You never forget the first time you heard The Roches — sisters Maggie, Terre and Suzzy, singing in clarion unison, dazzling counterpoint, or rich harmony. Their vocals were only part of the wonder, as their lyrics usually dealt with something as unique as their voices. I first caught them on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in 1990, singing about how their first time on a different popular late-night show turned out to be a “Big Nuthin.'”
Katy Schneider had seen that very performance — on “Saturday Night Live” in late 1979 — and it was definitely not a big nothing to her. She and her whole family were mesmerized by The Roches’ virtuosic a cappella sprint through Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.
When Maggie passed away last January, Schneider felt the need to start a group that sang Roches songs; she joined forces with Christine Andrews and Kay McKinstry to do just that, naming their new group after a 1982 Roches tune.
Jerks On the Loose perform a 40-minute set opening for The Johnny Memphis Band at The Iron Horse in Northampton, tonight at 7 p.m.
Schneider barely knew McKinstry at the time, she said during a group interview earlier this week. “I was just a gushy fan, but I pat myself on the back every day for having the cojones to email her. I asked her if she’d like to sing some Roches. She said yes, and I learned later she didn’t even know their music.”
Schneider and Andrews both taught in the art department at Smith College, and they’d found themselves vocalizing together before — a couple times at the Sacred Harp singing at Helen Hills Hills Chapel, and even once around a campfire. “She was my perfect Terre. When they both said yes, I forgot all about politics,” Schneider said. “This has been our great escape.”
None of the three singers are formally trained, but each has lots of vocal experience. Andrews was in ’90s Valley bands Flower Thief and Painesville Lanes and has spent the last decade as a shape note singer in the Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp Community, singing four-part a cappella harmony out of old American hymn books.
McKinstry grew up singing with her sister, in Girl Scouts, and at church. “I always had what I call ‘harmony disease’ — I always hear what the non-melody line is or could be,” she said. She has been a vocalist in numerous bands, including Drunk Stuntmen and Josh Lederman and the Cambridge-Somerville All-Stars, plus fronting her own group, The Good Pour.
Schneider, who led her own band Katyland and has joined Fancy Trash on pedal steel and backing vocals, grew up singing and harmonizing with her siblings, just like The Roches themselves. “There were seven kids sharing one bedroom, and one station wagon,” she said. “We had an amazing chorus teacher, Bob Sharon, who taught us four-part harmony in 7th grade. He was a Juilliard graduate who found his calling in a public NYC junior high. He set the bar high and all the kids met it. He really changed our life. It was too bad my dad was a nervous driver. He’d tell us to keep quiet in the car. We’d try to whisper the harmonies but things often got out of hand.”
The Roches’ catalog isn’t the easiest thing to tackle — the vocal arrangements are playful and complicated — but the three friends have fully immersed themselves. “We are all able to enjoy working on one verse for an hour at a time without getting bored or frustrated,” Andrews said. “We all love how hard it is.”
“We’ve been practicing once a week for three or four hours for about a year,” McKinstry said. “And before shows, we double up to sing twice a week, which translates to about six to eight hours, which is way more singing than I’ve done in a long, long time. The three of us spend a lot of time with a speaker and keyboard, and either an album recording or live video on YouTube, pausing and rewinding over and over, trying to hear the parts individually and together. Every verse and chorus of every song is harmonized differently. It’s telling that we’ve been together for a year and only know ten songs.”
Their dedication shows. Hear the way they deftly maneuver through the end bit of “Hammond Song” — on the climactic line, “Tell me I’m o-kay,” Andrews and McKinstry swoop down in harmony, and as they land, Schneider sneaks up from below with a wry, low line that nestles in perfectly. It’s kind of breathtaking.
“We really enjoy their unconventional harmonies,” Andrews said. “In the song ‘One Season,’ for example, they have a verse that’s intentionally out of tune, that fits the story of the song where the narrator is in an argument. When we were first practicing that song, Katy’s family was very concerned that we didn’t know we were so out of tune. ‘Um, you might want to work on that part more?’ Which was awesome, because we knew we were doing it right!”
When asked to describe what it felt like to sing together, all three agreed with a passion that would make The Roches proud: “It’s the best thing in life. Everyone should do it.”
Clubland: Jerks On the Loose
