When Joe Phillips left his church, he left music behind.<\/p>\n
The sixty-something resident of North Berwick, Maine, has a gravelly baritone, but regulars at Corner Point Brewing Company<\/a> know him more as \u201cG.I. Joe,\u201d the moniker inscribed on his mug club stein. On a sunny Saturday in late October, Phillips is not bellied up to the bar at Corner Point like usual. Instead, he\u2019s sitting across the taproom at a picnic table with members of the Seacoast Beer Choir<\/a>, holding a comb-bound collection of songs and singing loud like the church pianist he once was.<\/p>\n Seacoast Beer Choir is one of roughly 80 choruses organized under the national Beer Choir<\/a> group. Founded in St. Louis in 2015 by Michael Engelhardt<\/a>, Beer Choir has been running group sings at craft breweries across the United States since 2015. This is only the Seacoast chapter\u2019s second event, and Phillips\u2019 first. The combination of beer and song seems to have awakened something dormant.<\/p>\n \u201cI missed the communal aspect of singing in groups,\u201d Phillips says. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the things I lost when I drifted away from religion. When I heard about this, I was like, \u2018Great! Beer and singing! How can we go wrong here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Beer Choir was founded during craft beer\u2019s ascent. At the same time, Englehardt was trying to spark a nationwide movement to bring choral singing to public spaces. Naturally, he married his ambition with that of the brewers opening large-scale taprooms across the country, and those taprooms became his concert halls.<\/p>\n Their events are hosted by a song leader who directs the chorus, often alongside a pianist. Choristers refer to a 50-song booklet called the Beer Choir Hymnal<\/a>, and anyone at the taproom is invited to lend their voice. Participation is prized over ability.<\/p>\n In 2019, Englehardt sold Beer Choir to Adam Reinwald, who operated their largest, most successful chapter in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Reinwald still operates Beer Choir with his partner, Sara Langworthy. \u201cWe\u2019re coming from a place of community building,\u201d Reinwald says. \u201cYou\u2019re always singing and you\u2019re always hearing music, and you always have a chance to go back and get more beer.\u201d<\/p>\n Beer Choir events are typically hosted on nights when breweries aren\u2019t busy\u2014Tuesday nights and winter Sundays. Over the course of two hours, the chorus runs through 15 to 20 songs, beginning and ending with their signature theme song, which was composed by Englehardt.<\/p>\n While Beer Choir is a modern invention, singing and beer have been joined about as long as the two have coexisted. In Ireland and Cornwall, England, patrons might launch into a full-throated rendition of \u201cDrunken Sailor<\/a>\u201d or \u201cFinnegans Wake<\/a>.\u201d In Germany and Czechia, a round of \u201cEin Prosit<\/a>\u201d or \u201c\u0160koda L\u00e1sky<\/a>\u201d can make drinking feel like communion. These are the same traditions that American craft beer was drawn from, so it makes sense that a singing tradition would emerge where beer is poured stateside.<\/p>\n \u201cCommunities in the UK and Europe have an informal singing culture, where they go to a soccer match, and then you sing in the pub for the next few hours, and [Beer Choir] is the same type of idea,\u201d Reinwald says. \u201cIf the US is a melting pot, maybe a microcosm of that is Beer Choir.\u201d<\/p>\n In Ohio, Brad Pierson runs Whateverandeveramen<\/a>, a singing ensemble that brings choral experiences to informal settings. The group operates like a roving flashmob of big voices, signing sea shanties and Irish melodies in settings as varied as city parks and capitol buildings. At Pierson\u2019s event, the performers comprise the audience.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that I\u2019ve always disliked about \u2018classical music\u2019 is the sort of dichotomy that\u2019s set up between performer and audience,\u201d Pierson explains. \u201cI wanted to be able to program music and program events that were not beholden to any sort of predetermined structure or rules.\u201d<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, Whateverandeveramen performs most commonly in craft breweries. Their annual Carols & Ales event<\/a>, the flagship of their annual calendar, will be hosted this year at Batch Brewing in Detroit, Lovelady Brewing in Henderson, Nevada, and Earnest Beer Works in Toledo. Pierson finds that the setting disarms people. Breweries serve the same social function that church and art once did, so it\u2019s only natural to bring singing out of those spaces and into the taproom.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did not necessarily start out thinking that we would be singing in breweries and restaurants, but that has turned into most of what we do,\u201d Pierson says. \u201cThere\u2019s no pretense, there\u2019s no rules to how you can engage with it. If somebody decides they want to shout out in the middle of Brahms, they\u2019re welcome to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Whateveraneveramen only runs ticketed events, so unlike Beer Choir, most folks are in on the event. But there are more organic models, too. At Four Phantoms Brewing Company<\/a> in Greenfield, Massachusetts, every second Sunday of the month a group of folk singers host a freeform singing event in the back room. They call it Pub Sing!<\/a>. The event has roots in the 1970s folk revival, but the organizers also draw from that European-style community singing that also inspired Reinwald.<\/p>\n At Pub Sing!, there\u2019s no sheet music to read, no conductor to follow, and no accompaniment to match. Organizers Nicole Singer, Chris Bracken, and Crispin Youngberg simply start singing any old song of their choice, and others join in the refrains. The next singer volunteers a song, open mic-style.\u00a0 There are no restrictions about what song, but they encourage songs like \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d with quick-to-learn choruses. Youngberg has found that Four Phantoms is a particularly good host because they\u2019re not only concerned with serving fine beer to the people of Western Massachusetts. They\u2019re a community space.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that the focus is on the social interaction more than on the performance is pretty key,\u201d Singer says. \u201cWe are all doing the same thing, and we are all spending time together, and also singing, rather than someone performing, and we are listening. There\u2019s this very welcoming casualness to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Bracken points to the term \u201ccasual\u201d as being the signifier of Pub Sing!, but the same could be said of Beer Choir, Whateverandeveramen, and any community singing experience that springs up wherever beer is poured. Beer and singing are expressions of the same social desire to blend together. To commune in something and discover\u2014or, like Phillips, rediscover\u2014ourselves.<\/p>\n \u201cWe like beer, but we connect this kind of social singing as part of something wider,\u201d says Youngberg. \u201cWe\u2019re not rehearsing, we\u2019re not performing, we\u2019re just singing together with our friends, because that\u2019s joyful.\u201d<\/p>\n CraftBeer.com is fully dedicated to small and independent U.S. breweries. We are published by the Brewers Association, the not-for-profit trade group dedicated to promoting and protecting America\u2019s small and independent craft brewers. Stories and opinions shared on CraftBeer.com do not imply endorsement by or positions taken by the Brewers Association or its members.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"beer](\"https:\/\/cdn.craftbeer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/20241217141805\/beer-choir-glass-at-choir-practice.jpg\")
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