EASTON, Pa. — From its start, a capella vocal group Straight No Chaser, with Forks Township native Walter Chase and Allentown native Jerome Collins among its members, has been best known for its holiday songs.
The group still is best known for its 2007 video of “12 Days of Christmas” mashed with Toto’s “Africa” that became a viral hit on YouTube.
But in recent years, Straight No Chaser has released albums of "yacht rock" — songs from the most commercially successful genres of the mid-1970s to mid-'80s — and last year released a disc of 1990s covers.
Straight No Chaser stops today, Sunday, Dec. 7, for shows at 3 and 7 p.m. at Easton's State Theatre. Tickets, at $49.48–$85 each, remain available at the State Theatre website and the box office at 453 Northampton St., Easton.State Theatre website
That has kept Straight No Chaser on the road year 'round. So when the group decided to record another album of holiday songs, it had to do so as it toured the nation last summer.
That helped give the disc, "Holiday Road," released Oct. 24, its name (as did its title track, a cover of Lindsay Buckingham's hit from the movie "National Lampoon's Vacation.")
And now Straight No Chaser is back on the road to spread that holiday spirit.
It stops today, Sunday, Dec. 7, for shows at 3 and 7 p.m. at Easton's State Theatre.
Tickets, at $49.48–$85 each, remain available at the State Theatre website and the box office at 453 Northampton St., Easton.
"We recorded the entire album while we were traveling this summer doing our summer tour," Chase, who also is the group's musical director, said in a call from a tour stop in Columbus, Ohio.
"Usually we’re recording our holiday albums in June or July, just because of the deadline, which is always a little upside down, but that’s just how we do things.
“And to meet the deadline for 'Holiday Road,' we realized we were going to have to be creative with our recording setup."
That, Chase said, "meant that we were setting up our remote recording studios — sometimes multiple studios — backstage in venues, sometimes motel rooms.
“We found a record studio at a college campus in Wisconsin. We were having to do this as we were traveling on the road.
So the group came up with doing a version the song "Holiday Road" just to "tie the whole thing together," Chase said.
"It’s not necessarily a holiday song, but it’s got the word holiday in there and it’s got the most connection to us and what we were going through on tour.
“So it was definitely a unique album experience and with the advancement in recording technology, it’s pretty amazing that we were able to put this together and it holds up with the quality that we’ve done in years past, too.”
Holiday song history
The story is well known how Straight No Chaser, which started as a campus a cappella group at Indiana University, came together in 2007 for a reunion and recorded “12 Days of Christmas” mashed with “Africa.”
It was such a viral hit that the group in 2008 signed with Atlantic Records and released its debut album, “Holiday Spirits.”
The disc reached gold sales, as did the group’s sophomore disc, 2009’s “Christmas Cheers.”
"It’s our goal that people who have made it part of their tradition to come and see us for 10, 12 or 15 years now, our commitment has been to make sure they see a new show every time."Walter Chase of Straight No Chaser
It has released nine full albums and six EPs since — with "Holiday Road" being the fifth full disc of Christmas songs.
"That is how we are known, and we know that we’re going to be going out there in the holiday season, [so] we want to have new material," Chase said.
"It’s our goal that people who have made it part of their tradition to come and see us for 10, 12 or 15 years now, our commitment has been to make sure they see a new show every time.
"Even though people want to hear those songs that [know], they want a new Straight No Chaser show. That’s part of the reason we put together this new holiday album."
And while that means Straight No Chaser has amassed a deep catalog of holiday songs, "we still are finding so much meat on the bone, to say the least," Chase said.
New songs and collaborations
"Holiday Road" has 14 songs the group recorded for the first time.
“There have been new songs coming around that we’ve been waiting to cover, like ‘Underneath the Tree’, a Kelly Clarkson song that we’ve been trying to do arrangements with her the past couple of years.
“‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,’ which is a classic that we’ve never done. And then we’ve got a twisted version of ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer’" that includes a video.
The new disc also has collaborations, including with Hunter Hayes, who in 2015 had a debut album that produced three platinum hits, including the five-times-platinum "Wanted."
“He’s a songwriter — a young, very successful songwriter," Chase said. "He lives in Nashville, and our management in Nashville has worked with him before and he had known of us."
"And just having that little bit of spark of him having heard of us helped us reach out and say we’d love to do this song we found that has a positivity that Hunter’s voice has."
Straight No Chaser found the song "Christmas is Different," “and we sent him the track and he said yes," Chase said, laughing.
"Sometimes a collaboration, you need to go back and forth, back and forth to kind of craft the idea," he said. "But the first thing he came back with was perfect.
"He’s a musician’s musician — incredibly talented and a perfect fit.”
The group even shot a video of the song with Hayes in Nashville, "and he was a great hang to come for like two hours," Chase said. "It was a lot of fun."
He said that a couple of weeks later, Straight No Chaser performed at the famed Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, "and he came out and sang with us, which was a real treat."
