denver mile high sends five quartets to...

VOL 31, NO. 3 Published by the Rocky Mountain District Association of Chapters May/June2008

Rocky Mountain District www.RMDsing.org Barbershop Harmony Society

Qualified out of DistrictQualified out of District

Storm FrontStorm FrontStorm Front Denver Mile High chapter

Competed in Dixie District in Greenville, SC on March 14-15 and

qualified with 2025, 84.3 %

Qualified out of DistrictQualified out of District

ThunderboxThunderboxThunderbox Denver Mile High chapter

Competed in Land O’ Lakes District in LaCrosse, Wis, on May 2-3 and

qualified with 1828, 76.2 %

THERE WAS NO LOL PHOTOGRAPHER TO TAKE PHOTO’S — SORRY!

This new quartet has some familiar faces: Dave Ellis, tenor, Michael

Troyer, lead, Andrew Howson, bari, and Chris Richards, bass

__________________________

Chris Vaughn’s new quartet Redline (former Flipside plus Chris)

was the top quartet in that same Dixie contest, qualifying with

2094 points, 87.3 %. ___________________________

SEP qualified for Int’l in the Pioneer District in Battle Creek, Mich. April

26th (lead Allen Gasper & bari Bobby Gray, Jr. are from Colo. Springs)

and scored 1952 at 81.3 %.

Denver Mile High Sends Five Quartets to Nashville!Denver Mile High Sends Five Quartets to Nashville! Lots of quality singing at the RMD Spring Prelims in Longmont, Colorado

Land O’ Lakes, Dixie, and Pioneer Districts also feel impact of Colorado quartets

Singing order for RMD quartets in the quartet quarter-finals in Nashville: Storm Front, 10th, NeXus, 34th, ThunderBox, 38th, Revolution, 51st, and Ignition! 53rd. Revolution will compete in the International Collegiate Quartet Contest (and will obviously be a very strong contender for the gold medals). And with many of

those elite quartet voices in the Sound of the Rockies, won’t THEY be a force to be reckoned with? — Tony Pranaitis

Dave Michael Andrew ChrisDave Michael Andrew Chris

Contact Chris Richards 303 359Contact Chris Richards 303 359--2585 2585

[email protected]@comcast.net

RMD Collegiate ChampionsRMD Collegiate Champions RMD Seniors ChampionsRMD Seniors Champions

Qualified for InternationalQualified for International Qualified for InternationalQualified for International

Qualified for InternationalQualified for International



Storm FrontStorm Front

http://www.RMDsing.org

mailto:[email protected]


http://www.pdffactory.com


Executive Operations TeamExecutive Operations Team

The RMD Vocal Expressions magazine is published in Jan/Feb (printed), March/April (online), May/June (online), July/Aug (printed), Sept/Oct (on-line), and Nov/Dec (online).

Deadlines will be the 25th day of the preceding month, i.e., April 25 for the May/June issue. Non-member subscription price is $5.00 per year.

Member subscription rate is $3.00, paid for by RMD dues. Please send all articles as text in the email or attach in “text only,” Word, or PDF formats. You can also mail floppy disks

or CD’s. Send photos/ads/posters as jpegs or pdfs, please. Unless carrying a byline, all articles are by the editor and may or

may not reflect the views of the RMD or the Society.

Full pageFull page 7.25 x 9.257.25 x 9.25 $125.00$125.00 1/2 page 4.75 x 7.25 $ 70.00 1/3 pg Vert. 1/3 pg Vert. 7.25 x 3.50 7.25 x 3.50 $ 50.00$ 50.00 1/3 pg Horiz. 3.50 x 7.25 $ 50.00 1/4 pg Vert. 1/4 pg Vert. 3.50 x 4.75 $3.50 x 4.75 $ 40.00 40.00 1/4pg Horiz. 2.50 x 7.25 $ 40.00 Bus. Card (6) Bus. Card (6) 1.75 x 3.25 1.75 x 3.25 $ 30.00$ 30.00

Please send payment with your order and make check

payable to RMD — thanks!

Conventions Chairman

OPEN CARA Coordinator Gordon Springer

801 274-2575 [email protected]

COTS Coordinator Bill Lahti


Financial Services VP Member Services VP

Dr. Tony Pranaitis 303 233-6234

[email protected]

Events VP Len Siler


President Mike Deputy

Hm 801 733-0562 Wk 800 873-0221 Cell 801 550-6748

[email protected]

Imm. Past President Rod Sgrignoli 720 981-1246

[email protected]

Executive VP Chorus Director Dev. VP

Woody Woods 719 528-8702

[email protected]

Secretary Merle Quigley

3120 Corona Trail #101 Boulder, CO 80301


Treasurer George Brown

6305 Mt. Vernon Drive Murray, UT 84107


RR MM D D

BB OO AA RR D D

OO FF

DD II RR EE CC TT OO RR SS

VE Magazine Editor Steven Jackson

215 Cheyenne St. #18 Golden, CO 80403


Contest & Judging VP John Coffin


Chapter Support & Leadership Training VP

Lee Taylor 801 576-9384

[email protected]

Youth In Harmony VP Phil Ricks


Marketing/PR VP Shawn Mondragon


Music/Performance VP Dan Clark


District Vision Statement Enriching lives in the Rocky Mountain District through singing in harmony

Advertising Rates Advertising Rates

Webmaster James Harper 303 664-1796

[email protected]



















RMDRMD Vocal Expressions May/June 2008 Vocal Expressions Page 3 May/June 2008

RMD Qualifiers to Int’l 1 RMD Board/Executive Ops Team 2 Vision Statement 2 Magazine publishing schedule 2 Advertising rates 2 RMD BOTY 3 Mike Deputy/Len Siler 4 Spending A Saturday in Longmont 5 Weekly Update 6 Singing For Life/Chapter Directory 7 Longmont/Convention news & photos 8 Longmont news & photos 9 Dr. Dan Clark 9 Convention photos 10-11 Tony Pranaitis, HF/Member Service VP 12 Tony Pranaitis, Member Services VP 13 RMD BOTY’s 14 Bulletin Editor of the Year 15 More HF/Silverton update 16 Phil Ricks: Youth In Harmony 16 Lee Taylor: CARA Roundup 17 Paige Brumley-Faubion 17 Quartet Photos 18-19 College photos/scores 20 Small Chorus Champs/Scores 21 Pueblo/Mile High VLQ photos 22 Quartet Finals scores 23 Billings BOTY 24 Durango News/HI-LANDERS 25 Convention photos 26-27 Vocal Mischief/Pocatello News 28 Burley News/It’s Only A Hobby? 29 All About APTIFY 30-31 Visiting the New Mexi-Chords 32 Denver MountainAires News 33 Grand Junction News 34 Grand Junction BOTY/Colby News 35 Sound of the Rockies Show 36-37 Montrose News 38 Montrose News/Joe Liles at HU 39 Pikes Peak News 40-41 Pikes Peak/Albuquerque News 42 Albuquerque News 43 Mt. Rushmore News 44-46 Nashville Quartet & Chorus lineup 47 Denver Mile High/Longmont News 48 Longmont News/Chapter Ann. 49 Grand Junction photo 50 RMD Calendar/Tag by Szabo 51

INDEX OF CONTENTS SPRING PRELIMS 2009 IN LAS VEGAS & 2010 IN RAPID CITY

The 2009 Spring Prelims will be in Las Vegas, Nevada (combined with Far West-ern District) and over 40 quartets are ex-pected…and with as many International qualifiers as these TWO Districts pro-duce, the Show of Champions will be second only to International itself!

The HOD also voted (because it is outside the 100 mile radius of RMD’s three major metro cities) to investigate Rapid City as a potential site for the 2010 Spring Prelims. To better acquaint our members with this highly attractive venue, all are invited (and ENCOURAGED) to attend the Harmony Happening in the Hills Festival this summer (August 15-16).

Visit shrineofdemocracychorus.org for more information (including song list). Jim Bagby will be the Festival clinician!

SUMMER HARMONY CAMP ESTES PARK, JUNE 5-8

Visit SummerHarmonyCamp.com for

information. Tuition is only $100. Includes bus transportation from Arvada High School. Boys clinician is Chris Vaughn and girls clinician is Andrew Howson Headliners are NeXus (International top 20) and boys teaching quartet is Revolu-tion (International qualifiers and District Collegiate champions). Two members of Revolution are alumni of Summer Har-mony Camp (as members of Elevation, high school quartet champs and Colle-giate qualifiers).

The Camp choruses perform on a show as part of the YMCA SummerFest Concert Series on Saturday night, June7th, 7:00 pm at Hempel Auditorium, which will also include NeXus and Revo-lution and Intuition, Sweet Adelines. The free show is open to the public. THEN, on Sunday, June 8th at 3:00, we’ll repeat the show at a grand finale called “Barber Pole-ooza” which will include Skyline Chorus (Sweet Adeline top five International), NeXus, Revolution, Im-pulse (Sweet Adeline top 20), Intuition and Spin Off (both Region 8 finalists). Tickets are $5.00 and the show is at Ar-vada High School, 65th and Wadsworth, Arvada, Colorado. Support these young people as they engage in our art form, and enjoy this spectacular show!

Lee Taylor Lee Taylor

2008 2008 RMD BARBERSHOPPERRMD BARBERSHOPPER

OF THE YEAR OF THE YEAR With a long history of service to the RMD, current VP CSLT (Chapter Support and Leadership Training), and architect of the highly successful “Leadership Seminar” (which replaced COTS…and saved the District THOU-SANDS of dollars), Lee Taylor was voted RMD BOTY. Lee is a member of the Salt Lake City “Beehive Statesmen.” Lee is also a nominee for District EVP (Executive Vice Presi-dent), elections at Fall HOD.

IS YOUR CHAPTER INVOLVED?IS YOUR CHAPTER INVOLVED?




RMD Events VP Len Siler 2008 Spring Convention Was A Great Success

The RMD Spring Convention was held in Longmont, Colo-rado on April 24-27 and we had a great turnout. Twelve quar-tets, two choruses and three VLQ’s competed in a very enthusi-astic competition. Of the 12 quartets, three RMD quartets quali-fied for International - Ignition!, NeXus and Revolution. One quartet from FWD, Audacity, also qualified. One RMD quartet, Revolution, also qualified for the College Competition. Storm Front competed in the Dixie District and qualified as did Thun-derBox, who competed in the LOL and qualified. All five quar-tets hail from the Denver Mile High chapter.

We had a great turnout with 162 registrations. We also picked up an astounding 157 Saturday night customers from the Longmont area. That is a tribute to the excellent marketing done by Longmont, the hosting chapter. The convention ran very smoothly and everyone is very pleased with the work that the Long’s Peak Chorus did at the convention. If only all conven-tions would run this smoothly.

Our next great event is the International competition in Nashville. We will be honored to see our qualified quartets per-form on the international stage for all of our peers. It will be a humbling experience. Now don't forget our Fall Convention coming up on September 25-28 in Colorado Springs. All of the information is being loaded on the RMD website so keep check-ing. Thanks to everyone who came and joined in the fun heard the best of the Rocky Mountain District.

District President

Mike Deputy Big Events Are Happening for RMD

It’s great to be a barbershopper in the Rocky Moun-tain District. RMD barbershoppers set a pace and level of excellence that is the envy of our Society. We have great participation in the Singing For Life partnership with the American Red Cross. Our Youth In Harmony program is moving forward in a good way with special focus on mu-sic educators. Spring chapter shows are well underway with patrons giving rave reviews. We anticipate a big summer with Harmony University, Quartet Brigade, har-mony festivals in South Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado and with five RMD quartets and two RMD choruses representing us at Nashville’s International Convention and competition.

Once again RMD barbershoppers are honored that two of our fellow members received special recognition by PROBE (BHS organization of Public Relations Officers and Bulletin Editors) for their award winning work in pro-ducing and publishing chapter newsletters. Award recipi-ents are: Owen Herndon, Colby, Kansas chapter, and John Elving, Mt. Rushmore chapter. {See related article on page

These talented men submitted their respective chap-ter newsletters for review by PROBE’s panel of distin-guished judges and received top marks. Both men are multi-year past winners of Society awards for their jour-nalism. Herndon was the 2007 International Bulletin Edi-tor of the Year and Elving was recognized for superior performance at the district level. They continue the tradi-tion this year. CONGRATULATIONS men, we salute your service and dedication.

Now is a great time to step up and help your chapter attract new members. They will be joining an organization that is moving forward. Remember the old saying, “Birds of a feather stick together.” Good programs and good people attract more good people.

Best wishes to all RMD barbershoppers from your district officer team. We appreciate your good work and congratulate you on your successes.



ONE DOWN, SIX TO GO — OUR MOST SINCERE APOLOGIES TO IGNITION! FOR FORGETTING TO INCLUDE THEIR CARD IN THE LAST ISSUE

MY MISTAKE! SORRY, GUYS!


It was a small but vocal gathering for the afternoon contest. All five groups that competed seemed to be enjoying themselves. I even (gasp) saw someone smiling while singing. The presenta-tion started on a humorous note when we found out that the cur-tain crew needed more work. What was so funny was that The Presidents Men (Mt. Rushmore) were frozen on stage for the start of their first song. Took about five minutes of opening and closing and positioning until someone figured out that it was ok to lift the darn thing. I didn’t see anyone move or blink an eye — a great presentation of Tin Roof Blues complete with period cos-tumes and music instruments for props. I was ready to give them bonus points if they played the horns, too! Oh, well. The group had a solid sound — I really wanted to hear that banjo, saxo-phone, and trumpet play. They were troopers, all 13 of them.

Speaking of thirteen, the Pueblo Sunsational Chorus un-der the direction of Betty Bray, sang for an evaluation only. The red vested small chorus should have competed because I thought they sounded pretty good; they had a pretty good bal-ance and blend. They sang Little Pal and Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie. There was a young tenor in the front row just grin-ning away. It was fun to listen to them. As my Dad remarked, “There’s a lot of good singing going on up there!”

Harmony of the Rockies, 10 men strong, sang Bright Was the Night and Bye, Bye Blues. It was interesting to see the yellow shirts from the Denver International worn as uniforms; good idea!

Our hosts, the Longmont Larks, 14 members strong, with colorful and loud tropical shirts, sang well as they made their way through Lets Get Away From It All and a very different arrange-ment of Side By Side — very entertaining!

The Small Chorus Champs were the Durango Narrow Gauge chorus with Amy Barrett directing. The purple-vested fifteen men gave a smooth and polished performance as they sang Cabaret and From the First Hello. Well done, gents! There were a total of 65 men and two lady directors participating in the contest. The VLQ Champs were the Rapid City Statues, uh, I mean The Presidents Men.

Now, how do you waste four plus hours? Well, we went ex-ploring Longmont and then to a quick dinner before getting back to the high school for the evening contest and show. Ok, now we get to hear the best the RMD has to offer. We weren’t disap-pointed. What a line-up! Ignition, NeXus, Revolution, and Au-dacity (FWD) all qualified for Nashville with some awesome (blame Joe Connolly). Got to hear some good friends sing, too. And, ahem, a Denver MountainAire takes the stage — go team! David Zoetewey sang lead with the Mile High quartet Baseline.

Spending A Saturday in Longmont, ColoradoSpending A Saturday in Longmont, Colorado

By Steve Jackson, VE Editor How time flies when you’re enjoying yourselves. My dad Bruce and I drove up to Longmont Saturday morning, April 26. We were

soon joined by fellow MountainAire Don Groomer (with his sweetie in tow) at Skyline High School. We arrived about 11:30 and watched everyone scurrying around setting up stuff before the VLQ/Small Chorus contest started at 1:00 pm. John Elving (fellow bulletin editor and PROBE official) had asked me to watch the PROBE booth (and his laptop computer — we had a slide show going) while he competed with his Rapid City VLQ. So, I warmed a chair and tried to look intelligent as I answered the plethora of questions that were bounding my way. Hey, what’s a PROBE? Look at the membership application; only $10.00? That’s cheap, what do I get for that? I had my answers all ready! Unfortunately, it turned out to be a most quiet afternoon until the singing started.

Back to my ramblings: I was impressed with Clockwork from Rexburg; I sure hope they stay together (two are college students); the bass Jeff Hopkins was marvelous. What a voice! I also enjoyed Rocky Mountain High from Rexburg and a new quartet Flashpoint from Albuquerque. Both gave smooth, solid performances. I was tickled to see Fastlane (yo Doyle and Rod) place fifth — it’s always fun to see friends do well! Our Senior Champs were Category 4 from Mile High — always a pleasure to watch and listen to. I was so disappointed that The Summit didn’t score well enough to qualify. I thought they sang just great. I really was hoping that the RMD would send five quartets; we still may. Don’t they award at-large slots after all the Districts scores are in? Nevertheless, it was a great contest. And the sing-ing wasn’t over. We heard Chris Vaughn’s new quartet Redline! Wow! A top ten performance, thank you very much! And more singing from NeXus, Revolution, and Ignition (yup, saved the best for last). The RMD should do VERY WELL in Nashville with these fine quartets representing us!




E/BIZ PASSWORDS CAN BE RETRIEVED AUTOMATICALLY ONLINE

If you forgot your password from Mem-bers Only you can click on the “Forgot my user password” link on the main menu of the login page, then click on the link to send your password hint directly back to your email account of record. Please relay this informa-tion to EVERY member in your chapter. Thanks.

NEW DISTRICT OFFICER

NOMINATIONS OPEN FOR 2009

A new District Treasurer is being sought to follow in the footsteps of George Brown, who has organized our accounting proce-dures with spectacular efficiency. Qualifica-tions would be simply knowing how to operate computerized accounting software, a grasp of the “big picture” with attention to detail, sin-cere dedication to the financial health of the RMD, and participation on the Board of Direc-tors. If you know of (or are) someone with these qualifications, contact the Nominating Team of Rod Sgrignoli or Tony Pranaitis.

Likewise, the office of Executive Vice President will be vacated by Woody Woods as he seeks election to District President at the fall HOD. Nominees for EVP are sought by Sgrignoli and Pranaitis. District leadership is a tremendous joy because of the opportu-nity to work together with dedicated men from many chapters who each have a proven track record of success.

INSURANCE FORMS POSTED ON

DISTRICT WEBSITE

Frank Santarelli wants to be SURE that every chapter is aware of the insurance cov-erage your membership provides. Our District Secretary, Merle Quigley, however, is con-cerned about chapters who are NOT current with their corporation status with their Secre-tary of State. This COULD jeopardize your protection from liability that the insurance provides. See RMD Weekly from January 21, 2008 for detailed information (available in the archives at www.RMDsing.org ) and you can download insurance forms f rom www.RMDsing.org as well.

