The music industry is so large now I have already come to accept the fact that there will be many great bands that I will simply never hear in my entire life. The world is too large, the talent too plentiful. And part of this problem comes from our tastes in music. The Internet alone has allowed us to expand our range of interests into genres as obscure as low-fi-indie-alternative-country, and beyond. Think about the music you love. Does it all really fit under one genre anymore?
Enter Arts N.C. State, a rag-tag group of performance art fans who put together a slew of shows for our aural pleasure yearly. And while most concerts and plays we’ll see after college will run us into double figures before we even upgrade from lawn chairs to cheap seats, Arts N.C. State consistently offers reduced student rates, or in the case of Friday’s Chapter 6 concert, no rates at all. Free. The little ticket with your name and seat number on it? Nothing.
Free tickets are nice. But even better than free tickets are free tickets to good shows.
Chapter 6 is a vocal group comprised of seven young men with pitch-perfect harmony, good humor and a little bit of soul. Admittedly, my exposure to a cappella before coming to NCSU was pretty limited. But then so was my exposure to indie, post-punk, industrial metal and hip-hop. College being a time for experimentation, I dove into those genres and found Songs: Ohia, PJ Harvey, Rammstein and Black Thought and never looked back. Then one day I had the pleasure of hearing NCSU’s Ladies in Red and Acappology, and realized that there was a slice of music heaven that deserved attention.
“It was a phenomenal sort of experience for us, being in NC last time,” said Chapter 6 music director and bass John Musick. “North Carolina is a sort of hidden treasure and it feels like nobody in the Midwest realizes just how beautiful it is.”
The band is head-to-toe laden with awards from organizations like the International Competition of Collegiate A Cappella and the National Harmony Sweepstakes. They have also had the honor of appearing with the National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center and being featured on this past season of American Idol with bandmate/semi-finalist, Luke Menard.
While I could read press releases back to you for the rest of the article, I’d rather tell you how enjoyable their music is, which happens to be very. There’s a bounce and playfulness to their lyrics that makes me want to hear them with a live audience in an enclosed theatre so I can just take it in through more than my headphones. Tracks like their six minute version of “The Wizard of Oz” are hilarious as a band member stuck with the role of the Wicked Witch grumbles out of pitch. Also, the Tin Man, whose solo is always skipped over, complains while the lead tries to out sing his objections. Their cover of Taylor’s “Your Smiling Face” draws you into the same kind of familiar, safe place that the original artist made an art form over the years.
“We do five different kinds of shows. Colleges, opera houses, symphony halls, high schools and professional theatres… Some people think, because we tour churches, that ‘oh, they must be some kind of contemporary Christian group.’ Mostly we just do fun shows with a lot of fun songs. Our relationship with God keeps us sane while we’re on the road. So, yeah, we’d rather do Bohemian Rhapsody than Rhapsody in Blue when we come there,” Musick said.
Besides bugging John about whether Musick was really, I mean really, his last name, I asked him if he had any advice for aspiring artists.
“Our first gig was local…that’s how we started our professional career, because people that knew us wanted to support us. We took an opportunity with the Indianapolis Symphony, signed with our agency. It all took about a year, and we had just started out in Chicago surviving off ramen noodles. Oh, when you get out of college it’s gonna be real life. I’m pretty envious,” Musick said.
This Friday at 8 p.m. Free tickets. I’ll be there enjoying the tickets, as I’m still in that whole surviving-off-ramen-noodles phase.
