Old Friends, New Harmonies

Hello, hello, and welcome to THello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. If you are joining me for the first time, I’m glad you’re here, and I hope you decide to stick around. And to my returning listeners, it’s wonderful to have you back with me again.

Have you ever gone somewhere for one reason and ended up thinking about a completely different part of your life? Maybe a song, a familiar place, or an old friend suddenly brings back memories you had not visited in years. I know it happens to me.

Today’s story starts with a concert, an old friendship, and a chance to think about my earliest times singing in front of an audience.

Yesterday was the day of the concert. As I mentioned in the previous episode, I didn’t find out about it until just a couple of days before. Our schedule here in Utah has been so packed with activities that I’m a bit surprised we had the evening free to attend, but I’m so glad we did. The experience was exciting, but it was also quite nostalgic. It brought to mind my own experiences in my youth with singing and performance. But before I walk you through all of that, I’d like to share an interesting expression with you.

The expression is: walk down memory lane. Walk down memory lane.

Picture a real street or path that you used to know well. Maybe it leads past your old school, your childhood home, or the restaurant where your family used to celebrate birthdays. As you walk along, each place reminds you of something that happened there. You are not only moving through a physical space. You are also moving through your memories.

In English, when we say that someone is walking down memory lane, we mean that they are remembering experiences from the past, usually with a feeling of nostalgia. Nostalgia is a warm, sometimes slightly sad feeling that comes from remembering a time that has already ended. You can walk down memory lane by looking through old photographs, listening to music from your teenage years, or visiting a place you have not seen in a long time.

Someone might walk down memory lane while talking about their school days. A family might walk down memory lane by watching old home videos. A group of musicians might walk down memory lane when they perform songs they used to sing together years ago. In each example, the person or group is looking back at earlier experiences and letting those memories come alive again.

Here’s a quick example: when I hear a song from one of the a cappella groups I listened to in high school, I find myself walking down memory lane. I remember the people I sang with, the songs we practiced, and the places where we performed. Sometimes a single song is enough to send you back several years. Music is efficient that way.

You may also hear someone say stroll down memory lane. To stroll means to walk slowly and casually, often because you are enjoying the experience. So strolling down memory lane has an even more relaxed feeling. You are taking your time with the memories instead of rushing through them.

I hope you’ll join me as I take a slight detour down memory lane.

Back in high school, my friends and I started an a cappella group. That term is an interesting one. It comes from Italian and essentially means “in the style of the chapel.” Music that was sung in churches pre-1600s was often sung without the accompaniment of instruments, and so to sing “in the style of the chapel” meant to use your voice alone to make music. Today, a cappella groups are not limited to singing music for worship in church, although that still happens all over the world. They will often sing in a variety of genres and in a variety of circumstances. You can find a cappella folk music, R&B, soul, jazz, pop, and, surprisingly enough, EDM, or electronic dance music. That last one is most often found at beatboxing competitions.

My friends and I were inspired by a variety of groups, some of whom were mostly popular within our local Utah community and others who had achieved worldwide success. Some of my favorite groups included Pentatonix, Vocal Point, Straight No Chaser, Take 6, and Boyz II Men, who are not strictly an a cappella group but have quite a few great a cappella songs. Our biggest inspiration by far was Vocal Point, which is the performing group for Brigham Young University.

Over the years, we performed in a variety of competitions and in groups of different sizes. Our original group was comprised of four people. We called ourselves the Ransom Notes, although I wanted to call us by a different name. I’m half Black, but the rest of the group were all very much white. I had hoped to call our group “Tayvin and the White Noise,” but for some reason the rest of the guys wouldn’t go for it. In our senior year of high school, my best friend and fellow groupmate Jarom and I auditioned to be a part of a performing group run by one of the former members of Vocal Point, McKay Crockett. The group was called Frequency, and both of us got in.

Our experience in Frequency was great. We rehearsed often and got incredibly high-quality instruction. We got to perform in concert at various locations. I even learned how to beatbox, though not at all to the same level as Jarom.

Those years were where I cut my teeth on performing. I was learning how to sing in front of an audience, how to work with a group, and how to keep going when a performance did not go exactly as planned. I loved it, even if my limited career as a performer ended with high school graduation.