JIM HENRY/DAVE STEVENS DVD HAS ARRIVED, ONE PER CHAPTER

The promised DVD containing inspira-tional messages “Gold Medal Moment” by Jim Henry and “What Are We Trying To Preserve?” by Dave Stevens have been mailed, one to each chapter. Please make plans to view this DVD with as many chapter members (and prospects) present. If this doesn’t fire you up, then your wood is all wet!

SHOW CLEARANCE BY DISTRICT SECRETARY AND ASCAP FEES

District Secretary Merle Quigley main-tains the official calendar of Chapter shows (which should not conflict with District or Soci-ety events, or with other Chapter shows in close proximity). He also guides the procure-ment of ASCAP licensing for shows. Let’s address the reasons for show clearance. In other words, make SURE you get your chap-ter show date on the District calendar (with the RMD Secretary) and he will make sure you follow the ASCAP licensing procedure. It’s that simple. District Secretary can be reached at [email protected].

Your Chapter charter agreement (all the Chapter charter agreements), which was signed at time of organization by your Chapter’s organizing officers, pledged that subsequent board members and officers would abide by Society poli-cies and guidelines.

Your Chapter spends several months preparing a show, only to find out another Chapter in your area has scheduled the same dates for their show. Now both of you are looking for the same audience. Ask yourself, how will you feel if they pulled "your" audience?

In accordance with U.S. copyright law, the BHS has negotiated and contracted with the writers and composers (ASCAP) a fee for our using their talents. This is the method ordained by BHS for controlling our part of the agreement.

Editor: Tony Pranaitis Member Services VP

Financial Development VP Harmony Foundation

ARCHIVING AND SHARING CHAPTER BULLETINS

As a means of referencing news from all chapters in the RMD, the idea of chapter bul-letins being electronically archived is under discussion. If each chapter stored the bulle-tins on its own website, then provided links directly to the bulletins, those links could be published on the district website. That would be the least amount of work and easiest re-trieval process for everyone involved. If you would like to see this move forward, or if you have other ideas, please reply to [email protected] or bring your comments to the House of Delegates meeting in Long-mont.

SUMMER FESTIVALS IN THE RMD

Silverton Festival July 18-19

Silverton, Colorado Director Darin Drown

Chautauqua Festival July 26

Boulder, Colorado Director Chad Boltz

Harmony Happenings in the Hills Aug 15-16

Rapid City, South Dakota Director Jim Bagby

If there are other festivals planned, please report to this editor at [email protected] and we’ll let everyone know. Festivals are pure unadulterated barbershop-fun!

CHAPTER LEADERSHIP SEMINARS

PLANNED FOR NOVEMBER

The Society has officially terminated “COTS” and is advocating the plan the RMD had developed to replace COTS (which was driving us deeper into red ink every year)…which is that chapter officer training continue to be a District-sponsored event. RMD VP CSLT Lee Taylor is calling this “Chapter Leadership Seminar” (although you’ll hear the “stuffy” title of “Leadership Academy” used in Society publications). Note that “OT” in COTS was “Operations Training” and we are instead espousing “Leadership”. Cur-rent plans for “Chapter Leadership Semi-nars” in the RMD are: Denver, Nov. 8th, Salt Lake City, Nov. 15th, and Albuquer-que Nov. 22nd.

SUMMER HARMONY CAMP FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTSSUMMER HARMONY CAMP FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

June 5-8 at the YMCA Camp in Estes Park, Summer Harmony Camp is limited to 50 boys and 50 girls. Music students who just finished 8th grade through just finished 12th grade are welcome. Cost is $100.00. Visit www.SummerHarmonyCamp.com to register online. “NeXus” will headline.






http://www.SummerHarmonyCamp.com



RMD Chapter Directory S-022 Albuquerque, NM New MexiChords 505-242-4451 [email protected] newmexichords.com S-020 Bernalillo County, NM Duke City Chorus 505-281-5187 [email protected] dukecitychorus.com S-033 Billings, MT Big Sky Chorus 406-254-6781 [email protected] S-001 Boulder, CO Timberliners 303-499-0788 [email protected] harmonize.com/timberliners S-016 Burley, ID Snake River Flats 208-436-6047 [email protected]

S-083 Cache Valley, UT Bridgerland Barbershoppers 435-245-5870 [email protected] S-079 Casper, WY Oil City Slickers 307-234-1460 [email protected] S-084 Cedar City, UT Iron County Minors 435-586-4993 [email protected] S-078 Cheyenne, WY Wyomingaires Chorus 307 637-0600 [email protected] harmonize.com/wyomingaires S-009 Colby, KS Tumbleweed Chorus 316-397-2480 [email protected]

S-091 CS Metro, CO Peak Experience 719-528-8702 [email protected] peakexperiencechorus.org S-002 Pikes Peak, CO America The Beautiful Chorus 719-272-4390 [email protected] atbchorus.com S-028 Denver, CO Denver MountainAires 303-987-2520 [email protected] mountainaires.com S-003 Denver, CO Sound of The Rockies 303-987-2116 [email protected] soundoftherockies.com S-024 Durango, CO Narrow Gauge Chorus 970-259-0313 [email protected] durangobarbershoppers.com

S-082 Garfield County, CO Mountain Sounds 970-285-9526 [email protected] S-089 Grand County, CO Grand Chorale 970-726-0343 [email protected] grandchorale.org S-014 Grand Junction, CO Bookcliff Chorus 970-242-8643 [email protected] bookcliffchorus.net S-088 Idaho Falls, ID Eagle Rock Station Chorus 208-524-3217 [email protected] S-004 Longmont, CO Longs Peak Chorus 303-922-3804 [email protected] harmonize.com/Longmont

S-017 Los Alamos Area, NM Lads of Enchantment 505-662-7985 [email protected] S-006 Loveland, CO Valentine City Chorus 970-229-0947 [email protected] valentinecitychorus.com S-037 Montrose, CO Black Canyon Chorus 970-240-1801 [email protected] blackcanyonchorus.org S-007 Spearfish, SD Northern Black Hills 605-642-5196 [email protected] S-090 Ogallala, NE Cowboy Capital Chorus 308-284-8358 [email protected] harmonize.com/ccc

S-008 Pocatello, ID Idaho Gateway Chorus 208-237-2623 [email protected] idahogatewaychorus.com S-076 Pueblo, CO Sunsational Chorus 719-250-5993 [email protected] gopueblo.com/sunsationals S-018 Rapid City, SD Shrine of Democracy 605-348-2683 [email protected] shrineofdemocracychorus.org S-015 Rexburg, ID Carousel Chorus 208-520-1499 [email protected] S-035 Salt Lake City, UT Beehive Statesmen 801-694-4068 [email protected] beehivestatesmen.org

S-005 San Juan County, NM Four Corners Harmony 505-326-4306 [email protected] S-010 Santa Fe, NM Harmonizers 505-983-1981 [email protected] S-043 Scottsbluff, NE Sugar Valley Singers 308-635-3250 [email protected] S-030 Sterling, CO Centennial State 970-522-7566 [email protected] S-068 Utah Valley, UT Skyline Chorus 801-225-8108 [email protected] uvskyline.org S-081 Wasatch Front, UT Saltaires Show Chorus 801-451-8434 [email protected] saltaires.org

HELP! THIS NEEDS TO STAY CURRENT, OTHERWISE IT’S JUST WASTED SPACE! RECENT CHANGES IN GREEN

“SINGING FOR LIFE” BLOOD DRIVE—GET ON BOARD!

May 10 is a NATION-WIDE effort by the Barbershop Harmony Society to sing for blood donations, raising awareness of the need for donors and of the hearts of Barbershoppers in support of this need. Is YOUR chapter involved? As of now, 149 chapters have signed on, eight of them in the RMD (although I know of nine) which places us 5th among all districts in percentage of chapters participating. Thanks to: Colorado Springs Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs Metro, Denver MountainAires, Grand Junction, Longmont, Mount Rushmore, Pocatello, and Wasatch Front.

“Hey, Boulder” is signed up with Bonfils but not with www.SingingForLife.org (which is why you’re not on the list). To Boul-der and everyone else not on the above list: click that link and SIGN UP (user name Barbershop, password Harmony). Sing for the “unsung hero” who donates blood and saves 3 lives each time s/he donates. Give a gift of life yourself, if you are eligible and willing. But AT LEAST, give the gift of song for those who are willing to give the gift of life. Sign up now!

From Noah Funderberg:

“The Society has always considered itself as a community-based organization that gives back more than we take. On Satur-day May 10 we hope that most of our chapters will join in a part-nership with the American Red Cross (ARC) the America’s Blood Centers (ARC) the Canadian Blood Services (CBS) and Hema-Quebec to hold the largest blood and donor recruitment drive ever in North American history. The project is called “Singing For Life”. We have the opportunity to take a leading role in the fight to help save lives. We are asking our chapters to join with a local blood services agency to hold a blood drive in their local community. The hope is that chapters will host a blood drive, and share the message of the need for blood donations while also singing bar-bershop music for audiences….”

There are media tools available for use in promoting “Singing For Life” and YOUR CHAPTER (downloadable). What better way to be known in your community?






































http://www.SingingForLife.org



Longmont hosts RMD’s convention by Gil Norris

The last weekend in April at Vance Brand Auditorium in northeast Longmont. There was more than an hour to go before the audience and the competitors would be in place, yet the men in black (and their wives) were already hard at work moving judges in from the airport, setting up warm-up facilities, distrib-uting packets of materials, registering barbershoppers and their families, selling and taking tickets, all the other things that make a convention run smoothly.

Emcee Bill Sachs kept the audience chuckling with his original stories (he swears they were mostly all true.) The quartet hosting crew waited by the rear door, wondering if the next com-petitors would arrive in time and what to do when a mystery unregistered foursome turned up ready to sing. It turns out they had switched their quartet’s name on the way over to contest (Clockwork from Rexburg). Longmont not only worked behind the scenes; they also provided some of the music. The VLQ’ers and the chorus from the host city received a warm welcome from the audience. “I was in the audience this time,” said bass Bob Wesel, “enjoying how our guys sang. The balance of voices and close attention to the director during the performance was really there.”

“It was wonderful being part of the Longmont Larks, the name our VLQ went by,” said bari Bill Westley. “After the 14 of us left the stage, the presentation judges met with us. They said our appearance was a bit too stoic and they showed us how to move with the music. In minutes they had us moving all over the place. It was amazing.” Westley was impressed by many of the quartets, and especially by Redline, director Chris Vaughn’s newest. “They had the Gotcha! sound, but the bass was stronger by far. We were looking around for the pipe organ.” New lead Seth Patterson won’t soon forget his first convention. “It was exciting,” he smiled. “It was fun.”


Mike Hemphill, tenor of Pacificaires, meets George Davidson (center), bari of Classic Collection for the first time as they

spot each other’s silver and gold quartet finalist medals. Mike first joined SPEBSQSA in California when invited by

Jim Halen, Longmont’s director during the 1980s.

“No Vacancy” surprises Cain “No Vacancy” surprises Cain

Burdette Cain has about 25 years experience as a Longmont barbershopper, but that’s almost a new kid on the block com-pared with his membership in the Fort Lupton Masonic Lodge. Several weeks ago his lodge brothers were honoring Burdette and two other men for 50 years of membership. “It was such an honor they were giving me, but I couldn’t believe what hap-pened next,” said Burdette. “Out popped No Vacancy to sere-nade me in front of the audience. They even invited me to sing with them.” The quartetters had been in on the secret for months, but hadn’t let a word slip out. Burdette was lodge mas-ter there back in 1965.

Longmont April News

Secretary Bruce Lunstrum’s report: “The Summit” will be the headliners for our 2008 show. The blood drive is sched-uled for May 10 at the old Wal-Mart on Hover St. We are com-mitted to provide a quartet or VLQ. There was discussion about support for the Spring Contest on April. 25-27. Tickets at the door are $15.00 for all. Membership VP: Longmont chapter is second in the district in membership. Music VP: The music and performance plan for the annual show was discussed. America the Beautiful (with overlay) will be sung with The Summit and Sounds Appealing quartets taking part. We reviewed the cur-rent chapter fund raisers. The women’s auxiliary is sponsoring a night at the California Actors Theatre. The ticket prices will include a $5.00 donation to the chapter. The date is April 18th. We also talked about Merle Moore’s gardening presentations at the fairgrounds. We talked about new polo shirts and ball caps with the correct logo. Ben Long has prepared flyers for the show and we need to distribute them. There was talk about using postcards to advertise the show.

Gil Norris, editor, high notes

“Where the heck is the next quartet? They’re supposed to be on in just ten minutes.” The backstage team learns that in

the world of show business, printed schedules and reality are two different things.



Music & Performance VP

Dr. Dan Clark

Get A Standing Ovation Every Time!

Several years ago, the late, great Lloyd Steinkamp, one of

our Society's very special people, sat down with a few other creative barbershoppers and devised a coaching method they called the Standing Ovation Program. Lloyd was a great show-man, and he understood the thrill of bringing an audience to its feet with an outstanding performance. He wasn’t talking about the polite standing ovation we have all seen and taken part in. He wanted to give choruses and quartets ideas which would make their audiences jump to their feet as the last chord of the tag is still ringing.

The Standing Ovation Program (SOP) functions through the Music & Performance people at the Society and District lev-els, and I am trying to make SOP a bigger part of the action in Rocky Mountain District. SOP entails having an experienced barbershopper attend your chapter show, make a few notes about every aspect of the performance, and then sit down with the director, the music team, or with the entire chorus if desired, to go over the strong points, the weak points and everything in between.

I would like to have SOP evaluators scattered all over this huge district, so that every chorus could get an SOP person to come to every show without having great distances to travel. The evaluator has a good time seeing a barbershop show, gets a couple of free tickets for himself and a guest, and then is able to help the chorus make its performances more entertaining. Choruses and quartets who have used this service have virtu-ally all been pleased with this method of self-improvement.

Your Society is making an effort to pump up SOP. In a number of districts, including ours, SOP hasn't been too active, so a movement is afoot to increase the number of certified Evaluators in all districts, to get a Trainer in each district, and to make SOP a part of nearly every barbershop performance. To get all of these things started, ALL BARBERSHOPPERS are invited to attend a four-hour session in Nashville during our In-ternational Convention in July, and it's FREE! Yep, on Tuesday, July 1, 2008, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 pm, you are invited to sit in on an SOP training class which will explain in detail how the program works; you will then be able to come home and spread SOP all over Rocky Mountain District.

In a recent teleconference with the Society Committee on SOP, all districts were begged to please send at least one per-son to the Nashville meeting, and if possible, send several. I plan to attend, and I'd love to have six or eight of my RMD friends come along. I will have some more specifics available on email in the next few weeks. Contact me, preferably by email, if you have questions about SOP. Hopefully, in the next few months you'll have access to many more names on our SOP list.


Chorus Director Development VP

Woody Woods

Directing Opportunities Abound

We have four front line directors and a number of college music students headed for Directors’ College at Harmony Univer-sity this summer. Why is that important? We’re providing more skilled leadership to the chapters in the case of front line directors and we’re directly influencing the curriculum wherever the college students go to teach. There are two programs that we as a district have not taken full advantage of: Chorus Director Workshop Intensive and Out-standing In Front.

The CDWI pits two trainers from the Society pool of cer-tified instructors against five directors and a volunteer cho-rus in a single day’s battle to refine the skills of the directors. We have two members of the district who have completed the classroom work to become trainers, Rod Sgrignoli and Raisha Quinn, and just need to complete their practical application portions to become certified. If you are a director or assistant director who would like to refine his or her skills in a one day intensive session, contact me and we’ll try to schedule a session.

The Outstanding In Front program is less intense, but it uses the talents of two trainers with a music team or any-one who gets in front of either the whole chorus or a section and refines or develops directing skills in those individuals. This is normally done with a single chorus team, but a com-bination in not out of the question. We have two certified trainers in the district: John Elving and Woody Woods. If you think your music leadership team could benefit from this training, contact me.

Redline, featuring Longmont director Chris Vaughn, heads for the stage door, ready to warm up the

crowd as mike tester quartet.

SShowcasehowcase OOurur

PPerformanceserformances




LL OO NN GG MM OO NN TT

P P HH OO TT OO SS




Harmony Foundation

Who Will Sing Tomorrow?

Thanks to the support of Harmony Foundation, many Harmony Ex-plosion Camps across the country are giving young singers the oppor-tunity to experience barbershop harmony.

For example, there's the Denver-area camp in Estes Park June 5, 6, 7, and 8. For information about the camp visit www.SummerHarmonyCamp.com (registration online/tuition $100/space for 50 boys and 50 girls). Clinicians Chris Vaughn (boys) and An-drew Howson (girls) will teach and inspire these young singers far beyond their expec-tations or previous harmony-singing experience. Add the presence of headliner NeXus International top 20, and teaching quartet Revolution, RMD Collegiate Quartet Champs and International qualifier! When the buses return to Arvada High School on Sunday afternoon, the Summer Harmony Camp boys and girls choruses (and youth quartets in attendance) will join NeXus and Revolution and the Skyline Chorus (top five International Sweet Adelines) and quartets Impulse (top 20 International), Intui-tion, and Spin Off (both Region 8 finalists) for a grand finale show called "Barber Pole-ooza" (wow!).

Many thanks to all of these performers for volunteering their time and talent to in-spire young singers. However, even with all this volunteer effort, Summer Harmony Camp is thriving thanks to the financial support of Harmony Foundation, which depends on the support of DONORS.

In the Rocky Mountain District, the following chapters were awarded for contribu-tions by their members, which make Summer Harmony Camp (and many other youth outreach projects) possible:

•• GOLD Sterling GOLD Sterling $119.05 per member$119.05 per member • SILVER Longmont $ 54.47 per member • SILVER Scottsbluff $ 53.88 per member • SILVER Bernalillo County $ 39.22 per member • SILVER Albuquerque $ 37.14 per member • SILVER Denver Mile High $ 31.97 per member • BRONZE Billings $ 25.86 per member • BRONZE Grand Junction $ 18.87 per member

Grand Junction and Albuquerque were also recognized for their local charitable contributions:

• SILVER Grand Junction $ 60.92 per member • BRONZE Albuquerque $ 22.32 per member

The fact is, not every member contributed these amounts. Some members contrib-uted much more, others contributed not at all. To those who DID contribute, YOU are the reason young people are attending Summer Harmony Camp. To those who have "not yet contributed," WHEN you do, there will be MORE Harmony Explosion Camps all across the country, and TOGETHER we will answer "Who Will Sing Tomorrow?"

