[music playing] Support for the Alaska Live series of live music and conversation on KUAC is made possible by a grant from Design Alaska.

Design Alaska, strengthening community through support of the arts.

Welcome to KUAC's Alaska Live.

I'm your host, Lori Neufeld.

And my guest today, Nobu Aldeman.

Did I get it sort of right?

No.

No.

As close as anyone's ever gotten.

Adilman.

Adilman.

I got this.

Adilman and Daveed Goldman.

They are the directors of Choir!

Choir!

Choir!.

And here at the KUAC studios, we have a host of high school students and UAF Music students from Lathrop High and West Valley High and UAF Music.

Welcome, all.

[cheers and applause] Whoa.

Does that sound good on radio?

Yeah.

Just screaming.

It sounds great.

So, Daveed and Nobu, I was trying to describe to my spouse what you do.

And what I came down to is you spread joy.

You spread joy to all the venues and all the communities you go to.

Can you describe a bit how that joy comes about?

Because it's hard to describe what Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

Does.

Well, I mean, I think that Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

is at its core about bringing people together, taking them off of their screens from behind their computers, and interacting with each other in a really kind of old school and, quite honestly, a wholesome way, though, we try to make it as not wholesome as possible.

And it's just when you put people in a room, and you give them to-- just ask them to sing the best songs of all time, I think that the only real result is joy.

And that most people, we often say that people are very-- it's very easy to get into arguments online.

But when you're actually facing people, and you're actually talking, in a choir context, you have to listen to what your neighbor is singing.

And so that helps kind of just like chill the room out a little bit.

And then what we bring to it is just a lot of ridiculousness.

Are we being filmed right now?

Pardon?

You're not being filmed.

Totally being.

I'm being filmed.

Is this being filmed?

But you're not, Yes.

So we can't just be like, woo-- like you have to-- Well, there's different.

OK. Yeah, we just party.

Our shows are a party.

And that's where the joy comes from.

But it's also, it's a lot of things.

Like we do lots of shows.

Sometimes, we do shows to just like for no reason at all, just because we love a song.

Or we have touring shows that where we celebrate all kinds of music and different bands and different eras of music.

But when we got started from Toronto, where we're from, in Canada, there was no reason for it, but then we built this community.

We didn't realize that by just bringing people together every single week and not having any auditions, like there's no auditions to join Choir!

Choir!

Choir!.

You just show up and sing with us.

And you don't have to be some huge singer.

The whole idea is you just come out.

And so we got people from all over the city coming out every single week.

And a lot of the times, they would come without knowing anybody.

It's like a lot of strangers in a room.

And also, the age demo was huge, from 19 to into people in their 80s.

People bring their kids.

People bring their grandparents.

Yeah, early days, we would do it in bars, so it would be 19 plus.

But the thing is like, how often when you live in a city do you get to meet people outside of your work circle or your social network that could be fairly small.

So we just kind of said here's the city and anybody is invited to come.

And then from that, we learned a lot about just bringing people together.

How did you and Daveed-- Nobu and Daveed, how did you meet to put this together?

We knew each other from around downtown Toronto.

There's this app called Tinder.

I'm not sure if you've heard of it.

[laughter] We were the first two people on it.

So I was like, who's on this?

Who's this guy?

Hey, let's start a choir together.

What's this app for?

Anyway, we had done something for a mutual friend's birthday that was put together by his then girlfriend.

And we ended up at Nobu's kitchen.

And I brought my guitar.

And we just sort of ended up sort of directing people and telling people what to sing and what not to sing.

And it was very amateur and really-- Started out as a cool party trick.

It was just a party trick.

It was a friend who's a musician.

He had friends who were musicians.

So people were performing at his birthday.

So this was a group of people that could also perform who weren't necessarily solo performers.

But as a group, we did this choir thing, and I was playing guitar and whatever.

So and I'd see Nobu around.

I managed a restaurant, a brunch restaurant.

And he would come in, and we would say for two years like, let's do that choir thing again, without any real idea.

And then a couple of years later, he came in.

I go out on my coffee.

I'm like, when are we going to do that choir thing again?

He's like, let's do it.

And we're like, what do we do?

We're like, we don't know.

So we just made a Facebook event.

Oh, cool.

And that was really-- yeah, it's like, that's what-- the first event was called Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

Because Nobu was like on his computer being like, what's the event name?

I'm like, I don't know.

How about Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

Like calling out to people to come and sing with us.

