Q&A with Shoreline Quartet

Left to right: Cole Carey (Br), Kayla Reed (L), Caleb Downey (Bs), Maddie Cooper (T)

CH: Tell me about yourselves.

Caleb Downey (CD): My name is Caleb, and I've been sitting with Shoreline for just over a year now. And I've also been singing barbershop for just over a year now. I'm a pianist by trade, but I do enjoy singing.

Cole Carey (CC): I’ve been singing barbershop since I was seven. I became a member of the society when I was eight. I sang with the Plano Men of Note in Texas. I started singing in quartets around 2016 when I was filling in for my dad's quartet on a show in Canada, and then I became a permanent fill in for that quartet and I won Bush League in 2018 with my dad and then I started Solid Gold in 2019. We won fifth place at the international contest in midwinter in January of 2020. And then shoreline started up about 2021. I’ve sang at International four times now. Three Midwinters with The Voice. And now, I'm singing with Shoreline with my new quartet Five Star with Jeff and James and dad. And we're going to compete in contest here at the end of April and hopefully go to International in the summer.

Kayla Reed (KR): I'm Kayla, I've been singing my whole entire life. I’ve been involved in a bunch of choirs over the years, but I first started getting into barbershop almost a year ago, a little less than a year ago. I started singing in Cole's youth chorus in Cadillac. And around November, he started asking me to fill in for another member of Shoreline and then it just kind of stuck and still stuck for now, at least.

CH: What draws you to barbershop quartet singing?

CD: Well, I know for me personally, I mean, I enjoy singing. And it's I do like the sound of it. I like to sing barbershop but it's also a harder style of singing in my opinion, especially quartet singing, and I enjoy that challenge.

KR: I also like the challenge and the independence of having to learn your own part and stick to it while other parts are all happening all around you.

CC: I agree with that. I like quartet singing. But I like the sound of the chord structures but in order to sing in a quartet, especially a good quartet, it means that you have to surround yourself with people that are good, and that can do it. And I think it's a good way to find people that like you have the same things that you do. And if you can find a group of people that stick with it. And are good at it. I think that's a really cool thing.

CH:  How have you learned to balance the friendship you have and the way you respect each other as musicians with the fact that it's you that's leading and guiding?

CC: In this quartet, all four of us are pretty high level musicians or our ages. Like I think I was really fortunate to find four people in northern Michigan that are as well versed and good at sight reading and able to stick to it as us, and we're also determined to make it sound good. We think that it's cool and we hold ourselves to a really high level. But we don't want to put something out there that we know he's not good. So I think that has something to do with it.

CH: Why is it important to take a hobby and to take an art form like barbershop and to have young impressive, talented voices singing it? What does that do for the art form?

CD: The first thing that comes to mind is it definitely draws younger people in and kind of might destigmatize the complexity of it. You know, if people think it's hard, we can show you that it's hard, but it's possible. I mean, I think barbershop definitely needs young people coming in.

CH: What do you think you will take away or do you take away from this segment of your musicianship?

CD: Some people things I've encountered talked about, like it does bleed into other areas of our music lives, and learning how to keep a friendship and a professional relationship. Like, allow them to coexist to keep them separate. I mean, that's definitely a skill.

CC: I'm going to go to Michigan State to do music education. I would like to continue to direct a chapter. I'm going to start, I think, helping more with Great Lakes and I'm going to continue singing with Great Lakes. And continue singing with my dad's quartet. Because I'll be in just as close proximity to them as I am now. I'd like to continue singing with Caleb as much as I can, and maintain this relationship I have with this quartet now and you know, life's probably going to split us in different directions. But if we can have a goal or has something that we can do when we get together, I think that's important and fun. One of the reasons one of the main reasons, I guess that I started the Cadillac youth Chorus was, number one, I wanted to direct something and put something like that in gear and be able to perform barbershop with my friends. And I wanted a reason for everybody to come together and be together for two hours once a week. To come to town and do something fun and have to look forward to shows together and talk about learning songs together and have a reason to bring everybody to the same room again, and I think that I'm going to continue to use that as an excuse for life.

CH: What are you hoping will happen when you cross the stage?

CD: I mean, this information is relatively new, like we've been practicing together for like, a month. So, personally, I would like by next week to be able to achieve a fairly blended sound and I guess, be able to speak to the audience, you know, and not just be focusing on these very new notes. And really just actually, like get to performance level by next week.

CC: This will be the first time that I've actually gotten to sing in my own quartet. In front of the district. Yeah, it is, in my mind, will be my first time and you've seen me fill in with dad's quartet, you know, it rooms and stuff, but I've never actually gotten to have my own quartet that I'm competing with and to have it be youth. A youth mixed quartet is even more on the level of uniqueness. So I'm excited to show the district that not only we are here and we exist but hopefully that we sound good and that we are just we have the chops to be in the context.

KR: Something that I'm personally pretty excited for is the fact that Maddie and I are both girls, and that we're going to be doing this in a rather male dominated thing. And I think that that's pretty cool and you get to go up there and the girls barbershop same thing.