It's called "The Power of Everyone." When EVERYONE in your chapter becomes an "Ambassador of Song" (at the minimum amount of $5.00 per month) then your chapter will be giving AT LEAST $60 per man per year. Many will be inspired to give much more per month. Some may even join the President's Council at $85 (or more) per month.

When the SPIRIT OF GIVING is embraced by all of our members in all of our chapters, we'll be sending music educators to Harmony University by the dozens, stu-dents will be encouraged to enjoy barbershop harmony, and more will attend Summer Harmony Camps. Sound exciting? Visit www.HarmonyFoundation.org to give the gift of music to our youth, and build our Society's future. It will change their lives, and when you see the result of your giving, it changes yours.

THE POWER OF EVERYONE ONLY THE POWER OF EVERYONE ONLY THE POWER OF EVERYONE ONLY WORKS WHEN EVERY ONE DOES!WORKS WHEN EVERY ONE DOES!WORKS WHEN EVERY ONE DOES!

Membership

With the Society website functioning better every day, we now have access to membership statistics for 2007, and up to the first quarter of 2008.

The fastest growing chapter in the RMD is Longmont (up seven in 2007, up one more so far in 2008). Other chap-ters having a good year in 2007 were Grand Junction (+5), Mt. Rushmore, Casper, Cedar City, Ogallala (all +2), and Los Alamos (+1).

Unfortunately, despite these gains, overall membership in the RMD is down 78 in 2007 (and we're already down 45 in the first quarter of 2008). See chart on next page for the data.

Dr. Tony Pranaitis Member Services &Member Services & Financial ServicesFinancial Services

RMD Vice President

http://www.SummerHarmonyCamp.com

http://www.HarmonyFoundation.org




The recommendation I gave to the chapters at the House of Delegates is to set a membership goal, and post it so every member sees it every week. My suggestion is to create a "membership thermometer" (and I showed an example at the HOD). You can print this on a piece of 11 x 17 and mount it on cardboard, or draw it on a piece of sheet rock, or WHATEVER you want to do. Make it big enough to be seen, and keep it in a con-spicuous place.

The example I used was Longmont (since they ARE our example). Their starting point was 48 (in black). Let's say their goal was 56 (climbing up in blue) and their "stretch goal" may have been 60 (climbing further in purple). Heaven for-bid, we put losses in red.

The "X" (or arrow) is moved up (or down) any time membership changes. Every member realizes that they are one of that total; each one is important. Long-mont has told me that their goal now is "88 in 2008". What's YOUR chapter goal?

60

59

58

57

56 X

55

54

53

52

51

50

49

48

47

46

45

Chapter 2006 members

+ / - 2007 members

+ / - March 08 members

Frank Thorne 55 0 55 0 55

Boulder 28 -1 27 -3 24

Co Springs Pikes Peak 55 -6 49 -1 48

Denver Mile High 156 -3 153 -11 142

Longmont 48 +7 55 +1 56

San Juan County 22 -6 16 0 16

Loveland 49 -4 45 0 45

Northern Black Hills 8 -1 7 0 7

Pocatello 29 -6 23 0 23

Colby 28 -4 24 0 24

Santa Fe 19 -5 14 0 14

Grand Junction 49 +5 54 -7 47

Rexburg 24 -3 21 -3 18

Burley 16 -1 15 0 15

Los Alamos 22 +1 23 -3 20

Mt Rushmore 41 +2 43 0 43

Bernalillo County 51 -5 46 -3 43

Albuquerque 60 -6 54 0 54

Durango 35 -6 29 -1 28

Denver MountainAires 60 -8 52 -1 51

Sterling 16 -3 13 0 13

Billings 31 -2 29 -2 27

Salt Lake City 55 -6 49 +1 50

Montrose 32 -4 28 -2 26

Scottsbluff 25 -4 21 0 21

Utah Valley 24 0 24 0 24

Pueblo 22 -3 19 -1 18

Cheyenne 8 0 8 0 8

Casper 12 +2 14 0 14

Wasatch Front 62 -6 56 -1 55

Garfield 11 -3 8 0 8

Cache Valley 11 -2 9 -2 7

Cedar City 7 +2 9 -4 5

Idaho Falls 4 0 4 -1 3

Grand County 11 0 11 +1 12

Ogallala 13 +2 15 -2 13

Colo Springs Metro 10 -1 9 0 9

RMD 1209 -78 1131 -45 1086

NEW MEMBERS



200720072007

RMD BOTYSRMD BOTYSRMD BOTYS

Albuquerque Bob Duckett

Bernalillo County Michael Busse

Billings Frankie Albo

Boulder Merle Quigley

Burley

Cache County

Casper NONE

Cheyenne NONE Colby

Steve Ottum CS Metro

CS Pikes Peak Neil Ridenour

Denver Mile High Darin Drown

Denver MountainAires Glen McLaughlin

Durango Ernie Norris Farmington

Garfield County

NONE Grand County

Grand Junction

Ken Reish Longmont

Jim Hopper Los Alamos

Loveland

Montrose

Dennis Olmstead

Ogalalla NONE

Pocatello Tony Christensen

Pueblo John Hembrey

Rapid City John Elving

Rexburg

Salt Lake City Gary Ekelenburg

Santa Fe John Deyloff Scottsbluff

Spearfish

NONE Sterling

Utah Valley

Owen Richardson Wasatch Front

RMD Barbershoppers of the YearRMD Barbershoppers of the Year


Make your plans NOW to be in Colorado Springs for the Fall Convention. We will crown a new District quartet champion as

well as select both a Senior and Novice quartet champs. Our choruses will be pulling out all the stops in their quest to qualify

for the next International contest in 2009 in Anaheim, CA.




Congratulations to Owen Herndon of

Colby, Kansas and his excellent Tumblewords for winning the RMD Bulletin Editor of the

Year Contest.

Second place went to Second place went to Second place went to John ElvingJohn ElvingJohn Elving, Rapid City, South Dakota and his , Rapid City, South Dakota and his , Rapid City, South Dakota and his “Voice of Democracy“Voice of Democracy“Voice of Democracy.”.”.” John’s bulletin will enter the International Bulletin John’s bulletin will enter the International Bulletin John’s bulletin will enter the International Bulletin

Contest and represent the RMD. Owen gets to sit this one out as the current Contest and represent the RMD. Owen gets to sit this one out as the current Contest and represent the RMD. Owen gets to sit this one out as the current “king of the bulletin world” because he won the IBC last year.“king of the bulletin world” because he won the IBC last year.“king of the bulletin world” because he won the IBC last year.

Owen John




2008 Silverton Barbershop Music Festival

2008 Songs

Sound Celebration #8626, I’m Sitting on Top of the World #8627, Beer Barrel Polka #7348, This Little Light of Mine/Do Lord Medley #8628 Hello Mary Lou #8615, Goodnight Sweetheart #8613, Battle Hymn #7687

Let There Be Peace on Earth #8614, Irish Blessing, (Free and Easy Arrangement) *Aura Lee/Love Me Tender #8607, *Dream a Little Dream of Me #8617

Please note the arrangement for Dream a Little Dream of Me is # 8617, Gentry

*New songs for the Silverton Festival

Reminders: 2008 Silverton Barbershop Festival Friday July 18th and Saturday July 19th, 2008

Silverton School, Silverton, Colorado Contact information:

Silverton Festival Coordinator Jason and Bethany Ward

970-240-1827

Founder's Club

Bill Biffle Dennis Cook Fred Wiese

President’s Council

automatically members of Ambassadors of Song

Brad Ayers Bill Biffle Dan Clark

Doyle Cline John Coffin

Dennis Cook Mike Deputy

Gary Forsberg Robert Gray Curt Kimball

Dennis Ledbetter Tony Pranaitis John Sasine

Rod Sgrignoli Mary Tackett Fred Wiese

Woody Woods Don York

Ambassadors of Song

Rex Abelein Damian Berger Rod Businga Jack Cozzins

Bob Kaes Steve Libsack

Ron McLaughlin James Russell

Ron Skabo Charles Snyder Charles Taylor

David Zoetewey

RMD Youth In Harmony VP

Phil Ricks Congratulations to Resolution and Spin at the spring conven-

tion. They not only sang well but represented the younger generation of barbershoppers very well. As you attend the different conventions and contests it becomes very apparent that the young people today really enjoy barbershop music when they are exposed to it. Our chal-lenge is to give them that exposure. We have some chapters in our district who do this consistently and faithfully. These chapters include Billings, Montana, Beehive Statesmen and Wasatch Front in Utah, Duke City and New Mexi-Chords in New Mexico, MountainAires and Mile High in Colorado, Durango in Colorado, and Rexburg in Idaho. Thanks to these chapters who have represented our Society to the youth in their areas. To those who have only thought about doing something, ask any of these above mentioned chapters and they will tell you it is more fun to do something with the youth than it is to just think about it.

Let me share one experience to illustrate. Last November the Rexburg chapter was asked to come and spend a day teaching the freshman and sophomore beginning sing-ers from 12 high schools about singing in the barbershop style with a concert in the eve-ning. Many of those young men had never sung in parts before and some couldn’t read music. Others had done both. Some were very focused on the task at hand and others were somewhat less enthused, but all were glad to be at a certified music clinic instead of a day at school.

The day went well and we all had fun, but there were parts of it that seemed like would never end. Learning the choreography helped add flavor to the event and as they began to catch the vision of what would happen that evening, the excitement began to build. By concert time the girls let the boys know they were ready to hear them sing. At the end of the barbershop set of songs the girls went nuts over the guys singing and the guys went nuts over the girls. The day was a success and well spent by all. Please con-sider doing something in your chapter with the youth, whether it be grade school, middle school, or high school. There are programs for each age group.

REMEMBER, there are only three ways to build our Society, (1) SING WELL (2) INVITE OTHERS (3) INVOLVE THE YOUTH. In these three lies the future, but of the three INVOLVE THE YOUTH guarantees the long-term future.

Youth Are Our Future!




District Administrator Merchandise, Afterglows, Awards

Paige Brumly-Faubion

Awards & Merchandise Awards & Merchandise & Afterglows, Oh My!& Afterglows, Oh My!

Upon completion of this years Quartet Preliminary Contest in Longmont, I wanted to take a moment to publicly thank a few folks that really went above and beyond helping me complete my numerous tasks.

Thanks to the ladies that covered the merchandise table when I needed to step away, you gals were great! Maureen and John Coffin, thanks for feeding me, I couldn’t do it without you!

Thanks to Don Zadanayski for providing the amazing BOSE sound system used at the afterglow and to Paul Dover for providing the microphones and the sound board AND for all his help setting up, running the sound system and breaking it down at the end. Bless his heart, he worked until nearly 2:00 in the morning making every quartet sound great! Thanks to David L’Esparance from Mt. Rushmore for ably mc’ing the afterglow.

Last but not least, thanks to the RMD Board of Directors for allowing me to do this job and for all the incredible work you do to make these events so amazingly successful!

Chapter Services Leadership Training VP

Lee Taylor [email protected]

CARA Roundup

As many of you know, CARA stands for Chapter Activities Recognition Award. CARA is a voluntary program which al-lows chapters to record their achievements in the areas of Mem-bership, Activities, Leadership, Music Education and Communi-cations. The reports, submitted monthly by participating chap-ters, serve as a running analysis of how the chapter is meeting its goals and objectives, and is a measure of chapter and chorus health. Chapters participating in 2007 were Denver Mile High, Denver MountainAires, Salt Lake City, Durango, Colby, Utah Valley, Pueblo and Scottsbluff. Winners were Denver Mile High (Plateau I); Salt Lake City (Plateau II); Durango (Plateau III); and Utah Valley (Plateau IV).

2008 Leadership Seminars

Because our hobby of singing can be enjoyed more fully in well run chapters, the training of chapter leadership teams has always been an important part of the Barbershop calendar. Be-fore 2007, this training was delivered by a cadre of trainers trained and certified by a subcommittee of the Barbershop Har-mony Society. This program, known by the acronym COTS (Chapter Operations Training Seminar) entailed bringing faculty from all over North America to mentor chapter officers and de-velop the skills and knowledge base to be effective leaders in their chapters. The costs for COTS were shared by International and the District, and while the quality of the training was signifi-cant, the seminars were invariably money-losers for the RMD.

In late 2006, International announced their intent not to support the traditional COTS in 2007. Chapter officer training would be the responsibility of the individual districts. In RMD, the decision was made to focus on four basic areas of chapter operations: Governance (Presidents, Secretaries and Treasurers); Internal Communication (Membership, Program VP); External Communication (Marketing & PR, Youth Outreach) and Music (Directors and Music/Performance VP).

The idea is that chapters of any size, and in any state of health, share these four operational requirements. As few as four members of a chapter leadership can get basic officer skills and take them back to the chapter, infusing the remaining chap-ter board members. If the chapter can get additional people to the Seminar, that simply deepens the level of understanding for that team. Mark your calendars now for the upcoming Leader-ship Seminars.

Denver, Colo: Nov. 8th Eden, Utah: Nov. 15th

Albuquerque, NM: Nov.22nd Final comment

Thank you, my friends!





Contest Administrator

Ken Galloway Hood River, Oregon

Mike Lanctot Mukilteo, Washington

Music

Ron Black Seguin, Texas Tom Gentry Akron, Ohio

Presentation Larry Clemens

Garden Ridge, Texas Roger Mills

Blaine, Washington

Singing James Estes

Oak Creek, Wisconsin Russ Young

Mesa, Arizona

Panel of Judges

2008 RMD Quartet Competitors2008 RMD Quartet Competitors




Competing Quartets

Ignition! Denver Mile High, Colo

Dan Testa, Curtis Terry, Matt Swann, Dennis Malone NeXus

Denver Mile High, Colo George Davidson, Ryan Wilson, Mike Davidson, Mark Zenk

Revolution Denver Mile High, Colo

Nate Zenk, James Eaton, Wes Short, Travis Tabares The Summit

Bernalillo County, NM Tim MacAlpine, Shawn Mondragon, Matt Vaive, Marco Gonzalez

Fastlane Denver Mile High, Colo

Doyle Cline, Rod Sgrignoli, Gray Jackson, Gian Porro

Clockwork Rexburg, Frank Thorne, Idaho

Joseph Hopkin, Eli Hopkin, Bob Pickett, Jeffrey Hopkin

Rocky Mountain High Rexburg, Idaho

Jeff Quick, Scott Rigby, Cecil Ricks, John Quick

Category 4 Denver Mile High, Colo

Denny McPheeters, Bob Fox, Terry Dodd, Woody Woods

Flashpoint Albuquerque, Bernalillo County & F. Thorne, NM Steve Cooper, Steve Allen, Tim Steider, Carl Gardei

Audacity Greater Phoenix, Arizona

John Fynmore, Byron Bennett, Fraser Brown, Greg Dodge

Baseline Mile High, D. MountainAires & F. Thorne, Colo

David Zoetewey, Steve Kientz, Jeff Markle, Geoff Quelch

Spin Grandview HS, Metro State, Alum UNC, Colo

Tanner Kelly, Tyson Arellano, Ryan Jacob, Tyler Wigginton




THE PRESIDENTS MEN

OFFICIAL SCORING SUMMARY, BHS, International Quartet Preliminaries Convention Rocky Mountain District, Quartet Finals Collegiate, Longmont, Colorado, April 25, 2008 Finals Collegiate Song MUS PRS SNG Total Avg 1 Revolution Stormy Weather 148 157 156 911 75.9 Sunny Side Up 142 152 156 2 Spin Wee Small Hours 123 118 126 722 60.2 Let’s Get Away From It All 119 115 121 Revolution is the Rocky Mountain District Collegiate Quartet Champion and qualifies for the Bank of America Collegiate Contest in July.




Small Chorus/VLQ Contest

Saturday, April 26, 2008 1:00 pm

Master of Ceremonies: Rod Sgrignoli

The Presidents Men VLQ Rapid City, South Dakota

Harmony of the Rockies VLQ Denver Mile High, Colorado

Sunsational Chorus (Evaluation only ) Pueblo, Colorado Director: Betty Bray

Longmont Larks VLQ Longmont, Colo

Narrowgauge Chorus Durango, Colorado

Director: Amelia Barrett

2008 VLQ Champions The Presidents Men

2008 Small Chorus Champions Narrowgauge Chorus

DURANGO

Longmont Larks




Sunsational Chorus

Harmony of the Rockies




Barbershopper of the Year Billings singer fills his world with music

By Cathy Ulrich, The Billings Gazette Staff

Frankie Albo’s house on South 31st Street is always filled with music. With both a jukebox and piano in his living room and a basement full of vinyl records, Albo’s house is a welcome refuge for music lovers.

“Music, to me, is a universal language that everyone understands,” he said.

Albo, a part-time cashier at St. Vincent de Paul, was recently honored with the Bill-ings Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society's annual award: Barbershopper of the Year.

“I was surprised with that honor,” he said. “You could have just knocked me over with a little thump.” The honor wasn’t a surprise to his peers in the Big Sky Chorus, a group Albo joined in 2005. The group members had a secret vote, hiding the re-sults from Albo, the secretary for the Big Sky Chorus. And it wasn't a difficult deci-sion for them either.

“Frankie is a really friendly, unassuming guy,” said Big Sky Chorus Director Dave Barnett. "He works so hard behind the scenes, not only working on his singing and improving his abilities, but on all the business that needs to be done.”

Prior to joining the Big Sky Chorus nearly three years ago, Albo’s only musical experience was in his high school’s glee club, which he admits he didn’t take very seriously. His love for music led him to a Big Sky Chorus show, and, he says, he was hooked. “I liked their harmony, liked their sound, liked their appearance, eve-rything about them,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of that.”

Albo, who doesn’t read music, learns his parts by ear and by listening to practice tapes. He has worked a lot with Barnett on improving his pronunciation, especially his “r”s. His first language is Spanish, and he still carries a bit of an accent when he sings. Albo also enjoys picking out tunes on his piano, playing what he has heard, and he hesitates to learn how to read music.

“If I learn to read the notes, I’m afraid I'll lose what I already have,” he said, gesturing to his piano keyboard. “If I hear it, I can repeat it.” To demonstrate, he played a rendition of Fats Domino’s Blueberry Hill, a piece he picked up in about a week, listen-ing to it on his jukebox as he sat at the keyboard. “Isn't this a riot?” he asked. “I love it.”

Albo has impressed Barnett with his willingness and ability to work and improve his musical skills. “He's improved his singing 200 percent,” Barnett said. “That’s what impressed me, is the improvement that he made with very little experience. He works very hard at it.” It isn’t just hard work for Albo; it’s love.

