Review: STRAIGHT NO CHASER'S HOLIDAY ROAD at Palace Theatre

In nearly every boy band concert video, there’s that moment. The lead singer drops to his knees and sings a ballad of love to a swooning member of the audience.

“Carla” got that moment at the Straight No Chaser’s HOLIDAY ROAD tour stop Dec. 2 at the Palace Theatre (34. E. Broad Street in downtown Columbus) … nine times in a row.

Steve Morgan, who founded the a cappella group with Walter Chase and Jerome Collins while attending Indiana University, pulled the lucky fan out of the audience and “Carla” was serenaded, tangoed, and ultimately joined a kick line with all nine members of the group during a spirited version of the Turtles’ “Happy Together.”

At the end of the number, “Carla” with a rose clenched between her teeth, soaked in the applause … until Morgan told her, “Hey, we need that rose back for tomorrow’s show.”

On the road since 2007, the founders as well as Seggie Isho, Michael Luginbill, Luke Bob Robinson, Jasper Smith, Tyler Trepp, and Freedom Young have provided the soundtrack and the laugh track across 49 of the 50 states (Sorry, North Dakota) and around the world.

Yet sometimes the audience surprises Isho.

“Who is seeing Straight No Chaser for the very first time?” Isho asked the audience who responded with a “decent-sized roar.” “That’s … disappointing actually. We’ve been here like 20 times.

“Now who here is seeing a Capella show for the first time? Okay, that’s not too much applause, just some angry boyfriends and husbands staring through my soul right now. But it’s all good. You’re going to be dancing in your seat … or you’re going to leave at intermission. That’s okay either way because there are no refunds.”

Straight No Chaser has been a holiday tradition with many repeat attenders because their show doesn’t easily fit into a preset gift box. They are either a comedy group that harmonizes extremely well or an a cappella group that thrives because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. If you take away either skill, SNC would ferment quicker than eight day old eggnog.

Although HOLIDAY ROAD is listed as a Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa show, it is actually two shows in one. The first half of the show is a tilt-a-whirl through the pop charts, with the band covering everyone from Bob Marley to Madonna. Sometimes they squeezed all of that into the same song.

Luginbill leads a masterful collaboration of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours,” Bob Marley’s “One Love,” and Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The song is so flawlessly mixed together it’s hard to tell when one song stops and the next one starts.

The highlight of the first half was SNC’s mash-up of Disney songs, brutally rewritten to poke fun at the financial trauma of every Orlando vacation.

“We got back at Disney the only way we know how,” Chase joked. “We took their most coveted songs, put them in a medley, and absolutely destroyed them.”

At first listen, the blend sounds like a faithful homage to classic Disney soundtracks. However, SNC twists familiar lyrics into mischievous parodies. The opening of ALADDIN’s “A Whole New World” becomes, “I just catfished a girl by lying, scheming, pretending.” The TOY STORY send-up replaces images of Woody and Buzz with more sinister playthings -- Chucky, Annabelle, and M3GAN. Even frequent collaborator Kristen Bell isn’t spared—“Let It Go” becomes an anthem of parental dread about the FROZEN III soundtrack playing on repeat, ending with the relieved punchline: “We were tired of KPOP DEMON HUNTERS anyway.”

With such wicked parodies in the first half, you wonder if the sacred Christmas songs would get the same treatment in the holiday portion of the show. Fortunately, there weren’t any off-color versions of “O Holy Night” or “Silent Night.”

While they did have fun with “Holiday Road” and their breakthrough hit, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” SNC delivered powerful versions of Christmas carols, even blending together “O Come Emmanuel” (fronted by Luginbill) and “O Come All Ye Faithful” (led by Trepp).

While each member of the a cappella group received a chance to bask in the spotlight, Collins found himself in the center of it in the second portion of the show. With a tenor voice that is part Sam Cooke and part Nat “King” Cole, Collins took the lead on spellbinding versions of Stevie Wonder’s “Someday at Christmas” and “Christmas is Different,” a song the group did with Hunter Hayes for their HOLIDAY ROAD album.

Straight No Chaser closed out the 10-song Christmas set with a madcap version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” with a snippet of Toto’s “Africa” for good measure. Chase realizes the group owes much of its career to this song. A 1998 video recording of Straight No Chaser performing “Twelve Days” resurfaced with the birth of YouTube, earning over 1 million views in its first year on the online platform.

“Most bands will discourage their fans from capturing their shows. We encourage it,” Chase said. “We owe a lot of our success because our version of ‘Twelve Days’ went viral. Now there are even more videos of us out there. I’m sure a lot of you discovered Straight No Chaser by watching one of those videos.”

While the quirky performance of “Twelve Days” may have put SNC on the map, the show-closing version of “O Holy Night” will be the one most people remember. They set their microphones aside and Collins led the group in a gripping rendition of the song that filled the Palace Theatre.

Perhaps on their next visit to Columbus, there will be fewer first timers and more SNC converts because the Dec. 2 performance. And perhaps “Carla” will be back with a rose between her teeth.