And that's it.

And we were in the newspaper like the next day.

So that became our name, and it never stopped.

It was like week after week we just-- it was clear on that first night that people wanted to do it again.

So we did, and it's never stopped.

People assume just because of our dynamic on stage that we've known each other our whole lives.

But really, we didn't know each other when-- I mean, I knew him from being the waiter or the manager at that restaurant.

He was like a local character and pretty cranky.

And so then, but there was a vibe between us.

And four months into doing choir, like we didn't charge any money.

We were just doing it, and it was like growing quite rapidly because no auditions, and it was $5 to join us at the time.

And one night, we couldn't see everybody because about 65 people had shown up, which was, to us, like the entire world was there.

And then the venue had a stage.

And so we got on the stage.

And once that happened, you put two Jews on a stage, forget about it.

Like it was just ridiculous.

It's never been done before.

Never been done before.

But it became like this thing where-- it's a weird thing.

Like theater and music is a weird thing.

If you have a raised platform and like a little bit of light and a microphone, suddenly, you're like you're like, I don't know where you are.

You're in some other space.

And that's what happened to us where we got even sillier.

We ramped it up even more because we felt like we were like just performing in a different way, which was cool.

Well, it's sort of weird.

It sort of turned the idea of someone who's sort of in a choir director, which we never really saw ourselves as.

We wanted to start a choir, that wasn't really the idea.

I'd never been in a choir.

It wasn't the idea.

And even when we started, choirs would reach out to us to be like, hey, let's do something.

And we'd be like, we're not part of the choral community.

That's not our thing.

We kind of were like just like lone wolf that sort of went and just did our own thing.

It was in some ways a choir but like functioned with much more of like an underground DIY kind of punk aesthetic really without the music and the pierced whatever.

People would say early days when we would be asked to perform publicly, even people in our choir because they're so attuned to traditional choirs, they'd be like, what should we wear?

And I was like, I suggest that you wear clothes.

And that would be great if you were dressed for this event, but no robes, no holding yourself in a certain way.

A choir event early days was just-- we would announce it three or four days before we actually did it, and it would be like two songs, full arrangements, and that would be it.

Like we would do it that night, and that was it.

We put it out into the world.

Exactly, and online.

But we've graduated now into a touring act around the world and so we've got themed shows.

Like tonight, we're doing the epic '80s sing-along, that kind of a thing.

And we do tons of other things as well.

But back then, it was really just kind of just for the fun of it, like just for an opportunity to hang out.

We approached it like a band.

Like in some ways, we were like, we're this band that we get together, but it's like Steely Dan, like rotating members because whoever shows up, we're going to record every week.

We're going to learn it on the spot, and record it, and put it out, and then we move on.

And that was like-- we realized like a year and a half in, when we were putting out videos consistently, that there was no one else doing this in the world in this way.

And that was very exciting, so we just kept going and going and going.

And then we were like almost like a recording artist, like a live-- like it was like a show, but it was like a recording session.

But it was like a video production thing.

It was just-- and it was all very quick and in the moment.

And now, you've gotten to the point where you-- And we're so huge.

--are huge.

And celebrities come.

And sometimes, you have a celebrity on stage with you, and you've gotten the Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

ready to go as the backing band.

And I think that that is just an amazing thing to do, too.

And so it's a combo.

Well, the thing is that we were really learning, and we were still learning, as we go because there's no book written in terms of how we should run Choir!

Choir!

Choir!.

But what we realized was that by turning-- like by making the audience the show, the performers, then we have this dialogue, and it's all these people who love music and have lots of memories attached to it and a lot of stories and are really into sharing and sharing music.

And so the fact that we could then invite-- it started with friends of ours.

There's a Canadian band called Sloan from out East Nova Scotia, and we invited them to come and sing one of their songs with us.

And then what we realized is that we became like a bridge between the artists of note and people who just are fans of the band.

And it grew from there.

And we've been able to perform with some really incredible people, people that I grew up with singing along to or idolizing in many ways.

But also, I add to that is the attention we got.

Like that first night we did with our friends Chris and Jay from Sloan, we did a song called "Coax Me", which is a great song, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of that album coming out.

And we recorded it, put the video out.

And then a couple of days later, we were getting messages on Facebook of people saying like, I just heard us on the radio.

Like, us.

People who had come to this event, who we didn't know, who had paid $5, come and sang with and had a fun night with us.

And then they're driving in their car two days later, and they hear themselves on the radio.

