I’ve been singing with the Northern Pines Harmony Brigade since they started in 2013. It’s extreme quartetting barbershop. You get the music for ten songs in, say, December. Then you come to the “Rally” weekend the following May having learned your part well enough to sing any of those ten songs in a randomly drawn quartet with three other lucky folks. It’s a contest with everybody there participating. It’s hard-fought, although we don’t take ourselves all that seriously.

There are sixteen Brigades around the country and Europe. If you’re looking, you can find a Brigade somewhere about once a month. Some welcome women into the group, some are men only.

Before and after the contest we all go around finding three other parts to sing with. I like to try to sing with everyone else there, just for the fun of it. After singing with everyone there in Kansas, I went back around and sang with everyone again.

The Rally weekend also includes a show for the public. We put on a barbershop show with a guest quartet, and everybody sings all the songs in a big chorus. There can be anywhere from forty to over a hundred people at a Rally. It’s a great feeling to sing with a good group of singers who all know their music.

For the fun of it this year, I went to Brigade on the Range in Salina Kansas June 20-21, 2025. I wanted to see how other groups do it – they are not all the same, although they all are similar. Everyone is there to sing, and with as many other people as you can.

“May I Never Love Again.mp3” is a recording of the practice session of my quartet named “Just One Of Those Quartets.” We won first place in the contest! The quartet names are always fun, but the contest is quite competitive.

Another one of my random quartets in Salina was “William Tell Overtones.” The video is from that song. Sorry about the picture quality. I had to compress the file a lot to get it down to a reasonable size. At least you can hear it okay!

May I Never Love Again audio only:

Burnin’ the Roadhouse Down video: