By Laurie O’Brien
Back in the early 70s, Karen Caldwell was invited to sing bass in a quartet with three of her high school choir friends. The foursome called themselves the Four Get Me Nots, and they instilled in the impressionable young girl a lifelong love for the tight harmonies indicative of the barbershop art form.
Fast forward more than 40 years to 2012 and you’ll find Bethany Frerichs following in her mother’s footsteps. Bethany knew the one person she absolutely had to sing with was her mom, Karen Caldwell. Like her mother, Bethany has a low voice, so Karen happily let her daughter take the bass part, and she switched to baritone.
Next on their agenda was to find two other women with the same drive and musical ambition they have. Karen, who just last spring retired as the choir director at Auburn Mountainview High School, immediately thought of one of her former students, Rachel Murphy. At the time, Rachel was finishing up her studies to become a secondary music teacher at Pacific Lutheran University. She remembers getting the call from her mentor. “Karen asked me if I would like to sing in a Sweet Adeline’s quartet,” recalls Rachel. “I didn’t really know that much about barbershop or Sweet Adeline culture at the time, but I knew I couldn’t pass up a chance to sing with my high school choir director!”
Rachel, who has a classically trained soprano voice, was perfect on tenor, the high harmony part. The only thing left was to find a lead — the melody singer. Bethany, a middle school Spanish teacher in the Puyallup School District, had her eye on another talented young woman who sang in her chorus, Jet Cities. The problem was, Sarah Kirsch sang baritone. Sarah had been singing barbershop since her teens, but she had always been a harmony singer. “Bethany asked me if I had ever considered singing lead and, if so, would I be interested in being the lead of a new quartet she was forming. I had never sung lead before and never been in a quartet before, but it sounded like a blast,” says Sarah.
Fully formed, the group needed to decide on a name. In tribute to Karen’s high school quartet, they dubbed themselves The Four Get Me Nots.
“We love singing together,” says Bethany. “The dynamic is constantly changing and gets even better as time goes by. I would say Sarah and I like to think we’re in charge, and my mom and Rachel like to let us think we’re in charge. I feel like barbershop is a good fit for my personality because I like precision and attention to detail, so I love the challenge and thrill of getting a chord to ring.”
Sarah agrees. “Barbershop — and quarteting especially — requires a level of precision and focus that really appeals to me,” she says. “Also, since you’re the only one singing your notes, the autonomy you have forces you to make adjustments mid-song and develop your skills rapidly.” Sarah readily admits that she and Bethany lack the theoretical knowledge that the two music teachers bring to the table, but the “trained” duo usually bows to the interpretive suggestions the lead and bass decide upon.
“My mom is extremely passionate about barbershop, so I guess it wore off on me,” says Bethany. Her mother explains it this way: “Barbershop is so pure. Pure four-part harmony is my favorite musical experience to sing or listen to. [Barbershop chords create] pure harmonies and overtones you can’t get on any instrument or accompanied singing.”
Pure harmonies and pure fun, too. Karen, despite being the mother figure in the group, cops to being the one who goofs off and gets into trouble the most, but having fun is part of the equation with this foursome.
Now in her second year of teaching music at Dimmit Middle School in Renton, Rachel knows that her time is valuable, and she wouldn’t sing with the group if it wasn’t both musically and personally rewarding. “One of the biggest reasons I choose [this] as my primary musical outlet is because it is so much fun,” she explains. “We work together in our small ensemble in a way that is much more challenging for a larger group. We support each other and build each other up. We choose the music together and practice hard. The individuals in my quartet are all talented, hard-working, supportive people who are fun to be around and sing with.”
Their hard work has paid off, too. Formed in the winter of 2012, the quartet first competed in the spring of 2013, taking seventh place and earning the novice quartet award in the North by Northwest Region of Sweet Adelines International. In 2014, they made the jump to third place in the region, and this past spring, in addition to repeating as bronze medalists, their score qualified them as a wild card for the organization’s International Competition, being held in Las Vegas the week of October 4 through 10, 2015.
The quartet’s primary coach, Sandy Marron, is excited about their prospects. “The four awesome women of this quartet are the perfect combination of talent plus drive plus heart plus humor. They are eager and quick learners and are willing to try anything I ask of them, as their coach. In addition to all that talent, they are intrinsically motivated, which makes my job easy!”
“We are going to soak up every minute of the experience and plan to have fun and enjoy our time on stage,” says Bethany. “We have no expectations about what score we’re going to get or what place we’re going to end up in. We love the fact that we have nothing to lose going into this competition, and we are excited to be contestant number one so that we can watch almost all of the other quartets compete, especially with it being the first time for all of us to be at a women’s international competition.”
In one way, the competition will also be bittersweet for the group. Sarah Kirsch is in her third year at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and this will be her final performance with the quartet. “Music is part of me and so I hope to come back to formal singing in some manner as soon as possible,” she says. But she also recognizes that as a resident, her time will be at a premium over the next few years.
The quartet already has a plan in place though. With Marron’s help, they’ve already held auditions and found another young woman ready to take Sweet Adelines by storm. As soon as they get back from Vegas, the group will be back at it, learning, laughing, and singing sweet harmony.
You can check out the Four Get Me Nots on their Facebook page or contact them at thefourgetmenots@gmail.com.
If you are interested, Sweet Adelines International offers a free webcast of their annual competition. The quartet semi-finals, featuring the top 52 quartets in the world, begins at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, October 7, 2015. The Four Get Me Nots are contestant number one. More information can be found online.