Like that was a weird thing.

And in that moment, I was like, well, we're doing something pretty-- well, it's not normal to be like-- it's just not normal.

You don't go to a dance party, and then two days later, hear yourself or see yourself dancing on television.

But this was kind of like we were sort of circumventing the music industry and getting on the radio and getting into places that we weren't sure we should be getting into because of the way we were doing things.

It was a cool time.

I think it's fun not to be normal.

I think it's fun to do things that are unpredictable, and we have to figure out how to do it.

And we're in like, I don't know, choir 12.0 at this point.

I kind of want to see how that works in the room.

Are we ready to do how this goes?

Yeah.

Yeah, sure.

The question is, are you ready, our studio audience?

Yeah!

One person's like shaking their head, no.

Definitely, no.

Not me.

So for the listeners, we have a whole studio audience comprised of West Valley students, Lathrop students, and UAF Music students.

So it's great to have you all here.

Thanks for coming.

Give yourselves around of applause.

[applause] OK.

It's fun to like-- generally, people that come to our shows when we tour are usually over 30, usually, it's people between 30 and 65.

That's the age range.

And it's fun to work with kids, and it's sort of strange because their knowledge of music is not-- well, they're just not adults yet in the way that they haven't lived with these songs for long enough.

And it's kind of fun to have them-- sometimes, introduce them to songs that they don't necessarily know, and see how they interpret them or what they feel about them because it's funny.

I think we're going to sing "We Found Love" by Rihanna and Calvin Harris and just teach a bit of harmony.

But like, it's interesting to imagine them in like 30 years, hearing this song, and be like, oh, we were in that-- we sang that with those two weird guys from Toronto and like whatever.

And I still remember the harmony they taught us.

Because people tell us from the first nights of choir from 12 years ago, when they hear like whatever song on the radio, and they're driving, they still sing like the low harmony and the backup parts.

It's tattooed in their brain, these choir nights that have created these memories around songs for people.

If you're at home listening right now, so we sing through a whole bunch of songs at our show.

So like, one night-- and it's very spontaneous.

So one night, we might just be like, suddenly, we're singing "We Found Love", and there's lyrics on the screen.

And you don't know that you're singing any song.

So this is an example of what it would be like to be at a show.

So we're going to sing "We Found Love", and we're going to-- you have lyrics, right?

You guys have all your lyrics?

OK, cool.

We're going to sing in unison for the first verse, and then the pre-chorus, and then we're going to split you up in a harmony-- in a chorus, we're going to split you up into a two-part harmony.

All right, so why don't we practice the harmony first.

So we're going to split up the room in half.

And you can't see this at home, but my laser hand is splitting up the room in half.

So you're going to be-- on the left side of the room, you're going to do the melody part, of course.

(SINGING) We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

All right.

If you're at home, just clap your hands.

OK, now, the other side of the room, we're going to teach you the harmony.

So the-- (SINGING) We-- That's your starting note.

So take a listen to us singing it first, and then you're going to sing it back.

If you're at home, you can sing it back, too.

Here we go.

(SINGING) We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

Can you try that?

1, 2, 3, 4.

(SINGING) We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

Both sides.

1, 2, 3, 4.

(SINGING) We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

All right, let's try the song in the top.

Yellow diamonds, 3, 4-- (SINGING) Yellow diamonds in the light, now we're standing side by side.

As your shadow crosses mine, what it takes to come alive.

It's the way I'm feeling I just can't deny.

But I've got to let it go.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

Next verse.

Here we go.

Shine a light through an open door.

Love and life I will divide.

Turn away 'cause I need you more.

Feel the heartbeat in my mind.

Come on.

Sing it again.

It's the way I'm feeling I just can't deny.

But I've got to let it go.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

Here we go.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

We found love in a hopeless place.

[applause] You have to clap for yourself.

Everyone at home is.

You're awesome.

Everyone-- You're the performers, but you're also the crowd, so.

I want to-- and I say preface.

I know that's wrong because we've already done it.

So what's the word, postace?

Postace.

Is it postace?

I'll postace is by saying that we don't know these kids, and we just walked in the studio a few minutes ago.

So we hope you-- you can't see the smiles on these kids' faces because they're not there.

But, no, they're there, and it was really fun.

But we're sort of doing things on the fly here, but that felt really good.

Yeah.

And that's what it's about.

It's about capturing-- sometimes with these songs, like you capture this little moment, and you get into this groove.

