They’re the longest running music and arts organization in Durango. Rolling through their 57th year, the Durango Barbershoppers, also known as The Durango Narrow Gauge Chorus, have been making music for decades, music made without handmade instruments, tunes where the voice serves as the lead, tenor, bass and baritone, and then some.
The Durango Narrow Gauge Chorus will host their annual summer concert, titled “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” at 7:01 p.m. Saturday at Durango High School.
If you go
WHAT: Durango Barbershoppers Annual Concert, featuring The Durango Narrow Gauge Chorus and special guests “Shaken, Not Stirred.”
WHEN: 7:01 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: Durango High School, 2390 Main Ave.
TICKETS: $25 adults/$15 children. Admissionat door.
MORE INFORMATION: www.durangobarbershoppers.org.
“We were founded in 1968, and gave our first concert in 1969, and we’ve been giving annual concerts every year since” said Jeffrey Weaver, president of the organization and one of the vocalists. “So, this is a long-standing Durango tradition that we’re very proud to be part of, and very proud to be moving forward.”
Traditionally, you’d call them a barbershop quartet, yet because the Durango Barbershoppers have 24 members ready to bang out songs from the public domain along with tunes from modern pop culture, chorus is the appropriate title although they do sing four-part a cappella.
“As people might have notice throughout the years, the repertoire changes, but the harmonies do not” said Musical Director Amy Barrett. “Lots of pieces for the show do feature barbershop seventh chords, but we also, as you are going to hear, are going to sing some more familiar songs. So, it should be lots of familiar songs for our audience.”
The term “roots music” or “Americana” has become a catchall term for anyone from John Prine to John Hiatt to Lucinda Williams. This style of music, dating back a couple centuries, is true “Americana.”
“The barbershop style of four-part harmony is really the ultimate American roots music. It’s an African American style of music primarily developed after the Civil War,” Weaver said. “Back in the day when people didn’t have instruments and didn’t have access to instruments, the voice is that they had access to. So the barbershop harmony style is really an African American style of music that predates jazz, so many of the developers of jazz and ragtime around the turn of the century in the 1900s, they all sang in four-part harmony groups. There are hints of that early jazz and popular music style in the harmonies that you would traditionally think of as barbershop.”
It’s music to your ears when a band pulls off something magical on stage. It’s what music lovers chase at concerts, and it’s what musicians chase when performing.
“If you’ve never done barbershop before, there’s that moment where a chord locks in and it’s what the barbershopper world calls ‘rings’ and it produces harmonics that are not being sung, it’s just that they’re overtones,” Barrett said. “I think you get a buzz and a high just from actually singing a chord really well in tune. So I think that appeals as well, that just naturally occurring music phenomenon.”
Because they’ve been making music since the Nixon administration, they’re all about tradition. And that goes right down to the odd start time of 7:01 p.m., which was started by the late Carroll “Dr. Pete” Peterson, a longtime English professor at Fort Lewis College and one of the founders of the Durango Barbershoppers.
“He said nobody remembers six or seven o’clock, but they definitely remember 7:01. So, that has been the tradition since before I was born,” Barrett said. “7:01 is the start time, and we hope everybody remembers exactly what time it is.”
The Durango Barbershoppers are always on the hunt for new voices, meeting every Tuesday night at Christ the King Lutheran Church.
“You don’t have to have any formal musical training,” said Weaver. “It’s just the enjoyment of singing.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
