Arts Editor Maggie Needham sat down with Tim McCoy, president of a cappella group Decadence, to discuss their recent album release.
So you just came out with your first album!
A: We did. It’s been almost two years in the making. We were … founded in 2010; we started recording the next year. And recording just costs a lot of money. We would have to go fundraise at Chaifetz and work at Chaifetz to try and get some money for the next recording session. And slowly but surely, we did.
What was recording like?
A: We hired a guy [who] does solely a cappella recording. So he would come to SLU, and we would go to the Coronado or somebody’s apartment, and we would take all the furniture out of the room, soundproof it– literally like hang up blankets. And he’d bring his stuff in, and he would record, and … when we get done with it, it sounds like you’re in a professional studio … We would show up at different time slots: come in, sing your part of the song … Never when you’re recording a cappella are you all in one room. Normally, you have everyone else in your ears, in headphones, and you’re singing your own part … I had never seen how it worked and it was really cool.
Do you know how songs were chosen to be on the album?
I wasn’t around for the selection process. I know they were chosen by the group. […] [They feature] a variety of soloists. And it was more or less general consensus of some of the best-sounding songs and ones that we felt encapsulated the group, as well. Even today, as we learn new songs, […] a comment might be, “Let’s write this down. This might be a possibility for a song to record.” Just because it kind of embodies how we sound, for whatever intangible reason that might be.
Why do you think it’s important for college groups to spend time recording and making an album?
A: Honestly, I think part of it is– I don’t want to say selfishness, but you work really, really hard, and every group does … You put a lot of time in, you’re learning music, memorizing music. For a semester, we’re going to learn ten new songs … So you put in all of this effort, and then a lot of times, you only get to show your hard work maybe three, four times a semester … Part of it is wanting to kind of immortalize the work you’ve done, and kind of putting it in its best light, too, so not just having a live recording, and obviously that’s what we sort of live for is a live performance. . . It’s like you go on a trip and you take a thousand pictures. Then you come back, and you edit a few, and you choose the one picture you love, and you frame it really nicely and put it up just for your own sake. That’s kind of how I feel about the songs. Since I’ve been in the group, we’ve sang almost thirty or forty different songs … and so of all of those over the last four years … you take five of them and you kind of frame them. … And really it’s not like we’re trying to make the album to make a bunch of money or something like that. That’s kind of the very last thing– if we get some royalties for it, great. If nothing else, it’s just really exciting for us to have it, for our families to have it.
What songs should we look forward to on the album?
A: I think the epitome of the album is “Eet,” the Regina Spektor song, for a few reasons. It’s one of the most beautiful arrangements, hands down. The soloist is Kristine Gage, and she was the founder, the creator of Decadence. And she’s just a brilliant a cappella mastermind … I think that’s the one that people … cared most about maybe on the album. That is a song that, for years, if you went to a Decadence concert, you heard Kristine sing it … It’s sentimental to us. It’s also one of the most musically impressive. And then I really love the first song as well, “Break Me Out” … I remember when I heard the master of that song for the first time … Immediately I got goosebumps. No way this is us … For me at least, it kind of blows my mind that it’s college students, just your run of the mill college students being able to produce something like that.
What are you most proud of in the group?
[When I joined as a sophomore,] a lot of the members that were above [me], juniors and seniors, were still original members. And it was a really eclectic group of people from different parts of campus that, when we were together, just could absolutely be ourselves. […] I’m most proud of the way that now, even though all of the original members are gone, […] that the aura around the group has been maintained. It’s a group of crazy people from campus, […] just so many different types of people, and that we can come together all because we love to sing. […] And moreover, the fact that people give up their time to put in so much effort to perform just for the community. […] Decadence has always been centered, since I’ve been a part of it, on: what can we do to make our show the best for the audience? Not “let’s practice because we want to be good, because we want our next album to sound good.” Nothing like that. It’s always been, “how can we arrange the songs, how can we practice in a way that is going to make our shows the most enjoyable for the people on campus?” And I think if you have that mindset, you can’t go wrong. That’s a big part of it, and then maybe something auxiliary, but from the start of the group, it was founded in some service, as well. […] Every Friday, we go to City Garden Montessori School over on Tower Grove and teach the students a cappella music. That means our arrangers arrange two more songs every semester for that. […] Week in and week out, there’s eight of us there that give up some time and go and teach and hang out with these kids, and then they get to perform at the show. I think that the fact that the group has followed through on that now for the fourth year, that’s what makes me really proud, too. Because, again, it makes you realize that while you’re singing for fun, and it might be a great outlet for yourself, we also– and we don’t do it as much as we should– use it for the good as well. […] I think that’s something special about our group as well. It’s such an integral part of the group. And I think that’s what keeps Decadence fresh for a lot of people, too, to not always be the important ones.
Fans can find Decadence’s album on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora and loudr.fm. Physical copies will be available soon and will be sold at concerts.