“I was raised with music,” he said. “There was always music in the house.” And he has come full circle, keeping his house lively with the sound of song. The jukebox and his record collection are his crowning glories. “I think I would rather buy a record than a loaf of bread,” he said. It may be music that draws people to Albo - “People come to visit me and see the jukebox, and they forget about me,” he said - but it’s his personality that wins them over. “He’s always smiling, always happy,” Barnett said. “He takes it upon himself to go above and beyond.” To emphasize his popularity, a neighbor across the street, upon seeing Albo step out of his house, lifted her head and shouted, “Congratulations!” He smiled. “My whole neighborhood is just tickled to death.”

Published on Friday, March 14, 2008

Frankie Albo, recently named the Barbershopper of the Year by the Billings Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society, is a member of the Big Sky Chorus, directed by Dave Barnett.

The group's spring performance, with the theme of "You Gotta Know How to Love 'Em," will be held on May 17, at the Alberta Bair Theater. The concert is a fundraiser for the group, to help pay for music, cos-tumes and travel expenses.

The Big Sky Chorus practices from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays, at St. Ber-nard's Parish (rear entrance) on Wicks Lane.

"Everyone and anyone is invited to see us," Albo said. "The door is al-ways open."

Performers Announced for "Harmony Foundation presents..."

The annual celebration of a cappella known as “Harmony Foundation presents…” will be held Saturday, July 5, in the Sommet Center. This year’s show will feature The Real Group, an award winning a cappella ensemble from Sweden. Guest performers also include: Voices of Lee, Ambassadors of Harmony, and the Marcsmen. Show producer for 2008 is Brandon Guyton. For more information and helpful links, visit www.harmonyfoundationpresents.com.

http://www.harmonyfoundationpresents.com




Here’s a Barbershop Quartet thatHere’s a Barbershop Quartet that GUARANTEES* You’ll Have Fun!GUARANTEES* You’ll Have Fun! You won’t believe…You won’t believe…You won’t believe…

The Chordial CelebrationThe Chordial Celebration

Dan Rod Steve GaryDan Rod Steve GaryDan Rod Steve Gary

Until you hear and see them at their zany best!Until you hear and see them at their zany best!Until you hear and see them at their zany best!

To book The Chordial Celebration for your show, call:

Gary Drown at (308) 236Gary Drown at (308) 236--20832083

*GUARANTEE: If one member of the audience goes home without laughing, our fee will be cheerfully refunded!

From the Jan/Feb HARMONIZER, Leo Fobart, editorFrom the Jan/Feb HARMONIZER, Leo Fobart, editor

DOWN MEMORY LANEDOWN MEMORY LANE

HI-LANDERS (Denver, Colorado — Central States District)

Hugh Hohnstein, Baritone; Wayne Hood, Lead; Karl Penner, Tenor; Russ Thompson, Bass (seated) Contact man: Karl Penner, 6128 Nelson Street, Arvada, Colorado 80002

Durango, Colorado Pete Peterson, editor, [email protected]

On Tuesday, April 22nd, members gathered at the train station between 6:00 and 6:15 pm for a official chorus photo-graph (dress uniform, please) to be used in advertising and publicity. The Light Source did the photography between 6:15 to 6:45. Then we headed over to Christ the King Lutheran for our usual Tuesday evening chapter meeting. On Sunday, April 20th, at 3:30 pm, there was a special rehearsal of the contest chorus at the Fairgrounds Exhibit Hall but the re-hearsals were fun and rewarding, even on a Sunday after-noon. Thanks, director Amy Barrett.

On Saturday, April 26, we’ll participate in the Small Cho-rus contest at the district convention in Longmont. Please make sure that you take all of your uniform with you to Long-mont. Everyone who plans to sing in the contest chorus must have registered for the convention and purchased the all-events package. Registration forms can be downloaded from the district web site at rmdsing.org. The district web site also has a schedule of contest activities. The small chorus contest begins at 1:00 pm on Saturday. We’ll have a rehearsal and walk-on Saturday morning. On Friday evening, April 25th, the first round of the quartet contest begins at 7:00 pm. June 14th is Chapter show and July 18th-19th is the Silverton Festival.





MM OO RR E E

PP HH OO TT OO SS




All photos on All photos on pages 8pages 8--9 9

and on and on pages 24pages 24--25 25

were taken bywere taken by Mike DeputyMike Deputy

THANKS! THANKS!




Pocatello, Idaho Chordial Chronicle Harold Catmull, Editor [email protected]

Pres. Dennis Buschaw commented that BOTY Tony Christensen said that we began our practice sessions 15 minutes early to be devoted to vocal warm up. We may take a short break if most members attend the early start. The Board discussed go-ing to spring contest in Longmont, but the consensus was to forego the Pre-lims and compete in Colorado Springs. It is not too late to begin selling sponsorships for our May 10th show.

On another note, I’m sad to see that Wayne Lott has turned in his chorus shirt. I understand that his work and other duties has made time too scarce for him to continue to sing with the chorus. Thank you, Wayne, for singing with us and a big thank you for singing with Odd Man Out. That quartet had a very high quality sound. Editor Harold queries: is our chapter doing every-thing it can to bring in new members…..I haven’t seen anyone new at our meetings lately. Perhaps we need to rearrange our direction to accomplish what needs to be done. Hope this will be the stimulus we need to get this job done.

Congratulations! Congratulations!

Tony Christensen Tony Christensen 20072007

Barbershopper of the YearBarbershopper of the Year

Brian Foster has a suggestion for a great vacation.

“Ever think of spending a week with about 600 barbershoppers, spending the whole week learning how to perform better, sing better, ring chords better? One can spend this great week in St. Joseph at Harmony University for the cost of $535, if one is signed up by March 15th. That’s quite a bargain considering that it includes the best music education money can buy (and room and board). When I was there last year I talked to music teachers who said it was the best instruction they had ever received. One teacher was there for the fifth year in a row. Did I mention that most of these music teachers were women? So my fellow barber-shoppers, give it some serious thought, but don’t delay too long. The price goes up to $585 after March 15.

I’m thinking if we can get a group of people signed up for Harmony U. we could car pool there. Dennis Bushaw drove there last year and found out that the trip is a little over 1100 miles and takes 16 hours. That’s a long trip, but it would be a lot less expensive than buying a plane ticket. I estimate that it would cost people who car pool less than $100 to make the round trip, providing that the car had at least four people in it. Last year a plane ride cost over $400. This year it will cost more. Think about it guys. It will be money and time well spent. It would be a great vacation.”

From the March Chordial Chronicle, thanks, Harold Catmull

Pocatello’s Vocal Mischief Vocal Mischief Experiences Rocky Mountain High

By Brian Foster

The week end before Valentine’s Day, Vocal Mischief jour-neyed to Estes Park. The trip to Estes Park usually takes about ten hours. Unfortunately the weather didn’t co-operate very much and closed down highway 30 and 80. We ended up detouring down to highway 70, which was 200 miles out of our way and six hours of extra driving because of the weather and truck wrecks. We finally got to our destination at 9:30 that night. Even though we had missed our first coaching session and dinner, we man-aged to get in an hour of tag singing with the Colorado and Ne-braska guys before hitting the sack. Turned out that we were the only Idaho or Utah quartet to get across the mountains. All the others turned back. We did not see one other Idaho or Utah car there.

On Saturday Vocal Mischief attended three coaching ses-sions. The first one was with Tom Metzger, bass for Realtime. The second session was with Tim Broersma, tenor for Real-time. The third session was with Shawn Mondragon, lead for The Summit. All three sessions were great. We received lots of good instruction and lots of encouragement. The coaching ses-sions along with the tag singing and the good food made the 16 hour drive worth it. The show Saturday night was great fun. All of the quartets that were coached sang in it, including Vocal Mis-chief, The Summit, Nexus, Storm Front, and Realtime. The weather was much nicer to us on Sunday. All the highways were open and we motored on home in about ten hours. It was a great week end and I’m looking forward to having another week end at Estes Park again next year.

Tracey Holbrook, Br, Rich Koch, T, Tony Christensen, L, Brian Foster, Bs




RMDRMD Vocal Expressions March/April 2008 Vocal Expressions Page 29 March/April 2008

Ok, we’ve identified the problem… it was a problem back when the Society (SPEBSQSA, now Barbershop Harmony) was started, and it’s still a problem for many chapters, choruses and quartets today in spite of the best efforts of many in the Society to solve it. Why? Because we are organized around the idea that Barbershop singing is a “hobby” for men who only need to “love to sing” to participate in (and enjoy) it. Well, it would cer-tainly be hard to enjoy it if you didn’t love to sing, but this “one size fits all” philosophy has resulted in certain deep-rooted and often faulty assumptions about and expectations of our Chapter activities. Such as: “we don’t need to do choreography, or show emotion… that’s why we joined a non-competition chorus or quartet,” or “we only need to accurately replicate the words and music the composers/arrangers set down on paper to get across the meaning of the song.“ Not only are these ideas deep-rooted in many long-time members, some Chapters are still not educating or supporting their members in the multiple “participation modes” of Barbershop, and the standards of per-formance that are applicable.

Of course, the competition chorus or quartet is not for eve-ryone! That’s why we have other modes in our hobby that are enjoyable and rewarding, each having a certain appeal and level of expectations for their participants. What are they? Well, besides the “competition” choruses and quartets, there are “performing” choruses, VLQs (very large quartets) and quartets that not only love to sing, but love to entertain as well, and strive to create a high degree of “entertainment value” for their audi-ences (see previous article). These modes, if provided by the Chapter, give individual members a choice as to the size of the group, and the degree of challenge in audience entertainment they wish to participate in.

If perhaps, there are individuals who don’t wish to “compete,” or are not inclined to “entertain,” one or more of the other modes, such as “gang singing,” “woodshedding,” “tag singing,” “pickup quartetting,” “harmony education,“ “show pro-duction,” “marketing,” “communications” or “administration” may well meet their needs. These and other participation modes are just as valid, enjoyable, and needed by our chapter and Society as any other. For those who choose the performance mode, the standards set by the Society have evolved to a very high level, because in today’s competitive “entertainment” market, audi-ence expectations are also very high. Presenting a song to an audience in order to tell a story, and create entertainment value is a high calling, and deserves no less than our best effort in telling it using our unique musical and visual barbershop har-mony style.

So what is the solution, you ask? Can we be all things to all people? No, but we can provide a pretty broad spectrum of ac-tivities from which to chose from. It all starts with the chapters vision, mission and goals. Creation and implementation of goals that provide these opportunities, means of support, and clear standards for participation will go a long way toward allowing each member to give and receive his “gold medals” in the way he chooses.

It’s Only A Hobby? Author unknown

Burley, Idaho Chapter Hype and Pitchpipe Paul Brown, editor, [email protected]

Paul’s March bulletin says their March 1st show was their 40th anniversary celebration held at the King Fine Arts Center. Both performances had about the same turnout of patrons; head-liners Steppin’ Out were excellent! Thanks to Cindy Hansen for the balanced sound system! The first 100 man singout with the Twin Falls chapter to encourage the College of Southern Idaho basketball team only produced 87 men. Many singers were suffering from colds or flu and stayed home. Next perform-ance on March 8th yielded only 60 singers. Member Scott Barksdale brought his mother Carol and her friend Sharon to a few meetings. Carol has been helping the learning process by playing the piano to help locate those elusive notes. Sharon may be able to fill our director slot, even though she lives in Albion, a fair drive away. It was suggested to compensate her for mileage expenses.

Paul Brown’s April issue reports that preparations are un-derway for the 2009 show; Aaron Clegg is show chairman and other members of the show committee are Jim Rodgers and Paul Brown. The show is scheduled for KFAC again although there are some reservations about our continued use of this facil-ity. The tentative songs being considered are God Bless the USA, Mother, Mary Lou, Beach Boys Medley, Five Foot Two, Good-night Sweetheart, and Amazing Grace. The theme being consid-ered is “Love Makes the World Go Around.”

Upcoming performances begin May 2nd at West Minico for the Mini-Cassia Women’s shelter, on Memorial Day at the Paul Cemetery to recognize our fallen soldiers and family members who are deceased, then followed on June 6 by the Relay for Life Celebration to raise funds and awareness for cancer victims, and the July 1 sing on the gazebo in Rupert to commemorate Inde-pendence Day.

The Snake River Flats have a new director, Sharon has taken the job of directing from David Spreier and Don MacRae and is leading in a very different style and positive manner. Sharon lives in Albion and is stretching it to spend a few hours each Tuesday evening at Harmony Hall in Rupert. In addition to directing our chorus she is the administrator of the Golden Heri-tage Senior Center in Burley. She also joins Zeb Bell Tuesday mornings on the local radio station to partner up with him on “Zeb at The Ranch.” She hosts her radio show from 8:06 in the morning Monday thru Thursday when Zeb is out of town. When asked what she does with her spare time, she replies; “I’m build-ing our new house atop Water Tank Hill in Albion. Thanks to Carol Barksdale for helping us learn new tunes when Sharon is absent.





Chapter Rosters - each member of a chapter can go into eBiz and look at their own chapter roster. This roster shows member number, name, address, email, phone, MMON, Society years and also expiration dates. Chapter secretaries can print this and use it at every board meeting to review upcoming membership dues renewals, chapter contact plans for current members who may not be active and other chapter membership-related planning activi-ties. This roster can be printed directly from the eBiz screen. We have asked that the additional feature of al-lowing the member to resort on any column be added to this report.

Chapter Officers – because of field feedback, the grid that the chapter secretary, substitute secretary or chapter president use to report 2008 members has been updated. The grid ONLY allows current, paid members to be placed into Chapter Officer roles. The grid can also show current, past or "all" years for your local chapter.

Chapter Data Downloads - all chapter members, even including past members, are now contained in this data download, either in Excel or Access. The "old" format has an equivalent field-by-field comparison to the “Members Only” download. The "new" APTIFY format has additional fields. Based on your feedback about the volume of data, we are also planning on having a "limited" download op-tion, to allow the basic 10-12 fields that will be the most useful for current and suspended (less than 180 days overdue) members.

FIND Functionality – for INTERNAL presentation, that is once logged onto eBiz, you can fill in a selective search parameter that allows you to find members, chapters and quartets. Name, location (city, state, zip) and some prox-imity info (in miles) and even email and phone numbers are used in some of these searches. The EXTERNAL presentation to the public, allowing non-members of the Society to locate the local chapter contact and/or also quartet contact information is only being held up due to security concerns, but is almost finished. Quartet status (current, expired) and also quartet member chapter affilia-tion are being added to this display.

APTIFYAPTIFY

Chorus and Quartet Contest Registration - a revised CJ20 form now links to the APTIFY data and retrieves cur-rent member and quartet information for passing to the District C&J contacts in preparation for a contest. Issues surfaced earlier this spring because members were not shown as chapter officers, and therefore could not register their chorus; also, the quartet contact may not have had current dues, also causing delays in getting a quartet reg-istered.

Member Updating – each member who successfully logs onto eBiz can view their own chapter rosters and, more importantly, update their own address, phone and email information directly into the Society data base. Many uses are made of the data and members can improve the qual-ity of current data by updating their records.

eBiz Passwords – with the conversion to eBiz, your old Members Only password has become case-sensitive. For anyone that has tried and failed to log on, the HQ folks are responding to several hundred emails each week, simply sending you the password that you have forgotten or mis-placed. Each member is encouraged to create a success-ful log-on session with eBiz. Send your request, giving your member number, name and address to [email protected] and watch for a return note to your current email account.

Dues Renewal - Each member with an email will get a notice and can log onto eBiz approximately 60 days prior to their dues renewal schedule. The member can quickly and easily arrange to directly pay with your personal credit card on-line. Visa, Master Card and more recently, AMEX and Discover, are equally valid ways to pay. Dues pay-ment on-line can have your membership renewal card back in the mail to your chapter secretary in 2-3 business days. 75% of members still respond to dues renewals via US mail.

A member may choose to continue to wait for the “paper trail” to start at the 30 day milestone, when a US Mail letter will be sent with the same dues renewal information. Sub-mitting a check or sending credit card information via re-turn mail will get in queue with the estimated 4000 other paper renewals at the end of each quarter. You can imag-ine that the paper chase will add 2-3 weeks at a minimum in handling these renewals. End-of-year holidays and end of 2nd quarter International Conventions can additionally add to this delay as HQ staff are out of the office more dur-ing these periods. The message here is to renew on line. It is fast, free, and works!

MAKING E/BIZ WORK FOR YOUMAKING E/BIZ WORK FOR YOU

The following info from Nashville will help bring you closer to eBiz fluency and chapter functionality:





BHS Embraces Future With BHS Embraces Future With New Computer SystemNew Computer System

From a letter to Ed Watson from Mike Deputy

Some of us, barbershoppers of positive attitude, good natured, patient and understanding, have been, of late, sometimes quick to complain and maybe even a little emotional in our delivery of feedback and suggestions about the computer system up-grade. In my opinion, it’s time for a little of congratulations where congratulations are due. On behalf of all RMD barber-shoppers I wish to convey our most sincere thanks to the Soci-ety IT team. WAY TO GO!

Even those among us of the most limited forward vision can now see what you’ve been telling us all along. This new system will be a big step up in capability and capacity. Many hours of ser-vice and dedication have been spent to help bring us where we are today. I saw lots of e-mail when there were problems. Now that things are rolling along better, the “madding crowd” has gone silent. Shame on us.

I know there has been much behind-the-scenes hard work and probably many challenges surmounted that can never be easily explained to us non-computer types. Thank you. And, thank you again. I know there is still much to be done and we look forward to the on-going improvements and new features. In the mean-time, please know we appreciate your good work.

Mike Deputy RMD President, Salt Lake City, Utah

Editors Note: Many thanks to Tony Pranaitis for including this

information in the March 14, 2008 RMD Weekly Update. I was going to access the Society page to pull down Aptify info

when I received this. Great minds……ah, never mind. SJ

Staff member Nick Fotopoulos helps with Staff member Nick Fotopoulos helps with Aptify: Aptify: his duties include:his duties include:

Channels - A contact list manager for email and direct mail list management.

User Authorizations - rework of the existing system to meet current needs and retain back ward compatibility with the exist-ing authorizations.

CD Burn on Demand - System to automatically produce Learn-ing CDs as orders are processed.