Like we came closer to them, and we got them locked in a harmony, and we got them clapping, and get them moving.

And then you start to feel, and you're like, OK, now I can ride this for a while.

And sometimes, we'll have lyric sheets or things up on the screen at our shows, and people will be seeing it.

But no one ever look at each other and be like, oh, this is like-- we got to stretch this out.

So we'll stretch out a bridge or stretch out a verse or repeat a part or go into a thing and get people moving because it's just-- That was complete magic.

I swear, that was like-- I know there's a process, but it seems like magic.

I mean, the interesting thing-- We're not even here right now.

--we have a room full of choir students.

And you're young, you're energetic, and you sound great.

But still, you're a little bit reserved.

It's like you're not-- and then we find it so-- I find it so fascinating that we'll be in a crowd of people, and we keep on having to say, sing louder.

Go for it.

It's like there's this weird societal barrier to people letting themselves like just be their true selves and have a lot of fun and let it out and keep that energy going.

And I feel like we just are conditioned to sit back down.

And at Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

shows, it's like, no.

Just let it out.

And I think that that's why-- I call what we do exercise for people who don't necessarily like to exercise.

Because singing [Chicken Soup for the Soul] it's like exercise.

It gets all that air moving.

And so, you know.

I mean, we do-- You could sleep longer if you come to our shows.

We do a lot of-- we do public shows.

We tour.

We do all things like that and work with different people and go into schools.

And we also do like for the corporate work, working with companies and going to conferences and working with people.

And these people are not coming to sing to a conference.

We'll go do a-- with 1,000 librarians, and they're all there and getting them singing.

It's fun to push these people, who in their workplace, they're very reserved.

And then by the end of our session with them after like 40 minutes, the whole place is dancing and clapping.

And it's really fun to get people to just-- because we don't-- to see young people, this is something that they're going to be doing for the next several years.

These people are, how old are you all, 15, 16, however?

Hello, young people.

Like, no, but-- How are you doing, young people?

[laughter] But when you're young, it's easy to connect.

It's easy to connect because you spend every day with the same people so you share so many memories when the teacher got angry, or when you diss, or your exam studying together.

There's so many moments to share together when you're young.

Then you get older and you go to your job and you go home and you get in your apartment and you're tired.

And even things like television, we don't share anymore.

We used to all watch shows at the same time and be like-- when Friends would end, everyone you knew was watching that show on Thursday at 8:00.

So at 8:30, you'd call all your friends.

You'd be like, did you see what happened with Ross and Monica?

That doesn't happen anymore.

Live sports is really the only place where people really share these moments anymore.

So to create these moments with music that people can remember and be like, oh, we were there together at that show when we sang that song.

It's cool to because-- especially at an advanced age, not advanced, but even like 30s, 40s, you don't have those moments that you share with people as much anymore.

He was trying to tell you, all you young people, hold on to 16 as long as you can.

(SINGING) Change is coming around real soon make us women and man.

Whoa!

They don't know that song either, you see.

When you said that you were doing team building stuff, I used to be a facilitator of a challenge course, like a low ropes course.

And we had the librarians come out-- low, not up with harnesses and stuff.

You know what I mean?

And we used to have, yeah, all these corporate folks come out in their tennis shoes and jeans and have to do these team building exercises.

And it totally took them out of their element.

Yeah, absolutely.

And they were timid at first, and then all of a sudden at the end, they had this different experience and relationship.

And I think that's what you're creating, too, for sure.

Everybody is timid at the beginning of anything.

And it's like every choir session's like, everyone starts off as an underdog.

I have a theater degree because I went to University with no plan in life.

And I left University with no plan in life.

But the best course I took was developmental drama.

And that was how do you create community from a group of people who come from different backgrounds but need to be unified to accomplish some goal?

And so test projects like you're bringing people from across the country together to rewrite a history textbook for high school students.

Well, history is very contentious.

And there's lots of things, like even from my-- my mother's background is Japanese.

She's from Japan.

I didn't learn anything about internment my entire high school life.

And so, it's like, what is important?

There's only a certain number of pages.

How do you get people to feel unified and respectful of each other and doing this stuff?

And I feel like-- when we started doing choir, I was like, wow, this is like some weird kind of like my past catching up with me.

And I guess it was good that I went to University in the end.

Right, moral of the story.

For that one course.

I didn't even get a degree.

So that's how little plan I had.

