Silence.
That is not what comes to mind when you hear the collective voice of Out of the Dawg House. But silence is everywhere in its music.
Silence pervades while a single voice sings the lead or during the count off at the beginning of a song.
But the biggest silence one hears is at the perfect release of a chord. This could be in the middle of a song or at the end. It doesn’t matter.
The silence achieves its desired effect: amazement.
Out of the Dawg House is an all-male a cappella group at Butler University that sings popular songs without instrumental accompaniment.
The group has its spring concert Saturday. The concert will celebrate the group’s 10-year-anniversary, which is no small feat for an a cappella group, said Tanner Walter, Out of the Dawg House vice president and business manager.
“Concerts are my favorite part about being in the group,”said Myles Pinder, Out of the Dawg House president. “It’s all about bringing enjoyment to the student body.”
Out of the Dawg House started in 2003 with men who wanted to sing popular music but didn’t have an outlet for it, Pinder said. The group had a rough start with people inconsistently dropping out and joining, so it took a couple years to get the group off the ground.
But once it got going, the group quickly started gaining prominence on campus.
“We’ve gotten a lot more steam and a lot more integrity,” Pinder said. “We’ve had a higher class of musician try out and a lot more people trying out. We love seeing the new faces.”
The group recorded its first album in 2006 and another in 2009.
Since then, Out of the Dawg House has recorded every year or two, with its latest album, “Unsupervised,” released in April 2012. The group plans to record another album within the next year.
The group’s name had a clever beginning. Pinder said members were thinking about how a group of guys could go sing to a girl if she were mad at her boyfriend, trying to get him “out of the doghouse.” The term “dawg” formed because it associated the group with Butler.
Right now, 10 men are in the group, and six of them are music majors. The number of music majors is high this year. The group usually consists of a broad spectrum of majors.
“I love that I have another place in college to have a family,”said Josh Turner, Out of the Dawg House music director. “It’s a family, and it’s something you can have even when people graduate with the great alumni corps.”
The concert will feature 17 of the group’s songs, the most new songs the group has ever performed. Not wanting to give too much away, the group did divulge that it would be singing “No Diggity” and “Love on Top,” among crowd favorites such as “Effington” and “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”
The concert will be held in the Reilly Room in Atherton Union at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5 for general admission seating.
“It’s definitely worth the five bucks,” Walter said.
The $5 will get you more than music from Out of the Dawg House. The concert will include funny skits and giveaways, and there might be a surprise or two in the songs themselves.
Listen to a sneak preview of the concert here: http://thebutlercollegian.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/no_diggity_mixdown.mp3
