Flying new songs from the pole

In a world of disharmony, of angry voices going off in every which direction, what better antidote than Sean Devine? The man can’t afford to be disharmonious. If he is, he loses his job.

No danger of that. The man can croon. He and his three Orange County mates are fresh back from Denver, where they finished second in the quartet competition at the Barbershop Harmony Society international convention. The foursome also forms part of the Westminster Chorus that won its competition.

Devine sounded pretty upbeat Wednesday afternoon, and why not. He thinks his quartet, the OC Times, is onto something, perhaps onto the thing that will carry barbershop singing into its second century.

And that thing is?

First, consider that most of the singing at competitions still evokes memories of guys in striped shirts performing standards from the first 30 years of the 20th century. That’s largely how it was in Denver last week, except for our Southern California lads, who flaunted tradition and chose, guess what, for their two-song finale?

“Surfer Girl” and “Fun, Fun, Fun” by the Beach Boys.

Actually, the group has become known in recent years for flouting tradition, Devine says. He didn’t use the word, but they sound like the rebels of barbershop singing.

Besides Devine, who sings lead, they are Cory Hunt, Patrick Claypool and Shawn York. Four guys who must blend in but also want to branch out.

But the funny thing is, Devine says, the quartet reveres the history of barbershop singing and knows all the “polecats,” the name given to vintage barbershop stuff. The only revolution the group wants to lead is one that will keep barbershop singing alive.

So, they figure, why not a couple Beach Boys tunes for the finals? Last year, they chose songs by the Drifters and Paul Anka. The year before that, they sang two Elvis Presley songs for their final round.

“This is unheard of, at this point, for barbershop singers,” Devine says. It continues a trend of the last five to 10 years, he says, where instead of songs from 1930 and before dominating any quartet’s playlist, “songs are now being taken from anywhere.”

This may sound like the moment when Bob Dylan outraged his folk music fans in the mid-’60s by playing an electric guitar, but Devine, who’s 31, thinks the barbershop world will go with the flow.

If only for actuarial reasons.

“The Society has, literally, been dying,” he says, “with members getting older and passing away.” A spokeswoman for the Barbershop Harmony Society says that 29% of its members are 65 or older. Only 13% are younger than 34, says spokeswoman Julie Siepler.

Far from pariahs, she says, “groups like OC Times are celebrated as the future of barbershop.” Some Society members, she concedes, probably worry that it, much like other organizations formed decades ago and replete with older members, might slowly fade from view.

But the art form itself? “I don’t think it’ll ever disappear,” Siepler says. “It truly is a part of the continuum of American music history. It precedes jazz. It shares the same roots in the African American communities with jazz and gospel.”

Exactly, Devine says. “I’m a barbershopper first,” he says, noting that he came to California from Pennsylvania a few years ago to sing in a doo-wop group. He loves the close harmonies of barbershop singing and what’s known as “the ringing of the chords” when a quartet is cooking. “Complete agreement and locking in,” he says.

We get off on a tangent about sports, and Devine says there’s a connection. “It’s definitely the teamwork,” he says of quartet singing. “It’s very similar to a sport where all of us are working together, not so much as a soloist would, but to give in a bit so you fit into a team.”

Not surprisingly, not everyone in the 30,000-member society appreciates movement away from standard barbershop singing. But Devine says many older singers appreciate that a youth movement is emerging.

“We are very respectful,” Devine says. “We are not trying to mess with the history. We know all the old songs. We’re grounded. We know our roots, we know the music, the chords. We’re not trying to take it somewhere else. All we’re trying to do is appeal to a wider audience.”

Is that a warm glow I feel coming over me? I love music, mostly the pop stuff. But I also love tradition, and it’s nice to know four guys in their 20s and 30s living in Southern California in 2007 can connect the dots between themselves and black America and small-town America from 75 years ago, when people did congregate at the barbershop and sing.

It makes our world of disharmony seem a little less so.

Devine agrees. “I feel like people are running around like crazy, and there’s all this stuff, this drama, this uncertainty, and people can come to a barbershop show, sit down and relax.”

He tells a story of the group performing in “the middle of Iowa,” with the locals perhaps not sure what they’d get from four guys from California. But toward the end of their set, they introduced a song and told the crowd “it means just as much today as when Louis Armstrong recorded it in the ‘60s.”

When they finished, the crowd gave them a standing ovation.

The song: “What a Wonderful World.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at

dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns: www.latimes.com/parsons