I mean, I feel like light, but also just in terms of bringing people together with music and celebrating, have these moments of celebration, it's like, I think of like what's going on now online, and obviously, there's wars going on.

But even aside from that, just I feel like people live-- like it used to be like road rage.

When you're behind the wheel of the car, and you're safe in your car, you'll say things to people that you would never say.

Get out of the way you idiot!

You're a-- honking your horn at somebody who could clearly beat you up.

It's just like people have this inflated sense of, I can say whatever I want because no one's going to challenge me.

And now, online, it's like we live in a permanent state of road rage.

People see something.

They react.

They say something inflammatory.

They don't even have to really look they can log off and just be like, well, I'll just leave that there and see how people react.

It really focuses-- it's so much on like division and what divides people.

And at our shows, you really see that so much more brings us together, but no one wants to focus on that stuff.

I just read a really timely article in the New York Times last night from Jeff Tweedy, from Wilco.

It says, "Well, so if you take anything away from this, I hope that it will be a recommendation.

Spend some time looking for a song or a book or a film or person you might have unfairly maligned.

It feels good to stop hating something, and music is a good place to start."

It's very true.

But I think that-- I remember what it was like when I was 13 years old and music was a very important thing that helped me define who I was and very much.

And Daveed and I talk about this a lot in terms of our older siblings being the selectors and handing down music and style and showing us the way, and my brother's friends and community.

And so it's really cool to come back to music through choir, and we would do tons of songs every night.

We had to do tons of songs.

And we would start singing songs like The Smiths.

When I was in high school, I hated the Smiths.

I love the Smiths.

It's fine.

The thing is, 14-year-old me thought that the Smiths were just a big sucky band.

And it's like, you go up the stairs and you want to die.

It's like, OK, go ahead.

It's like, I was listening to music with like a little bit more like I don't energy that fitted my personality whatever.

But the thing is like, I got to sing the Smiths with choir, and I was like, these are great songs.

And so it's like, you get over yourself as you get older.

And you don't need to define yourself by music, and you can love everything.

Well, you define yourself by the things that you like as much.

When you're a teenager, you define yourself by the things that you will not get into and the things that you will refuse to like because you feel like that gives you a sense of, I'm not someone who listens to these types of songs or watches these shows or likes these foods.

If you know me, you'll know that I would never want to listen to that.

And when you're a teenager and you and you think that way, which is normal, it has an effect on the way you are as an adult, just like your upbringing does, or what your parents like, what they don't like.

And so to break away from that mold as an adult is, as Jeff said, is a very freeing kind of feeling.

And what we noticed with choir was when you strip away the production of these songs, and you take away like the beep, like the '80s beeps and the keyboards, and people are like, I like guitar music.

It's like I could take away all the instrumentation.

Just listen to the melody of this Justin Bieber song or this Wilco song or this Cher song or a song by the band or Stevie Wonder.

Like they're all good melodies.

If a song has a good melody, it'll connect with people.

And if you just strip away and just have one guitar, or even just voices singing it, it's like, you get to hear it with a fresh set of ears that you didn't have when you were young.

So it's kind of cool to get to.

We have people come to the choir nights who were like well into their '60s, and we're singing songs, current songs like we did "Bad Guy" by Billie Eilish, or we'll do Taylor Swift.

I mean, these people are like going on 70.

They don't listen to Billie Eilish.

But like, when they learn the song, they're like, this is a great song, but they never would have listened to it had they not come to choir and listened to it.

And we got an email one time from-- remember that kid who sent us an email saying like, that-- Dean.

Dean, who watches choir videos with his parents because him and his parents they share these songs at like, he likes to play with Mack songs now, and they like the Taylor Swift songs because they get to share Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

Videos, but they never would listen to each other's albums.

So we thought that was pretty cool, so we invited him to choir night.

We helped him with a promposal, and he got a prom date for prom.

Oh, nice.

But I think that what is like really cool about music right now is that there are no rules, and the genres are just like spread all across within one song.

And I think that that's really cool.

There's a lot of thoughts about music these days not being as good.

But I think it's really also there's a flip side to that.

And it is interesting, when you are on stage, and all the videos I watched of Choir!

Choir!

Choir!, you are no longer singing.

You're directors now.

And Daveed, you're playing guitar still.

And Nabu, you are just getting the most out of the audience that they've all amped up to do this.

And it's not about you so much anymore.

It's about them.

I mean, I've done a number of different things in performance in my life, and never have I really felt that it's been ever about me in many ways.

