Straight No Chaser kicks off the holidays with a Christmas concert

Straight No Chaser is having a very busy and productive 2024, with three tours that are giving the nine-member a cappella group — as well as their fans — plenty of musical variety. Plus, along the way the group recorded and released a new EP, “90s Proof.”

The group kicked things off in the spring with a run through the Northeastern United States and Canada in which they brought back last year’s summer yacht rock-themed show. Then came a more extensive trek in the summer billed as Straight No Chaser’s Summer: The 90s tour. This whole new show spotlighted a cappella versions of songs from that decade ranging from pop tunes from Hanson and the Spice Girls to rock tracks from Oasis and Weezer.

Now comes Straight No Chaser’s annual holiday tour, which continues through Dec. 31 and features selections from the group’s deep catalog of Christmas songs mixed with non-holiday material. The group will perform Nov. 7 at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City.

“It is kind of the bread and butter,” singer Walter Chase said of the holiday tour. “So you want to you want to put a put your best foot forward.”

That means a good deal of planning, preparation and rehearsals go into each year’s tour, which draws multiple generations of families that have made seeing the shows part of their holiday traditions.

Things usually start with the song arrangers in the group, with help from Straight No Chaser’s content director, putting together a set list. They identify songs that have worked well on past tours that should stay in the show and sometimes write new songs or change arrangements to existing songs — all with the goal of making at least half of each year’s show entirely new.

A good deal of work also goes into the choreography for the tour.

“Our choreographer Jill Hilliard, who is also an Indiana University alumnus, has worked for years with Ricky Martin (among others),” Chase said. “She knows us better than anyone, how to make us look great as guys in their 30s and 40s that are dancing. We’re not wearing dance belts up there. We are singers first, and obviously, she makes us move and look (appropriate and good). She’s worked with us for 10 years now and has … playbooks of where we’re going to be on each song for over the years.”

The group’s lighting and sound directors also get busy well ahead of the holiday tour, going over the set list, demos for the songs and the group’s ideas for how the show should look to design stage sets and the lighting. This all leads up to production rehearsals.

“We always go to the city that we start in first and just hole up for six or seven days and learn the music and learn the choreography, put it together and do our dress rehearsals before we get out there and do it (for real) for the first time,” Chase said.

And once the tour starts, there’s usually additional tinkering to be done.

“Generally, it takes a couple of shows for us to really figure out which songs are hitting and kind of shifting around, maybe this song should be second instead of seventh or this holiday song maybe should be in the encore after ‘12 Days (of Christmas),’ Chase said. “It's always a fun process to see the songs that you think are going to land and visa versa. So even after all these years of doing this (tour) and preparing, it's really getting in front of the audience for the first time, figuring out if it's going to work.”

The group’s wacky rendition of the aforementioned “The 12 Days of Christmas” is actually why Straight No Chaser exists today.

The original 10 singers got together in 1996 while students at Indiana University. They started out by performing at sororities (a great way to meet girls, the guys have noted) and various university events before going on to sing at events around the country during what was a three-year run with the original members.

When the original members graduated, they moved on to various career pursuits, never expecting that Straight No Chaser would be a part of their lives again.

The unlikely return of the a cappella group stemmed from a 10th anniversary reunion of the original collegiate group in 2006. To generate enthusiasm for the occasion, bass singer Randy Stine made DVDs of a 1998 Straight No Chaser concert and posted a performance of “The 12 Days of Christmas” to YouTube.

The clip went viral and became 2007’s most viewed video. It caught the attention of Craig Kallman, chairman and CEO of Atlantic Records, who tracked down Stine and offered the group a record deal.

The original 10 members were contacted about reforming Straight No Chaser, and eight them signed on, while two singers that were part of later editions of Straight No Chaser at Indiana University filled out the lineup.

Thinking Christmas music was the perfect introduction to the group, Kallman and Atlantic Records had the group debut with the 2008 Christmas album, “Holiday Spirits.” It was an immediate hit. Since then, the group has released four more holiday albums, six full-length albums and four EPs.

Over the years, several singers have left the group, each replaced by members of later lineups from the college ensemble. Today’s Straight No Chaser lineup has nine members — Chase, Seggie Isho, Steve Morgan, Tyler Trepp, Jerome Collins, Michael Luginbill, Jasper Smith, Freedom Young and Luke Bob Robinson.

The latest change happened before this year’s touring when bass singer Robinson replaced Stine, who left to devote more time to his family.

Chase said it’s been tough to lose one of the original group members in Stine, but he likes what Robinson brings to Straight No Chaser.

“He has just been an incredible addition with his stage presence and his professionalism and his ambition,” Chase said. “So I could not be more excited for everyone to meet Luke Bob Robinson when we come to their town.”

While Straight No Chaser’s focus for now is on the holiday tour, the group hopes to do a follow-up album to its 2023 release, “Yacht on the Rocks,” which included the group’s versions of soft rock hits from the late 1970s and early 1980s that fit the yacht rock vibe of relaxing on the water or the beach. If that sequel album happens, the group would likely do another yacht-rock-themed tour.

There’s also a distinct possibility that its “Summer: The ‘90s” tour will become an annual event. The group and its management want to brand the summer tours to differentiate them from the holiday outings. This helps reassure fans that they’ll see entirely different concerts if they go to both shows in the same year.

Besides, doing the ‘90s tour, the “90s Proof” album was a natural fit for the group.

“The founding members lived the ‘90s. That was our college years and when the group started out,” Chase said. “The reason why we wanted to instead of just singing in our choir — we were in a120-person show choir called the Singing Hoosiers that 10 of us broke off (from to form Straight No Chaser) — was we wanted to sing Boyz II Men. We wanted to sing the songs that we were listening to. That was sort of the genesis of the group.”