All About Buford all about a cappella
Quartet promises lively performance in Hallowell on Monday
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
Monday night, Slates in Hallowell will be the scene of something a little bit different — a vocal group with a decided twist.
All About Buford is the group's name. It is made up of Amy Malkoff (lead and backing vocals, occasional guitar), Taunia Soderquist (lead and backing vocals), Shah Salmi (lead and backing vocals) and Adeel Pandith (vocal percussion). A cappella wizardry is their game.
Malkoff, owner of the group's namesake (a Persian cat), spoke recently from her Marblehead, Mass., home about All About Buford and their upcoming show in the central Maine area.
"This is not what people expect a cappella to be," Malkoff said of the group's shows. "In fact, we had someone come up to us after a show and say, 'I never expected to laugh so hard.' It's high energy, it's very diverse — we're not doing doo-wop, and that's unfortunately one of a lot of misperceptions that we have to get through.
"We like to get people involved," Malkoff said. "You never know what we'll do. In every show we try to think of something that will get people involved — we just bought a wireless mic system which allows us to go out into the audience and harass people — very fun!"
Monday's show is not the group's first appearance in the state. If you listen to the first track ("Intro") on their debut CD, "Supercar," you'll hear they have performed in Maine at least once before.
"It was at the 'Battle of the Blends' in Lewiston — that was the only other time we were in Maine," said Malkoff.
Speaking of the first album, how do they go about choosing a song to cover?
"When you do just vocal stuff long enough, eventually you get to the point where you can determine, upon hearing something, whether it's going to work with just vocals or not — that's the first criteria. Other than that, it just has to be something that we all like and have to agree on," Malkoff said.
The group tries to stay away from material that is really well-known.
"You won't hear us covering any J-Lo," she said with a laugh, "I know, it's sad. We do a lot of songwriters who are known among songwriters but not hugely popular. It could be anything but we just all have to agree upon it."
Members bring material to rehearsals and if the vote is there the foursome will work it up, but even that is not a lock on a particular song.
"Say we've all agreed on a song, we try it out and then sometimes we come to the conclusion that it's not working and we scrap it," she said.
And as far as the creation of original tunes goes, if one goes by the information on "Supercar" only Soderquist appears to be songwriting.
"In performance, other than on the CD, Shah and I also do our own stuff — the only person who doesn't write is Adeel," she said.
Malkoff explained that they should be doing a new, original tune when they come to Slates, the result of a total collaboration of all four members.
"It's the first time that we all sat down and really wrote something together and it came out well."