Thanks to Danielle Cole, BHS, for sending the photo

Nashville office

Renew with eBiz for Renewing Members find eBiz quick and easy

It’s quick and easy, so we encourage you to use the eBiz on-line "Dues Renewal" process for processing your renewal of Society/District/Chapter Dues. You even have a greater choice of credit cards to use: the Society is now accepting American Express and Discover! Forgotten your password?

If you misplaced your eBiz password and are having a problem logging on to the eBiz website, LOOK AGAIN for this NEW FEATURE. eBiz now supports you, the individ-ual Society member, by clicking on the "Forgot my user password" link on the main log-in page. You then click on the link to send your password hint directly back to your personal email account of record.

This will eliminate you having to call and wait for a re-turn email or phone call just to reset that forgotten eBiz user id! That also helps eliminate an extra call to the few Membership folks in Nashville trying to help every member in the many areas of Membership other than lost pass-words. Discover your inner eBizman!

Canadian Chorus "Scores"

TWIN CITY HARMONIZERS WIN HOCKEY SONG CHALLENGE

The Twin City Harmonizers of Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, won the “Hockey Song Challenge,” conducted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in conjunction with its Jan. 26. “Hockey Night in Canada.” See their performance at hockeysong.cbc.ca/

The chapter borrowed jerseys from the local junior team, the Kitchener Rangers, and polished up Stompin’ Tom Connors’ song “The Good Old Hockey Game,” which was already in their repertoire. Song submissions came from hundreds of entrants, all ages, both genders, from throughout Canada.

The entry was submitted by chapter member Pat Dodsworth, who videotaped and edited the performance. He became the official winner of the Grand Prize consisting of The Ultimate Hockey Day Experience – a trip for him and three friends (drawn by lottery among Chapter members) to Winkler, Manitoba to at-tend the Hockey Day In Canada dinner complete with hockey celebrities and the Stanley Cup, and VIP seats at National Hockey League games in Toronto and Ottawa. The chapter also won a Samsung home theatre system.



Seen in the Jan/Feb 1999 New Harmony Horizons, Lou Schuman, editor

Fourth place

In Tune bulletin of the Hunterdon chapter, Flemington, NJ, editor Linda Williams

“I Was Welcomed At The New MexiChords” Written by Lee Roth

When you have the occasion to travel, it’s fun to include a visit to a local barbershop chapter. I felt very welcomed at the New MexiChords. I always find a visit to another chapter to be inspirational, educational, and Lee Roth fun. I was not disappointed in Albuquerque. When I arrived in town, I logged onto the Society web site and checked the chapter finder (I recommend you do so before any trip if you think of it and have the time). I found two chap-ters within 10 miles of my hotel. The New MexiChords held their meeting on one of the nights I was free. But the Society site reported that they meet at 12 noon which seemed like a strange time. The old web site had the correct time. Often if you call the chapter you want to visit, they will arrange a pick-up and drop-off. In this case, we arrived a day before a conference, and spent it with my wife’s college roommate touring.


Her husband, an accomplished pian-ist, had been invited by his dentist to visit his chapter, but had never done so. I as-sured John that he would enjoy the ex-perience of a visit, so he offered to drive. We arrived a little late because we first went to the wrong church. Finding it dark we looked for another St. John’s church.

When we got there, we were quickly greeted by George Franklin, their Mar-keting and PR Vice President (their membership VP was not at the meeting). He asked each of us what part we sang, provided a guest folder of music, and took us to the risers.

I was mightily surprised to walk in and find a member of my own chapter standing in the chorus! It seems Tom Sharkey, a member and President of the New Jersey Sussex chapter, and also a member of our chapter, was visiting his daughter to celebrate his granddaughter’s birthday in Albuquerque. He has sung with this group before while visiting fam-ily.

We joined right in with the leads as they worked on some new music for their annual show being held on May 10. I was surprised that they had so many new songs to learn, and that at least the ones we worked on while I was there had some difficult intervals and also some very difficult timing and rhythm opportu-nities. Their director, Doug Arrington, was really pushing the rhythm issues. We went over the same sections a number of times. Even with learning recordings, which I had not had, they were having to work hard to make him happy.

They finally took a break and wel-comed about six guests with the “You’re as Welcome as the Flowers in May” song that our chapter uses. My friend, John, was surprised to learn that several of the singers, including the director, worked at the same place he had worked before his recent retirement. He may go back when he completes the presentation of a scien-tific paper he will deliver in early April. I know he made arrangements to get show

tickets from JC Preston, the singer I shared music with, to attend his first ever barbershop show. I was given a copy of their program book from their very suc-cessful show last year.

I also had the opportunity to discuss their even more successful Singing Val-entine program, where they work with singers from another chapter, and also with a Sweet Adelines group. They get the kind of numbers we dream about. So, visit another chapter in your travels. Have fun. I did. Learn something new. I did. Become inspired. I did. And perhaps even more important, greet your guests with enthusiasm, the New MexiChords did. Perhaps my friend will some day join them because of the fun time he had. I know they took his name, address, and telephone number and I know he has tickets to their May show.

Good article about another of our

RMD chapters, way to go, guys! SJ




Did you see the last Harmonizer?

The Denver MountainAires chapter was proud to see that 16 year old member Matt Seivert (lead/tenor) was acknowledged for

recruiting his 17 year old buddy Allen Brooks (baritone). They sure help to drop our average membership age.

Denver MountainAires Mountain Talk Steve Jackson, editor [email protected]

Contributing to this report was Tony “Scoop” Pranaitis

On May 27th, the chapter will have a family fun night as we will show the Denver Int’l DVD at the chapter meet-ing — where’s the hotdogs and the popcorn? Our April 19th show may have been one of our most successful ever. We made over $3,500.00, we had a very funny headliner quartet in The Kowalski Twins, and the chorus sang very well, especially on the evening show. The 500 seat auditorium at Green Mountain High was nearly full for the evening show and about one/third full for the matinee. The good walk up crowd was the result of several things: members working harder to sell tickets, newspaper ads, ad in the VE, and radio advertising on KEZW two weeks prior to the show. Thank you Ted Cluett, PR VP and Tony Pranaitis. Director John Fenner was almost speechless after the evening show; yup, he was a happy camper!

Show Chairman Woody Woodward deserves a lot of credit for his organization and hard work. He recruited former member Lev Ropes to emcee and to help write the show script. It turned out to have a strong youth theme, so Woody promptly nabbed 16 year old member Matt Seivert (lead) and 17 year old Allen Brooks (bari) to help Lev over the rough spots. Thanks to assistant director Jerry Hooper for attempting to lead the chorus through Take Me Out To the Ball Game one more time! That bit gets funnier every time I see it.

Member Paul Bonnstetter earned a year’s BHS membership paid by the chapter as he sold the most eve-ning tickets. Thanks to former member Keith Lunsford as he helped us by playing the drum during Battle Hymn of the Republic. Many thanks to Paul and Deana Dover; Deana was our photographer and Paul had them for me the next day. Paul sings lead in the newly formed Rocky Mountain Blend, who sang on the show along with the UltraSoniX and the Grace Notes. We also asked the lo-cal choir, the Green Mountain Boys Chorus, director David Gleason, to sing two songs. The Marshmelons from Lakewood High sang two songs. This mixed quartet won our high school quartet contest earlier this year. It’s become a tradition to invite the winners to sing on our an-nual shows. And what a show it turned out to be! We haven’t seen Woody since!

We will have four quartets: UltraSoniX, the Grace Note, Joyful Noise, and the Harmony Emporium and the chorus singing at the Denver West Blood Center all day May 10th, due to the efforts of program chairman Tony Pranaitis.

June 27th and 28th will be our next Harmony Show-case, “Salute to the USO,” then Aug. 2nd we’ll present “Bluegrass and Barbershop,” featuring one of the top bluegrass bands around, the Stanleytones. Then we’ll finish with two harmony showcases on Dec. 5th and 13th. We stay busy singing! Eating, too. Our summer picnic is in the planning stages and the chapter will attend the Chau-tauqua picnic/show July 26th.

Allen Brooks

Matt Seivert

YIH VP Tom Whitfield has things well in hand for the June 5-8 Summer Harmony Camp in Estes Park at the YMCA of the Rockies. Revolution is the teaching quartet for the boys and Ignition is teach-ing quartet for the girls. Chris Vaughn is boys clinician and Andrew Howson is girls clinician for the weekend. NeXus is the headlining quartet. See mountainaires.com for more details on the camp. Tom also spearheaded the updating of our vision and mission statements, and refining of our chapter goals which were printed in the bulletin and placed on our bulletin board. He stays busy as he sings bari in Rocky Mountain Blend along with bass Jerry Hooper, lead Paul Dover and tenor Jim Darling.

People are more likely to buy a ticket to the Barbershop Show if they know they are helping the local charity...

Tom W, Jerry H, Paul D, Jim D

Hey Mister Preacher man….




Grand Junction, Colorado Bookclef Bulletin Carroll Owen, editor, [email protected]

Former member Ken Graybill (40

year BHS) says he has pictures of a Bookcliff performance at one of the early (if not the 1st) JUCO baseball tourna-ment. President Dave Woodward wel-comed back the Bookclef chapter bulle-tin, ably edited by past editor Carroll Owen; it’s been over a year since the last issue. It is a very important method of communicating to our membership and friends of the chorus. Carroll will produce an email version with only a few paper copies to those members with no email. So, all of us should contribute each month!

We are quickly approaching our an-nual show on April 19th. Dennis Kiefer is setting up teams for ticket sales and Loren Roth and Doug Beyer are enlist-ing help in generating Show sponsor-ships. Volunteering to help in these areas will make this our best show ever and continue to let the Grand Valley know we’re a viable member of the Musical Arts Community. Watch your email for per-formance schedules and other chorus activities. Welcome new member Aaron T. Jenkins.

On April 4-5, there will be chorus and quartet coaching by Rod Sgrignoli —

4th 7 pm-9pm Chorus and Quartets needed

5th 9 am-12 Chorus Coaching

5th 1 pm-4 pm Quartet Coaching

April 19 Bookcliff Annual Show May 10 Sing for life

June 30 Youth Camp Holy Family School 12:01 7:00 pm

Good idea to list birthdays and anni-versaries in each issue. At the last Board meeting: Treasurer Roger McClelland is readying the annual audit required by HQ —due in May. Dave introduced Carroll Owen who is willing to be bulletin editor with established guidelines: timely arti-cles, distribution format (hard copy, e-mail and posted to chapter website, and fre-quency. A lively discussion addressed many factors including inclusion of color photos, Hal West’s efforts to update the local website, the recently established blog and cautions about appropriateness of material included.

Music & Performance VP Robert Walker reviewed the results and main points of the last music committee meet-ing. The quartet coaching by Rod

Sgrignoli is scheduled for April 4th.

He noted that any special music re-quested for JUCO performance had to be identified by March 31st. Lloyd Unfred will investigate competing logistics of the Fall Convention.

Joint event with Sweet Adelines: Lloyd Unfred said the new director for the local Sweet Ads is James Werner and they welcomed the idea of a joint event. President Dave Woodward mentioned the work and dedication new webmaster Hal West is putting into updating the website. The blog is new and under de-velopment.

We are very proud of our director Rai-sha Quinn. In February, she attended a CDWI (Choral Directors Workshop Inten-sive) training session in Nashville, Tenn. Of ten participants, she was one of three (out of ten) to be invited to continue train-ing to become a Certified Director.

David Hein, committee member of Youth in Harmony, comments: As part of our commitment to involving youth in singing a cappella music, ten of the cho-rus members were involved these past four months in singing to vocal music classes in the District #51 schools. Our goal to involve students in our show this spring has had an initial interest of some one hundred four students. With the ex-ception of East and Mt. Garfield, all mid-dle schools and high schools have had at least one of their classes involved in this presentation process.

As part of the districts policy on visi-tors being in the building, we always had to sign in at the main office of each build-ing, so even the secretarial staff was wooed by one or two polecat tunes. Re-hearsals for the students will start on March 18, 2008. They will learn “Disney Medley,” “Teach the Children to Sing,” and “Keep the Whole World Singing.”

As a follow up, chorus members will

be asked to phone three or four students who have expressed an interest in being part of our show in April. It is hoped that all the students who expressed an initial interest will be able to attend some of the rehearsals and be on stage with us. Wouldn’t that be a spectacular sight and sound?

Hosting of a future convention was

discussed, led by Paul Didier. He made it clear that it was a major undertaking that placed a huge burden on the local mem-bership in addition to the need for an ap-propriate venue. He will respond to RMD’s query that we do not have a suit-able venue available.

Membership is at 46 members with 42 active and six overdue. Lloyd Unfred provided an estimate of obtaining safety rails for the risers at $1,486 including freight and requested authorization to go ahead with the purchase.

Music and Performance VP is cur-rently vacant. Dave W. discussed options and suggestions to find someone suitable to fill the vacancy. Lloyd also noted the need for a strong sales effort for promot-ing show sponsors. Dave W. announced he had confirmation of the hotel reserva-tions for our out-of-town guests for the show, the coach, the “Standing Ovation” person and the headliner quarter.

What a tremendous effort and great results Dave Hein continues to achieve in working with the SD 51 music teachers and programs. Dave is compiling a list of names and phone numbers and has re-quested help in getting the follow-up con-tacts by phone done in a timely manner. He has a personal goal of getting a quar-tet of Mesa State College students started and requested help/suggestions in pursuing that objective.

A Uniform Manager is STILL needed. Dave Woodward. agreed to discuss it with Shirley McGirr. Paul Didier noted that it was a much bigger job than simply providing storage space; someone with computer skills is necessary. Barb Reish has agreed to perform activities of track-ing birthdates, anniversary dates and getting members appropriate greeting cards.





Roger McClelland wrote a good article: The Bookcliff Chorus honored Kenneth Reish as the 2007 Barbershopper of the Year! I have known Ken for nearly five years now; for a while, he was just one of the smiling faces in the tenor section. Later, I became better ac-quainted with Ken and Barb, his wife of 57 years.

The first thing that struck me is how this couple shares a common strength and philosophy of life. In response to the question “what does barbershop music mean to you” Ken responded with a typical smile, “It’s cheaper than psycho-therapy and a lot more fun!” Ken loves music and openly shares his experiences with anyone who shows an interest. Today, Ken plays a trumpet, sings tenor in choir and a cap-pella environments and writes music just for the fun of it.

He served 36 years as a Denver fire-fighter and retired in 1990 as the asst. fire chief. His involvement with Barbershop figured to be one of the few critical factors that persuaded him to retire. He was a member of three different quartets. The first quartet was the Denver Dads then he sang with the Blenders which went to contest twice. He stated that it was a very humbling experience, both times. Today he sings with Spare Parts during which he proudly displays x-rays of his knees after enduring double knee replacement surgery.

He has a dream of owning and operating a radio station that would play much of the old music and programs popular in the early days of radio. Shortly after he retired, Barb and Ken moved to Grand Junction which was our gain. Ken states that “truly music is my life!” It is very easy to believe he and Barb intentionally live in harmony with those around them, making real music and humor at every opportunity. He is a real gentleman of a rare sort who has a talented wife who supports and encourages his barbershop hobby.

Ken Reish, Barbershopper of the YearKen Reish, Barbershopper of the Year Grand Junction, Colorado Grand Junction, Colorado

Colby, Kansas Tumble-words Owen Herndon, editor [email protected]

Owen Herndon’s March/April issue was full of news about

their recent joint show with McCook. “Doo Wop Saturday Night” was presented in two different cities on two different days. On March 29th, they sang in Colby at the high school, then on April 12th, they sang in the McCook City Auditorium. Music VP Steve Ottum wrote an amusing article about the trials and tribulations of getting two choruses together to practice on the same night at the same time with both directors.

Colby had some challenges to overcome but the Tumble-weed Chorus did pull off a successful show despite limited joint chorus rehearsal time. Sweet Adeline headliners Cabaret had to cancel due to a personal issue in the tenor’s family, but guest quartet Ignition! rose to the challenge and did a wonderful job. McCook quartet Key of G made their presence felt (Merlin Brown, tenor, Charles Coleman, lead, Carl Philo, baritone, Russel Ankerson, bass). Lots of people helped direct the show; McCook asst. directors Carl Philo and Dr. Don Blank each directed a song. Rod Eisenbise and Bruce Bandy also directed a song while Colby director Brad Herndon did most of the arm waving.

Director Brad Herndon wrote a good article about choices made by the members, asking, “Is it my singers best two hours of the week?” Congratulations to Steve Ottum on being selected Barbershopper of the Year. President Phil Knox recapped the year to date declaring a “a frantic successful end” and decreed a week of rest. Imm. Past President John Collett reported upon their Oberlin show done April 6 at the Gateway theater for the Western Plains Art Council. Barbershop Then, and Now fea-tured 19 Tumbleweed members singing to a very receptive audi-ence. Pick-up quartet filled in; Steve Ottum, Ted Kastens, Loren Wegele, and Tom McNutt sang “Hello Mary Lou. “Cupid” Steve Ottum (hey, I just report it) wrote a full page upon their Valentine experiences — bass Floyd Trail, lead Ted Kastens, Rod Eisenbise, tenor joined their baritone “Cupid” traveling around the Colby area spreading goodwill and music and earned $412 for the chapter. It sounds like they were the only quartet, too. Bet they were tired.

Dolores Corke, wife of member Kenneth Corke, passed away Feb. 17th. Memorials may be given to the Multiple Sclerosis Society or to the First Baptist church, 1121 Main St. in Goodland. Editor Owen Herndon ex-pounded upon Pareto’s Principle: 80% of the results are produced from 20% of the efforts. Hmm, Paretto must have been a barbershopper; enuf said?

In MemorumIn Memorum






A pictorial review of the annual Denver Mile High chapter show — photos by Paige Faubion, thanks.

MC Rick Crandall, KEZW 1430 AM

The new Storm Front

Almost a full house at DU

Bigger moves, the back row can’t see….

What can you do with a drunken sailor? Rod Sgrignoli emoting for all he’s worthRod Sgrignoli emoting for all he’s worth

NICE STAGE!

Stand up Woody and smile!Stand up Woody and smile!

Uh Darin, I think they’re ready to go!

Solo work courtesy of Steve Branson

Warming up — whatya mean I’m flat?!

Mike Wakefield singing solo More frivolity from the Chordial Celebration




NeXus

Storm Front playing Buglers Holiday

Ignition Ignition selling their next songselling their next song

My Impressions of the My Impressions of the Sound Of The Rockies ShowSound Of The Rockies Show

By Bob Dickman, Denver MountainAires (from Mountain Talk, Steve Jackson, editor)

The Sound of the Rockies did a great job presenting "The Great American Songbook" their annual spring show(s) last Saturday, March 1st, with an afternoon and evening per-formance at the Newman Center, Denver University. There was no “second half headliner quartet,” as is common at many shows, but with NeXus, Ignition, and Storm Front in your chapter, who needs to bring in outside help? They were interspersed among the chorus songs through the whole show, keeping with the theme. Actually, it was the other way around: the chorus never sang more than two songs in a row, while each quartet sang two songs in the first half, and two more in the second half. Not to mention when the three quartets joined together in a VLQ to sing Goodbye World Goodbye, and the notice-of-intermission in beautiful four-part, twelve-voice contrapuntal harmony — "We'll be right back ... after we've gone ... to the bath … room!"

When Storm Front was scouting for a new tenor, was one of their requirements that he must play a low brass in-strument? They did their version of LeRoy Anderson's Bu-gler's Holiday, with tenor Jeff Selano playing a trombone. I think the previous tenor, Dave Ellis, played a baritone horn. Jeff’s playing wasn't as polished as the others (give him time), but his singing sure was. He will be, is, a good addition to the quartet.

When NeXus was introduced the first time, the MC an-nounced that one of the quartet members just had knee sur-gery two weeks ago, and the lights came up on Mark Zenk, bass, leaning on an aluminum cane. He stepped stiff-legged toward the mike, then handed the cane across to George Davidson, who hardly seemed to need it. I don't recall George doing much dancing, though.

The MC was Rick Crandall from radio station KEZW and he did, as usual, a bang-up job of tying it all to-gether. The evening show was broad-cast on KEZW (1430 on your AM dial), as is becoming usual. The sta-

tion didn't make any announcement of the barbershop show that I heard. One moment they were playing some easy mu-sic, and it faded into applause for the start of the show. I was wondering how they would handle the "Old Black Magic" bit, where the chorus did a continuous vamp while Dr. Dan Clark did his infamous pseudo-magician act, which is all vis-ual. Instead of cutting away to something else, the station broadcast it straight through, Rick Crandall having an-nounced to the listeners to imagine something funny hap-pening whenever they heard the show audience laugh-ing. The broadcast was nice, but you really had to be there to experience the whole show. The chorus didn't mention which, if any, of the songs they will take to Nashville for the international contest this year, but they sang all of them with medal winning quality. Impressive.

“Abracadabra!” said the wily tenor Dr. Clark“Abracadabra!” said the wily tenor Dr. Clark



Montrose, Colorado Canyon Chords Bill Sutton, editor [email protected]

Duane and Clara Morris celebrated 50 years of marriage. Of course, the chapter descended upon their place to help them celebrate. A representative portion of our chorus filed into the party about 3:00 pm, planned and executed by their only son, David, to completely surprise Duane and Clara. Heck, we even surprised some of us and we were supposed to know what was going on. On cue, our lovely director Bethany Ward trailed by her obedient (she wishes) husband Jason led us into the big room filled with well-wishers full of yummy snacks and two kinds of cake. Then we lined up to sing a half dozen or so love songs to the lovely couple. Duane, however, was not content to sit with Clara and bask in the glory. Oh no, not Duane. After we sang Happy Anniversary To You, Duane fought through the clapping crowd to join us for the rest of the story. Clara did not seem sur-prised. Neither were we.

After singing pretty dang well, the New Canyonaires, with Duane as bass, performed their signature song Barbara Ann to the delight of those attending. Nice, very nice. Duane didn't even seem intimidated. Can you imagine Duane ever being intimi-dated? Me neither. While they sang "Ba-ba-ba," the rest of the chorus slinked to the back of the room where tables were set with of all sorts of things on which to munch and chew. What was really surprising about the surprise was the surprise that every-one was dressed alike, well almost….Larry Wilkinsen arranged this and did an excellent job of getting the word out. After some time spent congratulating Clara and Duane and finishing all the crumbs from the cake, the chorus started to thin out. It was a great way to spend part of Saturday afternoon.

Lots and lots of talk followed at the Board meeting about our imminent concert, how many tickets we will need to sell, how much donor/supporter money we might receive, and how much it is really going to cost. Conversation descended to topics like getting another article in the DCI with a picture of NeXus this time. Vern Dokter asked if he should pursue another singout for the inmates of the Correction Center and if we are interested in singing at the Cancer run/walk charity deal. Then President Vern said he really needed to know if we would participate in a Com-munity Concert on March 14, 2009. He is also looking for a Con-cert Chairman for 2009.

Celebrating the success of the Black Canyon chapter show includes rave reviews tapping of toes...“simply the best show” ….even given MONEY.... worth every penny. Director Bethany Ward has cajoled, insulted, pleaded and finally praised the cho-rus for doing what she knew they could do ( the habit of this chapter). We peaked right at the same time the curtain opened. Seeing a full auditorium sure didn't hurt, either.

As to the full house, much of the credit goes to the hard working members who busted their butts selling tickets. As Hank Snyer observed, it was much easier selling tickets to this concert because we were convinced it was going to be GOOD. Even Dr. Bobby “fleeced” 25-26 of his patients to buy tickets. Thanks to Don Dufva and his helpful cronies, everything worked flawlessly. We even had THREE chapter quartets singing on stage with the chorus, along with the talented The Higher Elevation. Second half showcased the DelRose Sweet Adeline chorus capped by our International quality guest quartet NeXus.


The second Tuesday in April we met at Vern Docker's house for the April board meeting. After approving the minutes and the money report, attentions drifted toward the show, how we did, and what should we do in the future. The future venue for our afterglow was discussed: we should get some facts from the Pavilion before making a decision whether to return there or stay with the Turn of the Century. Editor Bill Sutton will be the factual data getter. Then the sticky conundrum about what songs to sing this summer and who should decide? Unable to, we decided to let Music VP Gary Armour, Director Bethany Ward, and Ass't. Director Tom Chamberlain make those deci-sions, with input from Program VP Larry Wilkinson. Hank Snyer reminded us that we should be ready for the Delta Com-munity Concert Series next year. But before we left, Vern Dok-ter announced that many of us were listed as "expired" on the Society web site even though some of us have paid. Hopefully it’ll be fixed soon.

The afterglow was at the Turn of the Century; all the efforts

from Don Dufva and the Wilkinsons paid off. The food and beer was great. All of the show performers showed off again as did a few quartets. The New Canyonaires sang Little Darlin'. Then an ever improving quartet from Grand Junction sang for us as did the mangled Fourmatafied. Then NeXus knocked the sox off of the attendees until about midnight, playing a theme to a hilt that the bass never gets any words. That was funny. All in all it was an evening of phantastic successes, thanks to the phunny Philly silly guy who narrated our show and fractured our afterglow with his never-ending jokes and famous repartee. He was Plumb PHUNNY!

From Show Chairman Don Dufka: THANK YOU’S!

Larry and Sally Wilkinson — afterglow. When I asked for help they responded by doing virtually everything that needed to be done. Larry also took charge of ticket sales and keeping track of the cash that the sales produced. Bill Sutton — program and poster. Vern Dockter for printing the program and to those who helped him get them folded at the last minute. Don Barnett — chief riser wrestler not to mention storing the risers for us. Thanks Don and thanks to those who helped him. Dennis Olmstead did a fantastic job of advertising the show. How he managed to have NeXus on the cover of the Scene section of the Daily Press is a mystery to me but it was a master stroke! Thanks to the ladies who sold tickets at the door and those who handed out the programs. Thanks to Doris Chamberlain for selling CDs for NeXus. What would we do without all of our wives at show time?

Carl and Rajean Schultz were a huge help back stage. They took care of the curtain and saw to it that flowers were delivered to Bethany at just the right moment. by Duane and Clara's granddaughter, Becky. Thanks to Wilma Erven for tak-ing pictures. Thanks Hank Snyer for coming up with the cowboy hats. Gary Armour helped by forwarding e-mails that my can-tankerous computer would not send. Gary also suggested The Turn of the Century for our afterglow. Treasurer Jason Ward should have “final figures” available for the next board meeting. Bob Brethouwer sold at least 25 tickets and I know Tom Charmichael sold a bunch. Gene Bond brought his giant coffee maker for serving the ice tea we enjoyed at the afterglow. Thanks Mr. Pitch man, Duane Morris.




July 18July 18--19 19 Friday night and all day Saturday Friday night and all day Saturday


Joe Liles Joe Liles to give Keynote Address to give Keynote Address at Harmony Universityat Harmony University

One of the barbershop world’s greatest

talents, Joe Liles, will be the feature for Sunday night’s Keynote Address at Har-mony University.

Joe has been on the faculty of Harmony College/Harmony University for over 35 years. He is a talented arranger, song composer, chorus director, coach, and judge. He is listed in the International Who’s Who in Music, received the 1999 MENC: National Association for Music Education award for his work in promoting music education. He is a life member of the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and an honorary life member of Sweet Adelines International. In summer of 2007, Joe was inducted into the Barbershop Harmony Society Hall of Fame.

Joe joined the Barbershop Harmony Society in 1967 and directed the San Antonio, Texas, chorus to the international medalist level in 1971 and '72 in the Society’s competition. Cur-rently Joe is Music Publications Editor for the Barbershop Har-mony Society overseeing publication of arrangements in coordi-nation with a volunteer music publications committee. An em-ployee of the Barbershop Harmony Society since 1975, Liles retired as the Society’s Executive Director in 1996, after ten years in the job. He previously served as the Society’s Director of Music Education and Services and as a staff field representa-tive. Joe continues to be an inspiration for many barbershop singers in all three barbershop organizations. THIS IS A PRES-ENTATION NOT TO BE MISSED!

Visit www.barbershop.org/harmonyu for more information.

Saturday July 19, 2008

Quartet coaching on Fri night at 6:00 pm

Silverton High School Gym

SILVERTON BARBERSHOP MUSIC FESTIVAL

Darin Drown, Director Jason Ward, Music Festival Coordinator

We will sing as a chorus Saturday evening. There will be some tag and quartet singing

Friday evening. Come and enjoy.

A big thank you to Tom Chamberlain for filling in as director when needed and especially for his role as Professor Harold Hill, you added a new dimension to the concert. Isn't it nice that we now have a dynamic new quartet as a result of the show? I don't know if they will continue on as “The School Board” or come up with a different name, but I do know they will be a great addition to the chapter. And finally, thanks to Bethany Ward for all of your efforts. Please know that we appreciate all that you do for us. I think your efforts paid off with the best concert we have ever done. And thank you, Bethany for your marvelous solo. It was the highlight of the evening.

President Vern Dockter: On the night of the Concert, I was very proud of what we accomplished. After the concert was over, as one person was leaving (someone I know) walked by me, shook my hand, congratulated me for the chorus, and said, “it was worth every dollar and more!” He also left a fifty dollar bill in my hand.

Saturday, May 10, 2008 Dreamcatcher’s Center in Delta wants a quartet or two to sing for an auctioned off price at their silent auction. Would like them to sing at a 50’s party that night.. Saturday, May 24, 2008 6:30 PM Ridgeway State Park, Headquarters Building singouts on the lake overlook. Beautiful; well worth our time and effort. Sunday, July 13, 2008 1:30 pm Chapel of the Cross sing in Cedaredge for a good audi-ence. Should have beautiful weather Saturday, July 19, 2008 8:30 am Silverton High School Gym SILVERTON BARBERSHOP MUSIC FESTIVAL Saturday, August 23, 2008 6:00 pm Ridgeway State Park, Headquarters Building Annual potluck and sing for the fine campers.

Paige Faubion, minder of the Barbershoppers Shop at Longmont Prelims, shows some of the merchandise to

customers Bob Grigsby, left, and Burdette Cain.

http://www.barbershop.org/harmonyu



The PikeSpeakerThe PikeSpeaker Colorado Springs, Colorado

[email protected]

President Charlie Snyder states that most of the real work on the Convention will not begin until after the Spring Con-vention (April 25 - 27 in Longmont), so you still have some time to think about what jobs you, your family members and friends may want to do. We will need help ushering, backstage, selling tickets etc. If a family member or friend helps out at an event, they will be able to watch the rest of the events for free once their du-ties are complete. Sorry, this doesn't ap-ply to us members who will be competing, as we are required to purchase a con-vention package. Your Convention team will keep you posted as to the progress and needs in the coming months.

"The Faces of a Barbershop Chorus" By Charles Green

Here is a photograph of the Chorus warming up. Singing is very physical and Adam does a wonderful job of preparing all of us to sing our best. The chorus is charged mentally & physi-cally. The Chorus is stronger and more alert. Thank you Adam, we are very lucky to have you.

Our friends in the Velvet Hills Chorus are going to Salt Lake City the weekend of May 9th for their Region 8 Annual Spring Contest and Convention. Therefore, they are having their annual Friends and Fam-ily night on April 28th to show all their friends and families their contest pack-ages. Besides hearing the Velvet Hills you will also hear all of their competing quartets. You will also hear “Impulse,” our special guest quartet on our May 17th show.

There will be a Friends and Family night at Liberty High School Monday, April 28th from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm.

SINGING FOR LIFE UPDATE By Doug Simpson

Our Singing for Life blood drive will be held at the Panera Bread at 3110 New Center Pt, near the Best Buy on Powers between N. Carefree and Constitution, from 8 am to 12:30 pm. Bonfils Blood Center, our local blood organization part-ner, is going to park their mobile blood center in the parking lot there to run the blood drive. We will be providing quartets to entertain the blood donors and anyone else who comes to the restaurant that morning. I'll be working with Mark Hoff-man to have some information about ATB available to the donors and restaurant patrons. we'll be performing either inside or outside at the restaurant; I'll have a

tentative quartet performing schedule March 18th. Any of our quartets are wel-come to participate, pickup quartets, too. Be prepared to sing for the chapter before venturing forth. You’ll be singing at regular intervals along with several Velvet Hills quartets and other small local vocal groups between our quartets. Some kind of music should be happening all the time during the blood drive. To make this hap-pen, contact me at 475-2837 or e-mail me at [email protected] by March 25th. Thanks.

Our ad sales for the spring show goal is to sell at least $2000 worth of ads. Thanks, Doug Simpson

Howie Vroman will have the advertising postcards and mailing labels for the spring show this week. Please pull off all the labels with “your names” and attach them to the postcards. Keep the postcards that you will deliver personally. Write a person-alized message on the cards to be mailed and give them to me. I will buy stamps for these postcards; I’d like to have this all done ASAP but no later than April 1st. Thanks for your help.

Special request from Elaine “typing not so pro @ this editor business!” Shute: I would appreciate it if the articles you are writing for the Pikespeaker to be “free” of all punctuation/paragraph marks (have you really got them trained enough to do that, Elaine, that’s cool — SJ)

RECALLING MOMENTS OF “CUPIDS 4” SINGING THE BEST OF THE BEST THIS PAST VALENTINE’S DAY


This is Big Mark to his friends aka: Mark Keenan. Mark is a lead in the chorus, and sees to it that we receive refreshments on Tuesdays. Mark is a very hard man to measure up to.

Norm assumes the editing duties full time as Elaine has previous commit-ments April 18TH and April 25TH — keep those fingers loose!

WANTEDWANTED

INTERESTING ARTICLES FOR OUR NEWSLETTER SO IT WILL BE MORE ANXIOUSLY AWAITED AND FUN TO

READ. WE KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE SOMEWHERE JUST

WAITING TO BE HEARD...RIGHT?






Where Are We Going?

At this precise moment in time (three years hence), what is happening in this room?

• 79 people are in the room (significant chapter growth). • We are producing a much better sound • We are getting ready for the spring show • A younger chorus is in the room (average age is younger) • We are getting ready for contest • Excitement and happiness from our great sound • Eight registered quartets

At this precise moment in time (three years hence), what was the greatest achievement of the chapter in the prior two years?

(What was accomplished?)

• #3 in district competition • Most improved chorus: 1-2 times • Best fall convention hosted the district has ever seen • 40% of the town knows who we are • Eight performances with $1000 payment to chorus • Increase active membership to 79 members--including 2-5 more tenors • Eight quartets in contest

At this precise moment in time (three years hence), what are we working on right now that will be the highlight of this year?

(What will be the end result?)

• District contest competition • People call us and know us • Invitation to sing with "Sound of the Rockies" on their annual

show • Conduct a show with the CS Choral • Total sell-out for two shows with a larger auditorium • Shown/verifiable/definitive improvement • Two new guests per week at rehearsal

REMEMBER Regarding Spring Show ticket selling, not everyone is going to want to go to the show or they already have other plans. This is NORMAL. You make up for it by volume. Contact your neighbors, your co-workers, your rela-tives (even that crazy brother-in-law), your wife’s best friends, and your doctor/dentist/lawyer. Maybe your mechanic or barber or someone you know who works at the Safeway. Possibly, the restaurant owner of the place you eat breakfast regularly. Put them on your contact list. And, if you know some Sweet Adeline’s—make the calls!

It is VITAL you make ticket selling contacts now. It usually takes 7-10 days from the time you first contact people, send/take them tickets and then collect the funds. Some of you will do it much faster going to their houses or meeting them somewhere, or doing it at work. Have you sold your 12 tickets yet? That’s what we need from EACH MEMBER including YOU.

Gentlemen, it is volume in contacting people. There is no magic formula, just make the contacts and be pleasant. Don’t forget to ask if they say no thanks, if you can keep them on the contact list for future shows. If they say no, it will save you time in the future. Even that is a positive for your future sales efforts. Remember, you miss 100% of all ticket sales contacts you don’t make—I’ll guarantee it. Make the calls and contacts. We are all counting on you.

The Ticket Bubba

Please sell program ads soon!

Doug Simpson says ad sales are slow; deadline for submitting them is Friday, May 2, if you need a copy of the Info/Guideline sheet or contract form, email Doug at [email protected]. If you want to pick up these forms on Tuesday, let him know, and he will have them for you at the rehearsal. Please review your music and clean up any of the weak spots and be prepared to give Adam Reimnitz and Paul Huff a great rehearsal this

Mo Opperman has a wonderful bass voice and sings with great enthusi-asm. He always plays to the audi-ence and is a joy to watch. Mo is a 13 year member. He took a bad fall a few weeks ago and is struggling to get better. Mo has been at ATB practice sitting in front of the chorus and singing his heart out. Mo is recognized by his deep loud voice "Fall In!" helping the director to get

Tim Simmons sings baritone and has been a member of ATB for many years and also a member of Colo. Springs Metro. We are so glad that Tim has rejoined and is now active with us. Our Spring show will be better with him singing in our chorus.