I think that it's about us.

I don't mean to be too hippie-hippie joy-joy about it, but really, it's not.

But the thing is that we are the focal point, and-- You're such a hippie.

I'm such a hippie, dude.

But I just like, it's about the group dynamic.

And we'll do whatever it takes to get the energy up in the room.

We want everyone to have a great time.

Because what Daveed said earlier, is what I think Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

really is and what our lives should be, which is like let's create as many memories as we can until we have to go, Can I say something just-- and quickly-- and just not quickly.

I never say anything quickly.

I say quickly, but it's very long.

Of course, Daveed.

It's quickly and long.

Speaking of songs that you wouldn't think of, we've done songs that-- when we started doing choir, we started doing songs initially that were kind of just naturally harmonic, whether it's CSNY or songs from the '70s that lend themselves to harmonic singing.

We got into the '80s and the '90s.

We started doing songs that people wouldn't think of that a choir should be able to do.

But we would do these songs and present them in a way that was kind of choral and fun.

And this is an example of one of these songs, "Barbie Girl" by Aqua, which is a '90s song that we just did in the UK on tour.

And it was so fun because it's so not a song people would think of singing harmonically with a choir.

Should we try singing just a little bit of harmony?

I think you read everybody's minds at home, all the listeners, and how they want to sing "Barbie Girl".

What they want exactly?

Do want to sing "Barbie Girl"?

Yeah!

Hey, young people.

Hey, young people.

Let's go party.

So we have this lyric sheet.

I think we start with the chorus, and then we're going to go into the first verse.

Then we're going to do the pre-chorus, and then we're just going to-- Ride the chorus.

Ride the chorus.

Just keep doing the chorus over and over again.

I think we should do the chorus once, and then come on "Barbie, let's go party".

OK?

Not a double chorus into that?

OK, double chorus.

Double chorus.

So chorus-- Just follow our lead.

Chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, chorus.

"Come on, Barbie let's go party", and you just-- OK, if you're at home, and you're really confused right now, so is everybody else.

What we're going to do is we're going to sing a snippet of it.

But why don't we do again a harmony?

So last time-- well, why we split up the room into two again?

Or three, should we do three?

Three.

OK, so right now, we're going to teach the chorus, a harmony on the chorus.

OK.

The highest section of the melody right here.

Can you see that part?

So right now, we're splitting up the audience.

Here we go.

Here we go, one-- I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world.

Life in plastic, it's fantastic.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.

Imagination, life is your creation.

Right, OK. Just like that but try harder.

Yeah.

[laughter] OK. (SINGING) I'm-- So then this area here.

(SINGING) I'm-- I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world.

Life is plastic, it's fantastic.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.

Imagination, life is your creation.

Let's put it together with that "I'm, I'm".

1, 2, 3, go.

I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world.

Life is plastic, it's fantastic.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.

Imagination, life is your creation.

Right, let's try another one.

(SINGING) I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world.

Life is plastic, it's fantastic.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.

Imagination, life is your creation.

So-- (SINGING) I'm, I'm, I'm.

OK, 1, 2, 3, go.

(SINGING) I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world.

Life is plastic, it's fantastic.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.

Imagination, life is your creation.

OK, that sounds good.

OK.

So I'm going to say it sounds good.

Did everyone at home get that in?

If you got that in, please call the dashboard.

So we're going-- (SINGING) Life is your creation.

1, 2, 3.

I'm a blonde.

We'll count you in on that for that verse, and then come back in for the chorus.

And remember, it's a double chorus.

And then we'll go into the "Come on Barbie, let's go party."

We'll end at the end of that, OK?

And we want to-- and when you're singing, everyone stand up.

Yeah.

Yeah, I knew we were going to have to-- If you're able to stand, stand up.

Stand up, and just so everyone knows, Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

is chaos.

By creating this group, we invite chaos into our lives, and this is a good example of that.

We love chaos.

OK. OK, cool.

I'm, I'm, I'm.

We're going go right into it.

So sing aloud.

Don't ask us to make you sing louder, all the way to two.

2, a 1, 2, 3, go.

I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world.

Life is plastic, it's fantastic.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.

Imagination, life is your creation.

1, 2, 3.

I'm a blonde --Bimbo girl in a fantasy world.

Dress me up, make it tight, I'm your dolly.

You're my doll, rock n' roll, feel the glamour in pink.

Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky panky.

