Spring Sing gathering steam

By David Vale

Those who love barbershop music can listen to its a cappella close harmony for hours. 

But outside that select group, audiences prefer a bit more variety in a performance.  And if barbershop has a reputation for a bunch of guys who seem to sing to themselves, it’s because those who get lost in the rapture of harmony are used to audiences that understand. I was determined to stretch myself and my fellow barbershoppers to produce a truly crowd-pleasing performance of wider appeal.  Featuring show tunes was a start, but to really succeed in that goal, I had to reach beyond the barbershop community.

Music theater is big in Bigfork and the Thomson family is right at the middle of it.  Brach Thomson, in addition to being music director for the professional Bigfork Summer Playhouse, is the director, producer, and general head of everything for the Bigfork Playhouse Children’s Theater, an organization with a mission of turning Bigfork’s youth into actors and musicians. And, as part of that effort, Brach directs three choirs comprising children in elementary and high school. I’d seen his choirs perform several times and knew they had the capability of not just sounding good, but also of mounting an entertaining performance.

Over several cups of coffee one morning, Brach and I decided that we had a great opportunity for collaboration. In the course of our discussion, not only did we decide his three choirs could make a significant contribution to the show, the show could also make a contribution to the Children’s Theater. With a quick confirmation by the Valleyaires board, what had started out as an annual barbershop concert became a benefit performance to help the Children’s Theater with the purchase of its rehearsal hall.

The core of the plan in place, the rest of the show’s participants came together rapidly. Three quartets from the Valleyaires chorus quickly signed on: Classic Touch, Too Sharp to Be Flat, and The Music Men. Two quartets from a related chapter in Missoula, Switcheroo and The Mulligans, also enthusiastically enlisted. And two professional acts: Robin Gough with Blue Smoke and soloist Maggie McGunagle.

Of course, there was still the matter of getting from the idea to real entertainment, and first on the list was turning barbershop singers into barbershop entertainers. I decided to start simply. Our chorus chose its first song out of the archives: They Call the Wind Mariah, from the movie Paint Your Wagon. The movie was set in a gold-rush mining town and the song addresses the fact that, gold or not, life can be lonely in a world without women. All that my barbershop colleagues had to do while they sang was stand around and look unhappy. It was as if this piece had been written with them in mind, and they did well. I gave them shovels, hammers, gold pans, and told them to be rhythmically and harmoniously miserable. Watching them in motion, I felt like I’d struck the mother lode.

In the meantime, I started writing a script to integrate the music with a bit of story and humor. A touch of Twilight Zone, a hint of Faust, some imagination, and I felt I had the songs tied into a coherent whole. Not quite West Side Story, but certainly more than a stiff concert on the risers. But then imagination hit some turbulence.

Coming from the East, where profanity is at times almost a second language, I found the sensibilities of Northwestern Montana to be, if not absolutely restrictive, at least firmly influential. The show script, with an implied Faustian bargain at its core, seemed to beg for at least mention of Hell and damnation. My initial script called for Bub, the tempter, to refer to the “damned risers.” Being somewhat aware of local sensibilities, I without coaxing softened that to “damnable risers.” Good intentions notwithstanding, after the first script run-through with the chorus, I was taken aside by several members and informed that I risked the equivalent of excommunication from the Barbershop Harmony Society were I to persist in the use of such language in a “family” show. “Darned” would be an acceptable substitute, but “confounded” would be preferable. Feeling kind of darned if I did, damned if I didn’t, I rewrote the script. Thus at a critical moment in the final version of the story, lightning strikes, thunder crashes, and smoke rises as Bub derisively gestures and loudly condemns the “confounded” risers.Cast and script in place, it came time to deal with the technical aspects of the show. Like getting the great sound of the performers to the ears of the audience, creating a sense of movement with lighting, learning what makes special effects special, and achieving idealized performance goals within the reality of a finite budget. 

I was developing a respect for the job called “producer.”

Spring Sing is at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts March 8.

Tickets are $11 for adults and $9 for everyone else and are available at the Pocketstone Cafe (837-7223) in Bigfork, the Kalispell Grand Hotel (755-8100), and at the door.  

A benefit concert, net proceeds will go to the Bigfork Playhouse Children’s Theater.