By Charles Green

Meet Mike Davidson a member of Sound of The Rockies Chorus. Mike is demonstrating that big Barbershop smile that links us all. Mike is doing even more, he came down on April 15 to help the ATB Chorus with choreography. He was cheerful, energetic, & full of ideas. You know "It’s great to be a Barbershopper," and we appreciate what Mike has done for us. Adam, our director, is a personal friend of Mikes and we ap-preciate his effort too. Our Spring Concert is on the hori-zon. Believe me you will love the show. Thank you Mike and Adam.

Pres. Charlie Snyder reports that the chorus is performing the National Anthem at Security Services Field for the Colorado Springs Sky Sox vs. the Salt Lake City Bees baseball game at 7 PM, June 17. The Sky Sox are giving us a great discount on all tickets at $2.00 each. Chris Jensen, our new coordinator for National Anthem events, will be giving us more details as we get closer to June 17.

SINGING FOR LIFE by Doug Simpson

Our Singing for Life blood drive is all set and only a week away. We'll have groups performing all day; the schedule looks like this:

1:30 - 1:55 pm Harmony in Motion 2:05 - 2:30 pm Velcro 2:35 - 2:55 pm In The Stairwell 3:00 - 3:10 pm 3 Great Guys 3:15 - 3:40 pm The Back Row 3:45 - 4:05 pm 4 The Lord 4:10 - 4:25 pm Yesterday's Heroes 4:30 - 5:00 pm Metrognomes

Velcro, Yesterday's Heroes, and 3 Great Guys are from our chapter.

Harmony in Motion http://www.carson.army.mil/harmony/index.htm is "the official vocal ensemble of the 7th Infantry Divi-sion & Fort Carson" and they sing at military ceremonies as well as community events. In The Stairwell http://www.inthestairwellorg/home.htm is an all-male cadet group from the Air Force Academy that performs all-vocal renditions of top 40 songs. The Back Row is an all-male group from Colorado College, per-forms the same kind of music and was selected for Best of Col-lege A Cappela 2007, an award-winning compilation CD of colle-giate a cappella music.

4 The Lord, a gospel quartet with Woody Woods, and Met-rognomes are both from the BHS Peak Experience chorus. If you or your friends and family would like to donate blood, you can still make an appointment by calling Bonfils Blood Center at 800-365-0006 and choosing option 2. Walk-ins may be limited if the appointments are filled up, so don't wait. Mark Hoffman is planning to have some information to pass out about the chorus as well as invitations to our next guest night. We'll also do some promotion for our spring show. I hope to see a lot of you there when our quartets are performing or any other time. I ask you to wear something with ATB on it so the blood donors and restaurant patrons will know we're there!


The Deliverymen Gil Whalen, Jim Lyon, Carl Gardei, Dean Crouse

RIO BRAVO George Franklin, Rol Blauwkamp, Stan Hafenfeld, Oz Wehlander

The Harmonikats Mike Lash, J.C. Preston, Nick Maxwell, Ron Randall

http://www.carson.army.mil/harmony/

http://www.inthestairwellorg/home.htm




Albuquerque, New Mexico Serenader, editor Becki Whalen [email protected] www.newmexichords.com

From our annual show Director Bob

Cochnar: “Way Down Yonder in New Or-leans” is the theme of our annual show, set to go on Saturday,May10, at the Roy E. Dis-ney Center for Performing Arts, National Hispanic Cultural Center. We’re offering two performances, at 2 and 7:30 pm. The songs are a heady mixture of ragtime, jazz, blues and other strains of American music that mostly originated in New Orleans. To help the chorus present some of the greatest jazz hits, all with New Orleans themes, we’ve got the Duke City Jazz Band led by Bill Biffle, The Summit, and Ignition! Tying all of this together is Allen Gasper, our master of ceremonies, who is indeed a born and bred Louisianan, who comes equipped with a storehouse of stories.

Director Doug Arrington lists the show songs as: Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans, Way Down Yonder in New Orleans, Basin Street Blues, Jazz Came Up The River From New Orleans. the new Orleans Funeral Medley (Just A Closer With Thee and When The Saints Go Marching In), Birth of the Blues and Muskrat Ramble, South Rampart Street Parade, Lis-ten To That Dixie Band, Slippery Sam, and the Orna Dixieland One-Step, and Darkness On The Delta. Bob Cochnar is working hard on a great script, be sure and let everyone know about the show and what a great time they'll have.

His girlfriend still lives in Albuquerque, and he relates this anecdote: “I sent her a Singing Valentine this year and from halfway around the world enlisted the help of a close friend who took her out to dinner...and of course she just melted when the guys showed up, asked for her and said they had a message from Dave. It was Ver-tigo from the Duke City chorus...she remem-bered them from the convention which I had taken her to and they had done very well there. So not only did she appreciate the Valentine, but she really loved the music too. Best wishes to everyone, and good luck with the upcoming show.” Thank you, Dave, for your service to our country. We miss you.

Duke City Jazz Band is a group of veteran musicians

formed to the need of an orchestra and a jazz group in the Albu-querque area, The band has appeared at the La Posada de Al-buquerque Lobby Bar, The Albuquerque Country Club, The Al-buquerque FolkFest, The Rio Grande Jazz Society, and the En-chanted Mesa Show Chorus annual show and or numerous weddings, parties, and other functions. The verve with which they play their extensive repertoire of authentic and tunes brings a smile to every face, a tap to every toe, and a song to every heart. The merry band of brothers (and one sister) specializes involving the audience in the merry and music making. Sing-a-long choruses, handclapping, and second line-dancing, the later two following a modicum of instructions on how not to clap like "squares" or dance like "Republicans" - guarantee a live and memorable program when ever this group gets together.

Personnel are: Bill Biffle—leader, trumpet, and vocal, Bernie Higgins—clarinet, Phil Arnold—trombone and vocal, “Buck” Fingers" Neuman—banjo, "Queen" Victoria Bather-wick—piano and vocal, Buzz "Buzz" Batherwick—bass, Gene "Bones" Hutchinson—drums. For booking or information, con-tact Bill at 505 401-4963 or [email protected]

SINGING VALENTINES 2008

The New MexiChords once again participated in delivering Valentines around the city of Albuquerque and putting smiles on a lot of faces! The NMC quartets that shared in this amazing event were First Light, The Deliverymen, Harmonikats, Rio Bravo, City Lights and Young at Heart. Duke City Chorus and the Enchanted Mesa Show Chorus also shared the privi-lege of spreading joy and a bit of romance in schools, private homes, businesses and hospitals across our city. These three choruses once again contributed a portion of the proceeds to the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure foundation. A check for $250 was presented to a representative at Enchanted Mesa’s March 8th show. Special thanks go to J.C. Preston and all of the folks from the three choruses who manned the phones at Valentine Central and gave of their time and expertise to this fun endeavor.

Aug 8-10 Chapter Retreat, NM Tech, Socorro Sep 5-14 State Fair Oct 3-12 International Balloon Fiesta Nov 3-9 Sweet Adelines Int’l Convention, Honolulu Dec 13-14 NMC Christmas Concert

The New MexiChords offers a scholarship to first time at-tendees of Harmony U to offset tuition costs to any member who wants to take advantage of this amazing opportunity.

From Dick and Lola Lambert

Greetings from Florida! As promised I went to the Tampa Bay Heralds of Harmony rehearsals for about a month, but standing on risers for three hours was dong more damage than good, so I had to hang it up temporarily. There are a couple other choruses near by that may be less physically challenging. I'll have to check them out when getting therapy and treatment.

Greetings from Africa: David Nix

Former member sends greetings to his barbershop buddies from Dboutica. He’s halfway through a four-month deployment there, and looks forward to returning to his home in Georgia. He hasn’t found a chapter in the town of Vadosta, Georgia but is maintaining his Frank Thorne membership and hopes to drop in at Harmony University some day.


http://www.newmexichords.com




Rapid City, South Dakota Voice of Rushmore Editor. John Elving, [email protected] shrineofdemocracychorus.org,

Membership Matters!

For those who wonder when is the best time to recruit new mem-bers, comes this month’s ideas from VP of Membership in the Far Western District. There are some really good ideas here for us all to take to heart. Ed.

Great Times To Recruit So you think there are only a couple of times to recruit, huh? Well have we got news for you …

January: As the January blahs set in, many of your prospective members will have the free time in their schedules to begin a new hobby. Have your members be especially attentive during the holiday season to men who sing Christmas carols at parties, in church, as part of an office ensemble and so on. February: The big event can be the Singing Valentines that chapter quartets deliver around town to homes, schools, busi-nesses, etc. While out on their rounds, have them collect names of the people who hear and enjoy their performances. Be sure to invite all the customers to come down for the guest nights and open houses, too, and to bring friends along. March: Learn a few Irish songs and take part in the wearing of the green. Spot singers at St. Paddy’s parties. Offer singing les-sons to those who really need them. April: Harmony Month, the celebration of our Society’s founding, offers you loads of opportunities to get out in front of a large number of people. June: Organize “Barbershop Night” at the local ballpark. Arrange to sing the national anthem from the field or from your seats. In-vite men to come sing the anthem with you, with no further obli-gation. Watch them come back for more singing week after week. July: Invite singers and musicians of all kinds to be a part of a Fourth of July Musical Salute to America, presented in the band shell in the park. Perform at veteran’s homes, cemeteries, etc. with the new ensemble. August: Have quartets sing the national anthem and Take Me Out To The Ball Game at city softball league games. Take part in a fund-raiser to send the league champions to the state tourna-ment. Invite teams to come down to your chapter meetings now that the season is over. September: Back-to-school time is when most family schedules are realigned for the year. This is one of the best times to make barbershopping part of the weekly routine. October: As in May, take advantage of publicity generated by a major show or participation in district contest to reach and invite men down to the chapter meetings. November: Your holiday chorus should be in full swing by now, but you may yet get some late joiners. December: Performances throughout the community this month generate attention, names and goodwill for your January drive. Volunteer the entire chapter to help with a food shelf, Toys for Tots, Secret Santa or other community activity. Ask fellow volun-teers for names of men who like to sing.

Harmony Foundation Presents

To make it possible for more of you to enjoy the music of-fered at this special summer convention event the show is mov-ing from Tuesday evening to a 2 pm time slot on Saturday July 5. This year’s show will feature The Real Group, an award winning a cappella group from Sweden www.therealgroup.net. This year’s show producer is Brandon Guyton.

This year’s Gospel Sing in Nashville – 9 am Thursday, July 3 – will be enhanced by the King’s Heralds. The group, which joined the Society in February, has just been nominated by the Southern Gospel News as the “Breakout Group Of The Year.” The honey-voiced veteran quartet brings an 80-year heritage richly steeped in gospel music. Members are Don Scroggs, first tenor; Joel Borg, second tenor; Russell Hospedales, baritone; and Jeff Pearles, bass. Be sure to welcome them during conven-tion.

Following a long tradition, 29 men have been a part of the King’s Heralds since its founding in 1927 in Keene, Texas. The group has recorded more than 100 albums in 30 different lan-guages in a variety of musical styles making them a favorite with audiences of all ages in 50 different countries. The King’s Her-alds has been awarded 23 Silver Angel Awards for “Excellence in Media”, including six for “Best Male Vocal Group,” 14 for “Best Album” and a “Best International Broadcast” award for their own radio program, “Sounds of Praise.” The group also received a “Gold” Angel Award for being the oldest continuous gospel quar-tet in America. Their current release, I Just Can’t Wait To See, is an upbeat collection of contemporary Christian music. For more information about the Kings Herald, visit www. theheralds.org.

David L’Esperance, Secretary, reported that Marketing VP Del Beck reported the VLQ at the Children’s Chorus Concert on March 1st generated quite a bit of interest from the audience. Del also reported on the Singing Valentines. It was a great and re-warding day, and the numbers were almost identical to 2007. Even though the number of deliveries was up about 10 Valen-tines, the increased expenses brought the bottom line back to within a few dollars of last year. Del continues to look for more ways to increase our visibility to the public. Chapter Development VP Steve Ferley is designing an insert for the Show Program. The insert will highlight the planned Guest Night on May 1st.



http://www.therealgroup.net



Secretary David L’Esperance reported that at the April board meeting, discussions were mostly focused on the rapidly-approaching spring show “All That Jazz.” Treasurer Jim Gogolin’s report showed our expenses are still exceeding our inflow, but that is expected to reverse once program and ticket sales monies are turned in. Marketing & PR VP Del Beck presented mock-ups for The Rapid City Journal show and business card ads. These were tweaked and approved by the board. Chapter Development VP Steve Ferley reported the afterglow will be at the Hotel Alex Johnson. Admission is $5.00 for all. Pizzas, cheese, veggies and crackers will be served. Guest quartet GOTCHA! will arrive Friday evening and leave on Sunday. Under new business, members of The Presidents’ Men, the chapter VLQ going to Longmont for the RMD spring convention, will be responsible for making their own room reservations and for paying registration fees. Since Jason Dannenbring has resigned from his member-at-large position on the board, President Wayne Anderson nominated Ken Wootten to replace him.

Another Opening, Another Show! Al Kelts, Show Chairman

As show chairman, I had begun planning the show about eight months ago as a tribute to the musicians depicted in recent mov-ies such as Ray Charles in Ray and Johnny Cash in I Walk the Line. The Music Committee liked Georgia, which we performed beautifully, but explained to me that you can’t make four-part barbershop harmony out of repetitious three note chords (listen to several of Cash’s songs). Furthermore, getting the rights to use movie clips would take too long.

Eventually I figured out how we could use some movie songs, like Georgia and It had to be you (Harry Met Sally) with vocal jazz songs already in our repertoire, like Everything Old is New Again and Ain’t Misbehavin.’ I’ve always liked the movie All That Jazz, so I suggested that as a title which John Elving liked because our song, Everything Old, was featured in that movie. After MANY revisions, the plan for the show was done. Thanks to each of you! Additionally my special thanks go out to:

• Gary Welsh—stage manager/designer/planner • David L’Esperance—script researcher/writer/MC • Clayton Southwick—music director • John Elving—chairman of Music Committee and asst. di-

rector • Del Beck—chairman of advertising and procurer of audito-

rium • Ken Weybright—chairman of posters and programs • Jim Gogolin—treasurer and ad guy • Steve Ferley—chairman of afterglow • Pete Stach—chairman of ticket sales • Pete Anderson—recruiter/host of guest quartet • Dwight Edstrom—MC for afterglow • Carroll Korb—past chairman ads

Music and Performance VP John Elving reported on his Standing Out in Front directors workshop held in Nashville Feb-ruary 22-24. He and Woody Woods of the RMD passed with fly-ing colors and are now certified instructors for the Society. John and Clayton know some of the members are concerned about learning the new numbers It Had To Be You and From This Mo-ment On, but they are pleased with the solid work efforts and results the chorus is achieving.

The Board voted to direct the Secretary to submit a request to the Society for property insurance, primarily to protect the invest-ments in audio-visual and sound systems. President Wayne Anderson wants to convene a long-range planning session, to include the Board, and any members who are interested. This will be to develop goals for membership, quartetting and charting the course for the chapter. The meeting will probably be scheduled for sometime in May. Steve Ferley, Jim Olson and Wayne Anderson will work on designing a Chapter business card, and will report back at the next meeting. These will be for Chapter members to hand to anyone who expresses an interest in joining this great group.

Del Beck, VP, PR & Marketing: IT’S SHOW TIME! It’s that time of year when every member is called upon for serious contribu-tions toward the Chapter’s public relations and marketing efforts. Public relations? That’s when we promote our organization and our activities to the general public, including our own members, families and friends, in order to bring about better understanding and goodwill toward our purpose and mission. Marketing? That’s the process we use in promoting, selling and distributing our product or service. Here’s where we need special efforts from every member right NOW.

Our ‘07 show survey revealed that the most successful tool in promoting the show and selling tickets was the individual barber-shopper. We have the tickets and we are the show, so it is up to us to get the word and the tickets out to a whole bunch of folks in our area. Posters, newspaper, radio, etc. are all part of market-ing. However, we the members hold those tickets which need to be distributed. Can you top your last year’s ticket sales?

Several opportunities for successful public relations recently came our way. Each of three requests asked for a small group to perform. Instead of one quartet we formed a double quartet, Black Hills Blend and High Mileage (with some substitutes). The groups performed at the Sons of Norway Valentine party, the Dr. Reuben Bareis birthday party and the Rapid City Children’s Chorus concert. These appearances are certain to bring custom-ers to our show(s). Numerous past and potentially new show patrons were on hand for the Valentine and birthday parties. The Children’s Chorus performance stirred interest in students, par-ents and choral directors. It provided a great PR opportunity for our organization.




Promoting Our Show and Chapter Del Beck, VP, PR & Marketing

A quality presentation at an annual show is a big step toward promoting next year’s show. With much help from our directors and our CDs we were able to accomplish an out-standing musical pres-entation. After hearing feedback from numerous members of the audience, we are convinced the show was a big hit. Now comes the opportunity for all members to take the next step in public relations. Hang on to at least one show booklet. Review it carefully and notice the ads from local businesses supporting our chapter. Sixteen full-page ads, 21 half-page ads and numerous smaller ads appear in that booklet. This is major! The financial support from these public spirited people is what keeps us alive and well.

Now, YOUR PART: At every opportunity, patronize these busi-nesses, tell them how much you appreciate their support. Westside Millstone and Tally’s Restaurants agreed to be outlets for our show tickets. They did a great job of selling those tickets. Stop in and enjoy dining at these fine establishments and convey your appre-ciation to them. PR works when everyone becomes involved.

Steve Ferley, VP Member Development: Guest Night for the Shrine of Democracy Chorus will be on Thursday, May 1, two weeks after our annual Show. It will be held at Central High School and will be in the Music room. Another guest night will be held on August 28, two weeks after Harmony Happenings in the Hills Aug. 15-16.

On April 26th, The President’s Men, took first place in the VLQ (Very Large Quartet) contest at the RMD Spring Convention in Longmont, Colorado. Tenors Jeff Elving, Jim Gogolin and Al Kelts; Leads David L’Esperance, Dave Sommers and Clayton Southwick; Baritones Wayne Anderson, Jim Price and Ken Wootten; Basses Pete Anderson, Del Beck, John Elving and Al Pitts overcame untold obstacles to win the plaque for the Mt. Rush-more Chapter. John Elving, Music & Performance VP

First up is the Singing For Life blood drive on May 10. We will

be singing sometime during the day as we treat people to a musical interlude while they are giving their blood. Don’t forget, this is also a great recruiting opportunity for us. On May 30, we will have our annual performance at Hart Ranch. Keep up our show package, All That Jazz, for that and other performances throughout the year.