You can touch.

You can play.

If you say, "I'm always yours."

Come on, go!

I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world.

Life is plastic, it's fantastic.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.

Imagination, life is your creation.

I'm a Barbie girl.

Come on!

--in a Barbie world.

Life is plastic, it's fantastic.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.

Imagination, life is your creation.

Come on Barbie, let's go party.

Ah, ah, ah, yeah.

Come on Barbie, let's go party.

Ooh oh oh, ooh oh oh.

Come on Barbie, let's go party.

Ah, ah, ah, yeah.

Come on Barbie, let's go party.

Ooh oh oh, ooh oh oh.

I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world.

Life is plastic, it's fantastic.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.

Imagination, life is your creation.

I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world.

Life is plastic, it's fantastic.

You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.

Imagination, life is your creation.

Right, just like that.

There you go.

Again, you have to clap for yourselves.

If you're at home, clap.

There's nobody else will clap for you.

See, that's the thing is when we're doing shows, and there's an audience, and the audience finishes singing, are we supposed to clap?

Like, we're not going to clap.

We want to hire a separate audience and pull the curtain and have them suddenly clap for them.

You know what we need?

We need a little Casio with an applause button.

You could have that.

You could have that.

That all could be ours.

You are listening-- that sounded great.

If this were actually live on the radio, I wouldn't be so happy with that performance.

This is actually live on the radio.

Oh, it's live on the radio.

It is actually live on radio.

You are hearing a Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

demo, short demo for Alaska Live here on KUAC.

And it is so fascinating to see how it comes together.

I will say this, that I think that singing-- to sing in front of other people is an incredibly vulnerable thing.

You make yourself very vulnerable.

And we live in a world where you're not supposed to do that, or it's like you protect yourself.

And so I think it's great if anybody shows up and is willing to even try or walk through the door.

Even if they say I'm not going to sing, I'm into the fact that they're saying that.

Then to us, that's a challenge.

And then by the end of it, everyone's singing.

Yeah, I believe it.

And having a good time despite themselves.

What's the oddest place you've ever done Choir!

Choir!

Choir!?

I think there's a-- well, there's a number of them.

So there's a castle in Toronto called Casa Loma and some really rich person was having some party, and they wanted-- it was this Game of Thrones themed party.

And so we got dressed up in chainmail and like-- or chain, whatever you call it.

And we sang the Game of Thrones theme song.

[harmonizing] (SINGING) Many dragons, so many dragons.

And we had this arrangement of that song that was fun.

So we performed it there.

That was a really kind of-- Is that the weirdest?

That was a strange one.

One of them, a pretty odd one, which also like was really powerful was that we were invited-- I was in Tijuana by the wall with 400 Mexicans, and Daveed was in California State Park, 30 feet away from the wall-- because Homeland Security wouldn't let us be right next to the wall-- and 400 Americans singing.

And we sang with a little help from my friends, the Beatles, across the border.

And like-- Half in Spanish, half in English.

And the video's online, and it was like an incredible symbolic kind of moment.

And we had them talking to each other and saying hello and singing with each other and a show of friendship across the border at an incredibly contentious time.

I mean, that was pretty extraordinary.

Did you have to warn border control on both sides that this is going to happen?

Yeah, of course.

It was like months and months of-- Yeah, OK, right.

It was the UCSD.

UCSD.

Wow.

Yeah, helping us-- --organized the whole thing.

It was unbelievable administratively.

We also were invited to-- right before the pandemic, we were invited in New York to go sing in Foundation Hall at the 9/11 Museum.

There was a new-- This was 18th anniversary of the horrible event, and there was a new activation of-- Called the Glade.

The Glade outside.

So we were singing "Hallelujah" with Rufus Wainwright and the crowd.

And this crowd was were first responders in 9/11, people who had either lost loved ones or had-- from toxic fume inhalation, or it was sort of about that.

How more people had died after the attack just from that, from the after effects.

And we just felt like, we're two Canadian guys.

What are we doing here in this-- Three Canadian guys.

Three.

Three Canadians, I mean, yeah, so-- Rufus was third, yeah.

--in the 9/11 Museum, and these first responders would come to Nobu and I.

They were giving us like their medals and things.

They're like, you created joy in this space that like-- We gave the medals back.

Yeah, so I pawnshop.

But, no, I'm joking.

But it was just incredible to get to-- that sort of weird, and that we're like, why are we the ones that are doing this?

