It's An OPEN BAR At The McCallum When Acapella Sensation Straight No Chaser Comes To The Desert

A cappella sensation Straight No Chaser will bring the Open Bar tour to the McCallum Theatre at 7:00pm, Monday, March 30.Straight No Chaser has had an amazing decade-plus-moving from being a college a cappella group to enjoying international success, thanks to a viral video or two along the way.

One Shot, the group's seventh LP, features 16 genre-spanning songs, and 10 entertaining conversational interludes, as the members of Straight No Chaser trace their unlikely rise from an undergraduate singing group at Indiana University to a beloved Atlantic Records act with a devoted international fanbase.

Straight No Chaser followed up One Shot in November 2019 with Open Bar, featuring the group's trademark reworkings of some of pop culture's best-loved bar-themed songs of the last few decades, including "Take Me Home Tonight," made famous by the late Eddie Money; "Tennessee Whiskey," recently covered by Chris Stapleton; and Smash Mouth's "All Star."

Straight No Chaser has sold more than 1.6 million albums in the U.S. and amassed more than 100 million YouTube views thanks to tightly arranged songs, impeccable vocal harmonies and a healthy sense of humor. These singers have worked hard to make the most of an unexpected opportunity when they signed with Atlantic and released their first album, Holiday Spirits, in 2008.

After the founding members of Straight No Chaser graduated in 1999, they got jobs, found love and made lives for themselves as new undergrads replaced them in the group on campus. In 2006, Stine posted a clip on YouTube of Straight No Chaser singing "The 12 Days of Christmas" at a 1998 performance-and it went viral. Atlantic Records Chairman and CEO Craig Kallman saw it and contacted the guys to see if they would be interested in reuniting to make an album. It wasn't necessarily an easy decision.

"It was scary to jump into, because we were giving up life as we knew it," Stine says. "I envisioned it as a boat leaving the pier: Either you're going to jump on and make the boat, or you're not. And I thought, 'Even if the boat sinks and I have to swim back to shore, so be it.'"

Far from sinking, the group has only picked up speed. "Every year, it gets better and better," says Tyler Trepp. "We keep surprising ourselves in a good way, and it just keeps growing."

Along with Stine and Trepp, the current lineup features Walter Chase, Jerome Collins, Seggie Isho, Michael Luginbill, Charlie Mechling, Steve Morgan and David Roberts. They all have a hand in choosing songs, which mirror the singers' widespread musical tastes, ranging from R&B and old-school funk to folk and classic rock.

So much of what Straight No Chaser has done over the past 10 years is the stuff of dreams: They've collaborated with Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Elton John and Dolly Parton. They've performed on national TV early in the morning, on Today; and long after dark, on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. They've toured North America, Europe and Australia, consistently ranking among Pollstar's Top 100 touring acts in North America.

"We literally have to pinch ourselves every day that this actually happened," Collins says. "Now we're 10 years still in the game, and we're still a successful act. We started this just for fun and now we're doing it as a career."

Tickets for this performance are priced at $125, $95 and $65. Tickets are available at the Theatre's website at www.mccallumtheatre.com or by calling the McCallum Theatre Box Office at (760) 340-2787.

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