two who remember the ache, the disappointment. They are the last of the proud “rough and tight.” Though more than a year has gone by since that night in New York, the wound is still raw. Sarah, who arranged “Woodstock,” whose MySpace page reads Will Sing for Food , will be Divisi’s new music director. She tells the new girls about the eight-week plan, the one Lisa Forkish devised to whip the group into shape for competition.
Peter Hollens, the founder of On the Rocks, still lives in town. Actually, he’s engaged to Evynne Smith, and while she’s sailing with the Monarch of the Seas , he’s opened his own recording studio catering to a cappella. He goes to the first EMU performance to watch the new Divisi perform. The girls are shaky. He calls Evynne. “I don’t think Divisi should compete this year,” he says. He’s worried that they will ruin the reputation Evynne and Lisa and the rest of the girls worked so hard to build. “They need more time,” Peter said.
But Keeley and Sarah don’t have more time. They want one last shot at the ICCA title before they graduate. They want to right the wrong. For Evynne. For Lisa. For themselves. But after that first Friday-afternoon performance—mediocre, at best— Keeley isn’t sure that’s possible. She goes home and calls Lisa. “It’s not the same,” Keeley says, her eyes tearing up. “What am I doing?”
CHAPTER TWO
THE BEELZEBUBS
Wherein the legendary Tufts Beelzebubs face a crisis in leadership
Long View Farm Recording Studios sits on a hundred acres of western Massachusetts farm country, some two hours outside of Boston. The place is something of a commune—part bed-and -breakfast, part horse farm, part spiritual retreat, part top-tier recording studio. In the winter of 1976, Cat Stevens booked time at Long View. However, before he’d confirm the reservation, he insisted the owners install a sauna. (It’s still there.) In 1981, when the Rolling Stones needed somewhere to rehearse for their Tattoo You tour, Long View management converted the hayloft into a makeshift stage. The Stones—joined by a thirty-person entourage—stayed in residence for six weeks. In that time, Keith Richards left the property exactly once, for a surprise performance the Stones played at Sir Morgan’s Cove, a cramped rock club in Worcester; it was the first live gig the Stones had played in three years. With the parade of music legends passing through the studio, it’s no surprise that (with all due respect to Cleveland) some would come to refer to Long View as the rock ’n’ roll capital of the world. The allure of the place hasn’t faded in these intervening years. When indie rock gods Death Cab for Cutie signed with Atlantic Records in 2005, they checked into Long View for a month. Even Matisyahu, the Orthodox Jewish rapper, has heard the call. Before the Tufts Beelzebubs came to Long View, exactly one a cappella group had recorded there: the world-famous Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
Bonnie Milner, Long View’s owner, came to the barn in the seventies to do some recording of her own and was captivated by her new surroundings. “I asked the owners”—Geoff Myers and John Farrell—“for a job,” she said. “They told me to come back in ten years.” They were convinced she’d run off with the first band that came to record. In 1989, Bonnie did come back—with her three-year-old son in tow—and got a job cleaning the horse stables. Five years later she bought the place. Today Bonnie employs a fifteen-member staff of studio engineers and grounds-keepers. While the advent of professional home recording (Pro Tools, Auto-Tune, and the like) has slowly killed off residential studios, places like Bearsville—a once famous spot in Woodstock, New York—Long View has weathered the changing tides. If anything, Milner says, home recording has helped Long View firm up its identity as an escape for artists. “Home recording has really made people start thinking about