And yet, somehow, we are the ones that were doing that.

We've done a lot of things when artists have died.

When David Bowie passed away in early 2016, we had actually planned to do a night of Justin Bieber for our weekly inquiry.

We had just put the invite up to do a Justin Bieber song.

And then the morning we woke up after the invite was online and people were excited, we heard that David Bowie had passed away.

So immediately, we're like, well, we can't very well go sing Justin Bieber on Tuesday with choir when David Bowie just passed away.

So within 24 hours basically, we go put our heads together, canceled the Bieber event, contacted the Art Gallery of Ontario, which is like the major gallery in Toronto, and put it up on everyone who was was involved.

And we did CCC at the AGO, come sing David Bowie's "Space Oddity".

And we put it on sale it, sold out in about ten seconds.

And 600 people came to the gallery and sang "Space Oddity".

We put a video online that was kind of the first video that we put online that really sort of took us to another level.

People had watched-- It was the first video-- we'd made hundreds of videos, but that one went around the world and got us invited to a David Bowie tribute shows at Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall with incredible musicians like Michael Stipe and like I don't know.

Debbie Harry, Harry Nilsson, Cyndi Lauper.

So it's like, but the thing is, that was the video, and it was the first time that we had done a tribute night.

But I think that what is consistent, whether we did it for Aretha Franklin, we did it for Prince, we did it for all these artists, we performed at 9/11 Museum.

But like what we did there is like, yes, it's somber.

It's sad.

It's all these things.

But we're still here, and we're going to try to bring some joy, as you said, joy into this.

And so we're at the 9/11 Museum, and we were able to loosen some of that vibe.

And people there were appreciative.

But in some ways, to be able to create that space, which we had done to celebrate songs, but to commemorate an artist, and still celebrate their music.

And not that it's funereal.

It wasn't necessarily-- like that it was more celebratory, but we became those people, at least in Toronto, that create that space for people to mourn someone who they don't know, but someone who's meant a lot to them.

Like David Bowie meant so much to so many people even though they didn't know him personally.

But his effect on these people was huge.

So they want a space to commemorate this person who's gone forever, but they want to show that love.

And somehow, I mean, we know why we did it, but it was cool that we got to do that.

And that night really changed a lot for Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

And we became a bit of a different act on that night.

That's really incredible.

I saw online also in Dublin, you did a Sinéad O'Connor, and it was really moving.

And did you do that right-- We just did a tour in the UK, and we would sing at the beginning of the second half "Nothing Compares to You", which Sinéad made very famous.

But before that, just after we heard the terrible news that Sinéad O'Connor had passed away, we put on a tribute concert in support of mental health in Toronto.

And 1,000 tickets sold immediately.

And then 45 minutes before the show-- I'm not sure if the artist Feist.

But Feist texted us and said that she would come and sing the lead on it.

And she was a special guest.

Nobody knew that she was coming out.

And that video is online as well.

So for as long as we're around, we're going to be singing Sinéad O'Connor.

So but yeah, it's a beautiful thing and especially to be able to do it in Dublin as well.

That was pretty powerful.

It became kind of strange that when we did the Bowie thing, it became a bit of a big deal, especially in Toronto.

But then, as Nobu said, outside of Canada, even we went to New York to do this thing, Carnegie and Radio City Music.

But then, when major artists would start to pass away, like the CBC, they would email us and being like, what are you guys doing now?

Do you have to-- saying what does Choir!

Choir!

Choir!-- what are you going to do?

And we're like, do we have to do something now?

Like, I remember when Glenn Frey passed away.

People were like, we have to do something.

We're like, do we have to do something?

I don't know.

That's behind the curtain.

But I think that we do things when it feels right.

I just think that it makes you feel good whether you want to or not.

Despite yourself and your negative attitude, you will walk away happy.

And you'll have to live with that happiness for a few days.

Oh, that's a good promise.

Well, thank you so much, Daveed and Nobu of Choir!

Choir!

Choir!

This was really great to have you here.

Thanks, and I want to thank our studio audience and everyone behind the scenes.

Thank you so much.

Give yourselves around of applause.

Right now.

[cheers and applause] (SINGING) I believe the children are our future.

You can find links to more episodes of Alaska Live TV and download audio podcasts of the Alaska Live radio show online at KUAC.org.

Support for the Alaska Live series of live music and conversation on KUAC is made possible by a grant from Design Alaska.

Design Alaska, strengthening community through support of the arts.