Hopefully we will also be able to sing the National Anthem for the special appearance of the US Women’s Softball Team on July 15. On Thursday, Aug. 14th, we will have a coaching session with Jim Bagby. Of course, we always perform at the Buffalo Chip Campground a week earlier during Sturgis Bike Week. That’s al-ways a blast! Then it’s time to get ready for September and the RMD district convention in Colorado Springs, September 26-28. The board has already committed to entering the chorus competi-tion, so make plans now. Two big things are happening in October. Then, of course, we need to find time for our annual Oktoberfest.

We have been asked again to sing the National Anthem at the Parade of Presidents on Saturday morning, June 28th. After the parade we will present our show on the main stage in a free con-cert. On Friday evening we will have a more informal time of sing-ing under the tree that serves later in the year as the downtown Christmas tree.

Dwight Rips ‘Em Again at the Afterglow

According to Steve Ferley, chapter MC, Dwight Edstrom, knows how to get and keep a crowd going. It is great to have a polished MC available at the drop of a Derby; our many thanks to Dwight for his fun and wit, and especially to his wife, Joanne, for putting up with him.


On Friday evening, Aug. 15th, there will be a great social time in Hill City. This is always a great time to sing tags, meet new people, and even sing in new foursomes. On Saturday we will join in with many other barbershoppers from around the nation to work on our music, including two new songs. We know that we will have singers from the eastern part of our state, from Colorado (Ignition! will be here), possibly Montana, along with the entire chorus and chapter quartets from Beatrice, Neb. That afternoon/evening we sing at Mt. Rushmore. Of course that’s just a prelude to the afterglow. Make your plans now for a busy summer.

Things I’ll remember about the RMD Spring Convention

By David L’Esperance

• The dedication and work ethic of the 12 other men in our VLQ put forth in perfecting Tin Roof Blues and I Don’t Mind Being All Alone, and my personal pride at being part of The Presidents’ Men, RMD VLQ Champions!

• The excitement of competing in the VLQ contest. • The quartet competition, with Ignition, NeXus and Revolu-

tion all qualifying for Nashville. Revolution, with Nate Zenk at tenor, also qualified for the collegiate competition.

• The finesse, polish and delivery of Redline (formerly known as Flipside plus GOTCHA! lead Chris Vaughn).

• Getting a free half-hour coaching session for our VLQ from top Society arranger and Music Judge Tom Gentry. It was his request to coach us. While coaching, we were able to give him goose bumps with our singing. Two of his arrange-ments you’ve heard recently are Do You Hear The People Sing? and Up A Lazy River, (sung by High Mileage on our show).

• The after-after glow, where members of Redline, NeXus and Revolution “went at it” on songs and tags until 2:30 am. It also included the “how-low-can-you-go” between Mark Zenk of NeXus and Kevin Stinson of Redline. Mark took the competition with an A-flat below low C, edging out Kevin by ½ step.

• Seeing so many good friends from throughout the district and making new ones, including seeing Rick Spencer for the third time within eight months.




Recognize these guys?

A very young quartet from Scottsbluff, the Chordial Celebrationthe Chordial Celebration

From the RMD New Harmony Horizons, Jan/Feb 1999, Lou Schuman, editor

2008 International Chorus Qualifiers Named

Here’s who you’ll see in Nashville.

Session 1

1. Saltaires Wasatch Front, UT 2. Texas Millionaires Ft. Worth, TX 3. Sound of the Rockies Denver Mile High, CO 4. The Entertainmen Ronninge, Sweden 5. Alliance Greater Central Ohio 6. Heart of America Kansas City, MO 7. Heralds of Harmony Tampa, FL 8. Heart of Texas Central Texas Corridor 9. Granite Statesmen Nashua, NH 10. New Tradition Chorus Northbrook, IL 11. Sound of Illinois Bloomington, ILL 12. Atlanta Vocal Project Atlanta Metro, GA 13. Kentucky Vocal Union Elizabethtown, KY 14. The Big Apple Chorus Manhattan, NY

Session 2

15. Capital City Chorus Ottawa, ONT 16. Mountaintown Singers Mt. Pleasant, MI 17. Spirit of Phoenix Greater Phoenix, AZ 18. Voices in Harmony Bay Area, CA 19. Midwest Vocal Express Greendale, WI 20. Alexandria Harmonizers Alexandria, VA 21. Chorus of the Chesapeake Dundalk, MD 22. Houston Tidelanders Houston, TX 23. The West Towns Chorus Chicagoland West Suburban, ILL 24. Salem Senate-Aires Salem, OR 25. Masters of Harmony Santa Fe Springs, CA 26. Ambassadors of Harmony St. Charles, MO 27. The Vocal Agenda Batavia, NY 28. Brothers In Harmony Easton, PA

Quartet Draw for Nashville Quartet Dis08 AVG

1 Chameleon ONT 77.3 2 OC Times FWD 88.1 3 Crossroads CSD 85.2 4 Ringers MAD 82.0 5 Last Kids Picked MAD 77.0 6 Crush, The FWD 77.4 7 Absolut SNOBS 77.3 8 VocalEase FWD 79.5 9 Stardust FWD 78.0 10 Storm Front RMD 84.4 11 Allies, The JAD 83.7 12 Wheelhouse MAD 83.9 13 Four Aces MAD 80.2 14 Redline DIX 87.3 15 Inflagranti BinG! 70.2 16 Old School MAD 85.6 17 Q.E.D. BABS 76.4 18 Wildcard PIO 72.3 19 Ringmasters JAD 76.9 20 3 Outa Four EVG 78.5 21 Metropolis FWD 85.5 22 Speakeasy SWD 80.2 23 On Demand SUN 78.3 24 Jet Set EVG 76.7 25 Voce ILL 79.0 26 SEP SWD 81.3 27 Great Nashville Singout DIX 78.6 28 Late Show FWD 80.9 29 Hot Air Buffoons JAD 81.5 30 Vocality LOL 77.2 31 Audacity FWD 76.4 32 3 Men & A Melody CSD 82.5 33 High Definition CSD 81.0 34 NeXus RMD 81.4 35 Men In Black NED 83.2 36 After Midnight LOL 78.5 37 Sterling SWD 81.5 38 ThunderBox RMD 76.2 39 Lunch Break DIX 78.4 40 State Line Grocery DIX 87.5 41 TKO JAD 77.6 42 Rounders SUN 84.1 43 Main Street Station LOL 76.6 44 Reveille MAD 79.7 45 Ringmasters SNOBS 78.2 46 Glory Days SWD 85.1 47 HotShots SUN 78.0 48 Pinstripe DIX 79.7 49 Wise Guys SUN 78.1 50 Past 'n' Present CAR 71.5 51 Revolution RMD 77.7 52 Foreign Agreement SLD 76.2 53 Ignition! RMD 81.7 54 Rush Street ILL 78.4




Denver, Colorado Denver Mile High Mile High Hi-Lites Jim Jensen, BE, [email protected] Kevin Pape, Events VP, informed the chapter that the second round of Group Registration purchases have arrived and for all members to pick them up at the chapter meetings. Kevin is still waiting for the AIC Show tickets. Thanks to all who ordered them and took advantage of the 10 per cent discount.

The International Travel Manual is posted on the SOR webpage and has new information….In addition we have posted the Spring Retreat travel manual; it contains important information on the June 13-15 retreat. James Harper is working diligently on PayPal to allow res-ervations to be made for the retreat. Many of these items have been posted or will be posted shortly on the Member's only Site. The next time you see James Harper, give him a big thanks for his hard work. It’s through his efforts and the ef-forts of others that so much of what we are doing is easy and allows us to focus on the task of performing at our best.

There has been interest in fielding a VLQ (Very Large Quartet) for the

Small Chorus/VLQ contest. Rehearsals are scheduled for each

Thursday evening at 6:00 pm before the chorus rehearsal. Dan Clark introduced two songs at RMHC:

Bye Bye Blues (arr. Val Hicks) and Bright Was The Night (arr. David Wright).

Copies of each song have been purchased and distributed. If you want to join in the fun,

we have a few slots remaining; we could form another VLQ, too!

[email protected] 303-775-1054

RMD Spring Convention Set for April 25-27

The RMD Spring Convention and Prelims are coming up on April 25-27; this is the time when all quartets compete to qualify for Internationals in Nashville. We all need to attend and support our competing quartets. All registration forms and hotel reservation information is on the RMD website, www.RMDsing.org.

NeXus at the Harmony Sweepstakes event last week came in second place – and many in the audience (Denver Mile High members?) thought they should have been awarded first place. They are just warming up for the Pre-lims coming up next month…

Everybody’s favorite comedy Barber-shop quartet, TKTs, otherwise known as The Kowalski Twins, will be the featured foursome at our brother chapters annual show on April 19. The Denver Mountain-Aires show will be at Green Mountain High in Lakewood.

The Ignition! quartet will be the fea-tured act at a “Home for the Heck of it” concert on April 8 in Lafayette. It’ll be at Nissi’s Restaurant, 2675 North Park Drive. Contact any member of the four-some if you have questions.

Membership renewals handed out recently by Paul Wood, secretary guy, included Dennis Cook, 27 years; Dale Vaughn, 18; and Woody Woods, 12.

NeXus took second place in the Rocky Mountain Regional Harmony Sweepstakes last week in Denver. Left to right are: George Davidson, tenor; Ryan Wilson, lead; Mark Zenk, bass, and Mike Davidson, bari.

We are looking for volunteers who would be willing to pick up a judge or two from DIA and transport them to Long-mont. Four have volunteered thus far, but we could use a couple more. They will be arriving on Friday, April 25th.

The SOR Connection’s next meeting will be April 17at St. Luke’s Church.

Longmont, Colorado high notes, Gil Norris, editor [email protected]

All hands on deck for the RMD Spring Convention, April 25-27 be-cause our chapter is the host. Long-mont’s annual show is May 17th. Three pages of photos as the chapter quartets hit the street delivering Sing-ing Valentines — some of these shots were featured in the special Valentine VE distributed mid-March. At home, at school, at work, maybe at a restau-rant, those dashing men in red caught the surprised sweethearts un-awares......and with an old fashioned love song or two made someone’s day a lot brighter. Even the youngest among our audiences were visibly moved by barbershop seventh chords melodically intoned. All the people pictured on this page have long dem-onstrated a fine taste in music.

At the February board meeting president Gerry Swank requested a small adjustment for expenses of the president, approved. Yeah, stick to your guns, Gerry! There were 86 val-entines sung by the chapter. It was proposed and approved that a gift be provided to Donna Bustamante for her effort towards the success of the Singing Valentines program for this year as well as several previous. Terry Behne brought the files from the 2007 show and described the organization to the board. Behne said that we printed 1000 copies of the program last year and used 600 or 700. We need an ad chairman for 2008 ASAP.

It was agreed that we would offer Chris Vaughn travel expenses to Directors College this year in addition to the current contract provisions. Jack Jensen described his vision for a comprehensive grant program and further action is forthcoming.







Milestone Chapters

Rocky Mountain

Happy Anniversary!

10 YEARS Cache Valley S-083

Bridgerland Barbershop Chorus Sept. 23, 1998

10 YEARS Bernalillo County S-020

Duke City Chorus Sept. 14, 1998

15 YEARS Los Alamos Area S-017

Lads of Enchantment Oct.1, 1993

25 YEARS Loveland S-006

Valentine City Chorus Sept. 7, 1983

25 YEARS Northern Black Hills S-007

Northern Black Hills Chorus April 19, 1983

40 YEARS Casper S-079 Oil City Slickers Dec. 31, 1968

40 YEARS Burley S-016

Snake River Flats Sept. 16, 1968

40 YEARS Grand Junction S-014

Bookcliff Chorus June 4,1968

60 YEARS60 YEARS


The board agreed that at least one special concert in the Broomfield area be added to the schedule for this year. There was a motion passed to explore participation in the Standing Ovation Program.

Music & Performance VP Jim Cole presented the final list of songs for the spring show, also working on a new general opening song for the chorus. The music committee will evaluate the Christmas show and a possible new venue. There was a mo-tion passed to add a new board posi-tion – Executive VP. The function would be to fill in for the president when he was absent and move to the presidency next year.

Swank asked the board to con-sider moving up the date that a new board will be seated to right after COTS. He will develop language to be presented next board meeting. Kevin Pape described the plan and organization for the spring convention sponsored by our chapter. It was rein-forced by the board that every mem-ber had a responsibility to assist in some manner. The chairmen of major committees have been appointed. Jim Schoemer and Jack Jensen took notes for our absent secretary Bruce Lunstrum.

Neil Rower and Gary Creech are two 25 year Longmont barbershop-pers who were gone from sight for years and are now back on the risers. Neil Rower, who favors bari and sometimes lead, followed his job to Nashua, New Hampshire and stayed active by singing with the Granite Statesmen there. Neil is well known around the RMD as the chief organ-izer of many HEP schools (and some first class afterglows) at Estes Park each winter. Gary Creech, who stayed in the area, is a devotee of Al Jolson’s works. A powerful lead, Gary played the part of Jolson and belted out Mammy on many shows in the old days. It’s really great to see those singers from the 1980s are still ringing ‘em like they used to.

The Vocal Expressions is ready for download as the

spring edition of the RMD bulletin is ready for you to enjoy. It won’t be delivered by mail this time, but is still easy to get. Just log onto

rmdsing.org and follow instructions

Thanks for the plug, Gil.

You won’t believe all the news about the Longmont chapter. Pictures too.



Attention Show ChairmenAttention Show Chairmen

One of the easier ways to advertise your show is to make sure that it’s posted on the Society webpage under “Shows.” This will let us know who your headliner quar-tet is (to build the District calendar to help promote your show) and other show information.

Please consider buying a half or full page ad in this magazine to advertise your show.

This magazine is sent Society–wide to all 16 Districts AND to the Sweet Adelines. Advertising rates are listed on page 2. Please be aware of the posted deadlines; printing and mailing of the Jan/Feb and July/August is-sues of the Vocal Expressions takes three to four weeks. Thanks!


C'mon Home to Nashville

HQ Tours to be set for International Convention

Several tours of the Society’s beautiful new headquarters build-ing are being arranged especially for members during conven-tion week. Dates will be announced in the near future since HQ staff will be fully engaged working at the headquarters hotel and performance venue for convention activities, the building will not be open for unscheduled visits. Please take advantage of the soon-to-be scheduled opportunities to see your new “home” in Music City! We’re sure you’ll like what you see.

The Grand Junction chapter had its 2008 annual Spring Show on April 19th. We had about 25 kids in our show as part of our Youth in Harmony activities; the stu-dents came from several middle and high schools. Storm Front was our guest quartet; they are in the photo with two on each side in yellowish-green suits (Jim Clark is holding his son).

The Close Harmony quartet sang “Puff the Magic Dragon” and one of our supporters made a dragon, which is also on stage. The dragon came down the aisle while the quartet sang on stage. We had two kids (a boy and a girl) miming while each quartet sang. In the photo the boy is inside the dragon and the girl is next to the dragon.

Again this year our chapter gave $500 to four schools, a total of $2000 for their vocal music programs. Raisha Quinn is directing in the photo and Dave Hein, our assis-tant director is all the way on the left next to Storm Front and behind the girl holding the violin.

Youth In Harmony Major Part of Grand Junction Show!

By Paul Didier



RMDRMD Calendar of Events Calendar of Events *Preliminary Clearance

Dates reserved without BMI license until six months before the event ** Dates not reserved until BMI license is issued

Merle Quigley, RMD secretary

May 3 Salt Lake City Shows

Taylorsville HS Ignition May 10

Albuquerque Show National Hispanic Cultural Center

Ignition May 17

Billings Show Alberta Blair Theatre

NeXus May 17

Longmont Show The Summit

May 31 Pocatello Show — Frazier Hall

June 6

Bernalillo County Show Desert Springs Church

Storm Front

June 7 Bernalillo County Show

Keller Hall — UNM Storm Front June 14

Grand County Show Middle Park HS

June 29-July 6 International Convention

Nashville, Tennessee July 26

Chautauqua, Boulder Sept 26-28

RMD Fall ConventionRMD Fall Convention Colorado Springs

*Dec 5-7 Bernalillo County Christmas Shows

*Dec 6 Salt Lake City Christmas Shows

*Dec 13 Denver Mile High Christmas Show

*Dec 13-14 Albuquerque Christmas Shows

2009

Jan 25-Feb 1 Midwinter Convention Pasadena, California

* March 7 Denver Mile High Show

March 19-22 Joint Spring Convention w/FWD

Las Vegas. Nevada *May 9

Albuquerque Show June 28-July 5

International Convention Anaheim, California

Sept 25-27 RMD Fall Convention Cheyenne, Wyoming

*Dec 12 Denver Mile High Shows

*Dec 13 Albuquerque Holiday Shows



Rocky Mountain District Mission StatementRocky Mountain District Mission StatementRocky Mountain District Mission Statement The Rocky Mountain District is to be an ever-growing association of SPEBSQSA chapters located within the geographical

boundaries of the District. It is the mission of the RMD to lead and support the efforts of local chapters in contributing to the vision of our Society. The Society’s Vision Statement reads “The Society is to be an ever-growing fraternity of barbershop-style singers, lead-ing the cause of encouraging vocal music in our schools and communities.” The RMD’s means of working towards this vision is to provide leadership and structure in the following areas:

• Increasing membership through member services at the local and district level. • Educating and encouraging our members in both quartet and chorus performances in the barbershop style. • Training, supporting, and coaching leaders in our local chapters. • Supporting and developing youth outreach on a local and district level. • Developing chorus directors at the chapter level through local and district workshops. • Providing district publications and historical records as well as supporting and educating chapters in communica-

tions and public relations. • Providing ongoing district events such as conventions, contests, festivals, etc. • Providing contests for quartets, choruses, and other ensembles to determine district champions and International

contest qualifiers. • Supporting and educating chapters on developing district financial resources and in the use of good financial

practices. • Administering district charitable and community service initiatives and supporting and educating chapters in their

charitable efforts. • Creating, administering, and coordinating district organizational structures and processes to accomplish the Dis-

trict’s goals.

Rocky Mountain District

Vocal ExpressionsVocal Expressions SPEBSQSA, Inc.

Steven Jackson, Editor 215 Cheyenne St. Lot 18

Golden, CO 80403

[email protected]

(303) 384-9269

Member of PROBE

PRSRT STD U.S. Postage Paid Denver, Colorado Permit No. 04874

Deadline for the July/Aug Vocal Expressions is July 15th — thanks!




denver mile high sends five quartets to...

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