A year and a half after a Kickstarter campaign raised nearly $3,000 for the group, Cockappella has finished its first CD.
Cockappella, the only coed a cappella group at USC, has been in the process of recording since March 2012, when the Kickstarter campaign ended, according to the group’s president, fourth-year psychology student Benjamin Peele.
“We started recording when I joined the group, like, five semesters ago,” Peele said. “So it’s been a long haul, but we finally got all the production, all the duplications, it’s finally here.”
Much of the delay came from scheduling issues with the production company, located in Charlotte, and technical issues after a software crash.
“It was just a big mess, but we ended up getting extra tracks on the album out of it, and he extended our contract, so that was great,” Peele said. “Just little snags like that kind of dragged out the whole thing.”
The coed group will be selling the 10-song album for $10 each at a release party in the next week or two, Peele said. Details aren’t set, but he said he hopes they can host the party on Davis Field and include cornhole, free food and a performance from the all-female a cappella group, the Cocktails. CDs can also be ordered online from the group’s Facebook page. After the release party, Peele said the album will be available on iTunes.
The CD includes a cappella covers of “Fat Bottomed Girls” by Queen, “Pop” by N*SYNC, “Fix You,” by Coldplay and a mash-up of Taylor Swift’s “You’re Not Sorry” and OneRepublic’s “Apologize.”
Because of the extended recording process, the album features a larger group of performers, Peele said.
“We’ve been through two or three different generations of Cockappella now,” he said.
Now that the CD is finished, it’s time for the group to start sending out the rewards promised with different giving levels on the Kickstarter campaign, including about 70 free CDs, Peele estimated. But he doesn’t mind.
“They paid for the CD; we owe them,” Peele said. “That’s totally cool. It’s been two years, so they kind of deserve it.”
The Kickstarter had 71 total backers, who donated amounts ranging from $5 to $1,000 from the group’s initial founder, Bobby Arcovio.
Arcovio, who started the group in 2008 and graduated from USC in 2012 with a degree in music education, said his donation was the only way the project could get off the ground.
“Our group was broke,” he said. “And if we didn’t start recording right then, I wouldn’t have been able to be on the actual CD.”
Arcovio is now teaching chorus at Hand Middle School in Columbia, and said he plans to pick up his copy of the CD soon.
“I’m really excited to have the physical copy in my hands,” he said. “That’s kind of my baby, so I’m just really excited.”
Arcovio came back after graduation to record the solo for his arrangement of “With A Little Help From My Friends” by The Beatles, which Peele called his “farewell song.”
“I guess it could be called that,” Arcovio said. “That song had a lot of meaning for me in terms of the group and the people who were in it, and I just thought it was pretty special to be able to be a part of that.”
Arcovio said he arranged the song with a deeper meaning in mind. He said the song starts out soft, but slowly builds until the end, when it gets “much louder and exciting.”
“I thought that was a good parallel with how the group started out. We were the new group on campus; nobody knew us, but now, they’ve grown a lot and gotten a lot better.”
The support from Arcovio and family and friends of members paid off, Peele said.
“Honestly, there are a couple of songs on the album where it’s like ‘OK, this sounds like a debut album for a group,’” Peele said. “But then, there are at least four or five out of the 12 on there where I just sit back and I’m like, “Hot damn. This is good. This is serious music.”
The album is a culmination of multiple successes for Cockappella in the past year, Peele said, including placing fifth in the regionals for the International Championships of Collegiate A Cappella. The group placed just below Cocktails, but above another rival.
“We’re getting there. It was actually a really proud moment for us; we beat both of Clemson’s groups, so that’s good enough for me,” he said.
Cockappella also saw a significantly larger group of people for this year’s auditions, Peele said.
“When I joined, I was one of maybe six people that spring semester who auditioned, and we just had 80 people come out for this year’s auditions,” Peele said. “It’s been an enormous growth and huge interest, and we’re able to handpick the best talent we can find. It’s actually really cool. I’ve never been a part of something that’s grown that fast.
Peele said his goals for the group in the next year include releasing a few singles — Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us” and a mash-up of OutKast’s “Hey Ya” and “No Diggity” by Blackstreet among them — collaborative concerts with groups from nearby colleges and to place in the top three at ICCA.
Peele said he hopes the USC community will get behind the group as they work toward those goals.
“It is important to support us because, I mean, we’re USC,” he said. “It was USC students and USC parents who paid for this CD. It was students both past and present who made this CD. It isn’t just buying music from a corny group; this is Carolina culture at its best.”