In every concert performed by Rockapella, the a cappella quintet that first garnered fame with its appearances (and title-song crooning) on PBS's long-running children's game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, a segment is devoted to a solo by the group's vocal percussionist, Jeff Thacher.
Like the drummer for most bands, Thacher spends a majority of his stage time, as he says, "working away laying down beats," adding that solos allow him - also like the drummer for most bands - to "do a level of gymnastics that prove that you have something to do."
Yet in a recent phone interview, Thacher explains that, when he joined the group in 1993, providing audiences with a dexterous vocal showcase wasn't exactly the impetus for adding his solos to Rockapella's repertoire.
"We used to do that because people didn't understand what it was," he says, referring to the then-burgeoning art of vocal percussion, in which a performer uses the throat, tongue, and lips to simulate drum and cymbal sounds. "Over the years, it's become a concept that's more familiar to the listening public, but every now and then, we'd have somebody come up after [a concert] and doubt that it was all a cappella.
"We did a corporate event," he continues, "where somebody said they saw the instruments behind us, behind the curtain or something. And we said, 'What are you talking about?' And this person said, 'Well, perhaps you didn't know.'"
Thacher laughs. "It's almost inconceivable now because there's so many guys doing it. I mean, Michael Jackson put it on some of his records, and you've got Justin Timberlake doing it ... . And there's always at least two a cappella groups in every college, if not 20, and almost every one has at least one person who does mouth percussion. It's really prevalent, and that just wasn't the case back then. It really had to be kind of invented."
Arguably the country's most influential and popular a cappella ensemble, Rockapella - which brings its stage show A Rockapella Holiday to Iowa City's Hancher Auditorium on December 5 - is currently composed of Thacher, high tenor Scott Leonard, tenors John K. Brown and Kevin Wright, and bass George Baldi III. Yet when the group (none of whose original members are still with the band) debuted in 1986, and for several years afterwards, it was still a quartet, as vocal percussion had yet to be recognized - at least by mainstream audiences - as a vocal art form. "You know, in any kind of thing like that, there are a lot of hobbyists," Thacher says, "but in the a cappella world, there were only a couple of guys doing it professionally."
In 1991, though, PBS premiered a special hosted by Spike Lee and Debbie Allen - Spike & Co.: Do It A Cappella - in which Rockapella performed, and which also spotlighted the emerging arts of vocal percussion and the hip-hop-influenced beatboxing. The program, which received heavy rotation on PBS affiliates and inspired a soundtrack, not only increased Rockapella's visibility, but vocal percussion's, as well, and Thacher says that "one of the guys in the group saw that and thought, 'Oh, there's an interesting thing that could complete our sound.'"
By this time, Rockapella was already an established presence in music and television through Carmen Sandiego?, and when the group announced that it was seeking a full-time vocal percussionist, Thacher says, "I definitely knew it was a good job. I hadn't actually seen Carmen, but I had seen them on the Spike Lee-hosted special, and I remembered that they were kind of the interesting group there. I remember them standing out as something really different. So I saw that ad and I thought, 'Well, I've been looking for something, and this is really out of left field, but it fits.'"
A graduate of Boston's Berklee College of Music, the 39-year-old Thacher reveals that his beginnings as a vocal percussionist were inauspicious, to say the least.
"You know how, when you're a kid, you have toys, or you have Legos, and you make sounds for them? That's pretty much how I started. And my family's pretty musical, so it was a short hop from there to hearing drums on the radio and copying those. It was never something you would think you could make money at.
"But then along comes a job," he adds with a laugh, "and who am I to turn down work as a musician?"
Thacher sent the group an audition tape - "I FedEx-ed mine the minute I saw the ad," he says - and was eventually sent some of Rockapella's vocals on CD, as preparation for his audition. "They basically said, 'What can you do with these?' You know, 'Listen to these and see what comes to you.'" And happily for Thacher, his vocal-percussion style was primarily based on seeing what came to him.
"There are a number of ways to approach" vocal percussion, he says. "You can do it very literally, where you're doing everything you can to imitate an instrument, or some sort of sequence in drum. Like the big old Casio keyboards that had the little drum pads on them - some people go out of their way to sound just like that.
"Or," he continues, "you can take a more organic approach, where you make sounds that may fill the roles of that - and in some cases are very similar - but you kind of let yourself go after that. It's hard to describe, but you can put more of a humanistic sound to it. And that's really where I fall in. I never really thought about it; that's just what I did."
An audition in Los Angeles led, two months later, to a callback in New York, and, Thacher says, "I got the job within a day. And I kind of knew I would get the job. It sounds strange now, but I just knew that it was ... me. Everything collided at the right moment, I guess." (He adds that "I knew that the universe was telling me something when the very first concert we had with me in the group was at Berklee.")
Years after his 1993 debut as Rockapella's first - and, to date, only - vocal percussionist, Thacher (once described by bandmate Leonard as "the Mozart of spit") continued to fine-tune his talents through his discovery of a vocal supplement termed "throat pickups."
"I tend to do a little grunt underneath the spitting sounds," he says, "that provides a sort of note to the drum, and that doesn't really get into a hand-held microphone that well. I started noticing this within a few years of joining the group, and about 10 years ago I started experimenting with stuff taped to my throat. We tried all kinds of things. And the only thing that didn't overload, and wasn't too heavy, and that I didn't have to hold, was acoustic-guitar pickups. They're like two little dime-sized pickups, very thin, and they provide this wonderful, round tone without overloading, that our sound engineer can mix with the hand-held. And that way you get whatever's going on in my throat."
With a laugh, Thacher adds, "It sounds strange to talk about it."
Today, Thacher is widely considered the vocal-percussion standard-bearer - on the Web site (http://www.antimusic.com), Sherrill Fulghum described him as "a phenomenon and an object of study" - yet the musician states, "I think there are several standard-bearers now, because the field is so big. [But] I was one of two guys that were really visible in the beginning. It was myself and a guy named Andrew Chaikin, who's gone on to become a solo beatboxer, and nobody else. So I think I've benefited from the exposure and being there first."
Not that he isn't grateful for the acknowledgment and praise, particularly when it comes from fellow vocal percussionists. "It's the best form of flattery," Thacher says, "because it comes out of a sense of respect. It's not a kind of crazy fandom, because guys come up and say, 'I've been working so hard at doing this, and I listen to what you do ... .' And these are young guys that are very creative and really put their hearts into it. That kind of fandom is very much appreciated and humbling.
"I really enjoy the fact that I can inspire anything," he says with a laugh. "I mean, it's a situation I never imagined myself being in."
And what advice does Thacher impart to fledgling spitters? "I go all Yoda on them," he says, "and I tell them, you know, 'You just do it. You just do or do not. There is no try.'
"As any real drummer will tell you, it's about muscles. You're working those muscles, and yes, maybe you can't hit that snare drum for two hours, but if you practice, you can. You may not have a natural sense of rhythm as much as another person, but you can certainly do it. And in the talent department," he adds with a laugh, "it's certainly a little bit easier than singing."
A Rockapella Holiday will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 5, at the University of Iowa's Hancher Auditorium. Tickets are available by calling (319) 335-1160, and more information on Rockapella is available at (http://www.rockapella.com).
