Last Saturday evening we went to hear SideCar Heroes at Music on the Hill in Windham. They’re a six man a capella group. Most of the six have formal college-level training in music; several are secondary school music teachers. They have an amazingly full big sound for six people. There are music and video links on their website, so go check it out.
Music on the Hill is a summer concert series in the UCC church in Windham, ME. Windham reminds me a little of Dedham MA in having a big commercial strip along a major highway, but having some lovely old parts that you don’t see if you don’t look for them. The church that hosts the music is a little New England church with maybe eight pews on each outside wall and twelve more between the two aisles — so it seats a little over 100 people. There’s one stained glass window in a bump-out in the front of the sanctuary. If you’re not going to get more than thirty or forty people to attend a concert, that’s a nice size hall. Everyone can be close to the performers, and the room doesn’t look empty the way a venue four times as big would with twice as big an audience.
After the performance there were refreshments in the community hall, which is in a separate building. We got to speak with a couple of the performers, notably the guy who does the vocal percussion. One of the numbers they had done was a cover of an Aerosmith tune, for which the group arranged themselves like a rock band, with the percussion guy in the back. The percussion guy was using his hands like a drummer, and with the least bit of imagination you could see where he had the cymbals, the set of tuned tom-toms, and so on. So after the performance I got to compliment him on the cymbal playing, and he told me more than I can remember about the history of people doing vocal percussion. I didn’t look at the online videos, guys, I don’t have to, I got to see the band live, and it’s all I can do to find time to blog much less watch online videos; but I hope one of them shows him in action.