Frequency may have been the end of my performing career, but not Jarom’s. Though he may not have discovered it until he was in middle school, beatboxing is in his blood. I remember the countless hours he spent repeating the same snare drum sound into a portable mic he had at home until he could finally get it just right. I remember the videos he would watch of other beatboxers to try to understand the subtle ways they moved their mouths and tongues and incorporate those techniques into his own beatboxing. I’ve heard many people comment on how talented he is after a show. And it’s true that he’s very talented, but more than that, he is dedicated. Really, he’s obsessed.

Having gone through those experiences with him and seen all his hard work, it was a real treat to see him in concert again last night. The group is called Known by Name, and they are a Christian a cappella group. At this concert, they were the opening act for another group called King’s Return. I had spent the first part of the evening looking backward at my own beginning as a performer. Then I got to watch Jarom continue his.

The venue for these performances was an outdoor amphitheater called the Scera Shell. The stage is surrounded by a rather steep hill that provides natural tiered seating for the audience. Lower down, closer to the stage, they have chairs set up for audience members to sit in, but as you move up the hill, the seating rows end and it becomes a free-for-all. Bring a blanket to sit down on the grass or your own folding chair.

Over the years, I’ve seen many performances at the Scera. They’ve held concerts for Pentatonix and Vocal Point. They put on multiple musicals every year, and I’ve even seen a few where Emma was one of the designers. There are a lot of memories connected to that place.

Well, Jarom’s group knocked it out of the park. They were amazing. There are a couple of other people that I know from my days plugged into the a cappella scene who are members of the group as well. It was wonderful to hear how well they’ve been developing their talents. Though the group is still relatively new, I think they are on par with many of the other top-level performances that I’ve seen.

After Known by Name performed, we got to hear a little over an hour of music from King’s Return. I had not heard of them before last night, but I was absolutely blown away by each member’s vocal abilities. They remind me a lot of the group Take 6 in their soulful R&B and Gospel style. There are a couple of areas that you can evaluate an a cappella group on. One of them is how well their voices blend and how tight their harmonies are. The other is the quality of their soloists. I’m a bit biased due to my connection to the members of Known by Name, but I think they might have had the edge when it came to the vocal blend. But King’s Return had some of the most impressive, jaw-dropping vocals I’ve ever heard live. It was truly an experience well worth the ticket price.

That brings me to today’s second expression: a blast from the past.

When you hear the word blast, you might picture a sudden burst of air, sound, or energy. A blast is quick and powerful. In this expression, the blast is a sudden return of something from the past. A song comes on the radio. An old friend walks into the room. You find a photograph in a drawer. For a moment, something that seemed finished or far away is right in front of you again.

In English, a blast from the past is a person, object, song, memory, or experience that suddenly brings back an earlier time. It usually has a positive or amused feeling, although the memory itself can be complicated.

The two expressions are related, but they focus on different pictures. When you walk down memory lane, you deliberately spend time remembering the past. When something is a blast from the past, the memory may arrive unexpectedly, almost like someone turned on a speaker in a room you thought was quiet. Last night gave me both experiences. I went looking through my own memories, and then the past surprised me by putting old friends on a stage in front of me.

Here’s an example from the concert. I first met Anna and Rob, mezzo-soprano and bass for Known by Name, at a vocal camp called Remix when I was 14. It was a real blast from the past to see them on stage last night. I hadn’t expected to be reminded of Remix, but there they were, still performing years later.

So here’s something to think about. What person, song, place, or object has been a blast from the past for you recently? And when was the last time you intentionally walked down memory lane? If an old memory comes back to you, take a moment to enjoy it, and maybe share it with someone who was there.

I think one of the great things about walking down memory lane is that when you’ve come to the end of your walk, you can process how far you’ve come. I got to watch the concert last night with my wife, the love of my life. We were able to sneak away from home while our beautiful baby girl was sleeping because my grandparents were willing to stay home and watch over her while we were gone. The memories are great, but the path I really want to be spending my time walking is the one where I get to travel with the people I love the most. It’s nice to look back every once in a while, especially when the past gives you a chance to appreciate the present, but life is lived looking forward.

And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.