Alumni A Cappella All-Stars Keep Hitting the High Notes

Comedy, high energy, upbeat music — that’s the Heebee-jeebees’ shtick. “If we don’t get a laugh within 30 seconds, we’re worried,” says Love, who works in marketing and communications at Mount Royal University. In fact, flip over the band’s business card and you’ll read, “the most fun you’ve ever heard.”

Lima-Coelho admits the band has obviously evolved from a way to “meet girls and get free food.” Though he’s quick to point out that all four members did, indeed, meet their wives through music. But today, rather than balancing studies with concerts, they juggle full-time jobs and family responsibilities with the demands of two shows a week. There remains, however, one constant.

“Our wives are saints,” the members say, almost in tandem, certainly in tune.

And, Lima-Coehlo adds, “We still get free food.”

Other vital facts you may not know:

• All four singers are serious Star Wars fans, but only one — Jonathan Love — can actually claim to have been a part of the franchise. Love played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Clone Wars video game for LucasArts. An expert in voiceovers, he’s also worked on Dragonball, Inuyasha, a lot of anime series, and will be heard in an upcoming feature film called Valley of the Lanterns.
• The Heebee-jeebees have opened for groups such as the Commodores, Spirit of the West and sung alongside Paul Brandt and Percy Sledge.
• Every Jan. 8, they join forces with Steve Pineo to perform an Elvis tribute — always on Elvis’s birthday.
• The Heebee-jeebees have a mantra. It sounds like that Talking Heads line from Once in a Lifetime, but Love says they always look at each other before a show and say, “How did we get here?” Explains Love: “That’s really our way of saying, ‘Let’s not screw this up.’”
• They almost called themselves Merge instead of the Heebee-jeebees. En route to their first gig as a band (that wasn’t), they discovered they needed a name. The story goes that they looked out the car window and saw a road sign — merge. They’re very glad they opted to use an expression of Calvin’s — when he has an existential crisis over a dead raccoon — in an old Calvin and Hobbes strip.
• It’s easy to imagine how an a cappella group can tire of singing “A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh,” night after night, show after show. After three years of desperately wanting to move on from the iconic melody, Love had an epiphany: “It seems so straightforward now, but I remember realizing, ‘It’s not what we want to sing, but what they want to hear.’” Everyone knows that song, says Love. “We now use it as a connective moment to bring people up on stage, from [Mayor Naheed] Nenshi and [Village Brewery co-founder] Jim Button to every premier . . . who can’t sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight?”
• They always — always — begin their shows with Good Lovin’ and, if it’s in December, then it’s Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
• One of the quartet’s highlights was elbowing their way in to meet Harry Belafonte, who was singing in Calgary at a private reception where people had paid $10,000 a ticket. After getting booted out, the quartet circled back at the end of the evening, played two songs for Belafonte and were shaking hands with the voice behind Day-O when all Lima-Coelho could think to say was, “You were my favourite guest on The Muppet Show.”