PicoBlog

I can not read music, sing well or play any instruments. My last attempt at choir happened before puberty set in. So no one was more surprised than me when I discovered the Tufts Beelzebubs . (If you follow the link here you will discover the magic of the Bubs performing Trey Songz’ “Bottom’s Up” at a concert at the University of Maryland in 2010. It is just really good stuff.)

I could geek out about the Beelzebubs in a way that even I find mildly confusing, but that’s for another day. The Bubs were the beginning of a rabbit hole for me that fortuitously culminated in the trilogy of Pitch Perfect movies (Shoutout to OG subscriber Jarrad Williams for going to watch Pitch Perfect 3 with me on opening night) which did the good work of introducing the world to the really unique niche of collegiate a cappella (turns out the movie is loosely based on a book by Mickey Rapkin called Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory, which I have read and is excellent as well). The point I want to make here is that I am possibly the least likely person to become a fan of collegiate a cappella music but the talent, creativity and team/competition component of the genre got me hooked.

My conversation today is with Kelley Jakle. Kelley is insanely talented. Her musical accomplishments are legion. She has movie and TV credits to her name. She’s really impressive. However, today we’re here for one thing and one thing only. Collegiate a cappella. Kelley was a two time ICCA National Champion as a member of the SoCal VoCals. She also competed on Seasons 1 and 2 of the Sing-Off. She was Jessica of the Barden Bellas in all three Pitch Perfect movies. If there were an a cappella Hall of Fame (is there?), she would be in it. We had a very entertaining Zoom call a few weeks ago where she shared her stories from that time in her life and what it's like to perform and compete at that level.

The conversation is heavily edited. My additions will be in bold.

On Her Background

“I grew up in Sacramento, CA and I had two older brothers and two parents…I grew up playing sports and I loved forcing my family members to listen to me perform lullabies in the living room. There is a song called “Just For You” that my brothers to this day will cringe if they hear it, because I sang it so many times. When I saw my brother’s friend perform in a choir concert I was beside myself. So in third grade I joined the Sacramento Children’s Chorus and loved that. I did my first role in the third grade play as a caterpillar who turned into a butterfly, and I had my first solo. And here I am.”

In middle school I still loved choir, but I also played soccer and swam. I played competitive basketball. I had to pick between choir and basketball and I actually picked basketball. It was something new and very exciting to be on the competitive girl’s team for my big middle school (she was erroneously told she was going to be six feet tall, but stopped growing at 5’6”). I remember going to the summer training for high school basketball and looking around and being like, “Oh No. I’m out. Back to performing arts.”

Kelley spent time at two different all girls Catholic Schools in Sacramento. All of her theatre was done at an all boys school called Jesuit High School under the direction of Ed Trafton.

“I did choir in high school all four years as well as plays and musicals. Ed Trafton is still at Jesuit. He was the director of all the shows that I did. He is so incredible. So innovative. Truly made me fall in love with theatre and the collaborative process. He has a sign on his door as you walk into the Black Box that says, “Leave Your Ego At the Door.” And I love that mentality for theatre.”

Early Competition

I auditioned in 7th grade for the National Honor Choir, and at that point we were still sending in cassette tapes. Three of us from my children’s chorus went to New York City and that was very cool. I went through a competition process to sing at a 49ers game and had to compete against other singers on Pier 39 in San Francisco. When I got picked, my brother was so proud of me that he ran down and practically tackled me on the stage. It was so sweet. One time my parents agreed to drive me to San Leandro in the Bay Area (they never pushed me), because there was a vocal competition going on where whoever won got an all-expenses paid trip to Seattle to audition for American Idol…and I won the San Leandro competition, so they put us up in the Travelodge and we had the glamour of standing out for hours in the rain to audition, and then I didn't get it. 

On a Career in Entertainment

When it came time to audition for BFA programs while applying for college, I did not know if entertainment was a viable career path. I was too nervous, too scared to put all my eggs in one basket. I even applied to UCLA in musical theatre and just never scheduled my audition. When I got to SC I realized very quickly that I should have applied as a BFA. I wouldn’t change it going back. I feel like I majored in a cappella and who knew how valuable that would be?

My experiences in college, mainly my summer internships (a record label and an animation studio), made it very clear to me that I didn’t want to be behind-the-scenes, even though it was more predictable and a more steady income. I was so miserable being close to what I wanted to do, but not actually doing it. I did "The Sing-Off" on NBC during my junior and senior year of college, then I got a manager before my second semester senior year.  I said "I am going to go for it," because I knew I would always wonder what would have happened if I didn’t.

The SoCal VoCals and ICCA National Championships

When I was talking to Kelley I made the parallel to being a blue chip recruit to a major sports program. She had a very successful high school singing career, ended up with one of the most successful and well known collegiate a cappella groups in the country and parlayed her success and experience into a professional career in music and entertainment.

I was actually deciding between USC and Stanford and when I visited USC. First of all, everyone felt so excited to be there and to go to school there. There is so much spirit at that school. I saw a performance by the SoCal VoCals. Their slogan was “We’re a Party On Stage.” They were the best and they had so much fun, and I think that they really sealed the deal for me. I really wanted to be a part of the group. I didn’t go there just for the group, but I wanted to be in LA and it just made sense for me.

Later on I learned that some of the group members would, for lack of a better word, “stalk” incoming students (I suggested that we call it scouting) in the freshman class. They would send Facebook messages to potential members about auditioning for the group. I cannot remember if I got one of those messages or not. I think that I did, but I don't think they scouted me before I got to school.

I wanted desperately to get into the group. It was so competitive, they only took three members when I auditioned. It was an intimidating process. It was a wild audition in that the first round we went into a classroom on campus and sang a verse and a chorus of a song of our choice, and then they held callbacks at the SoCal VoCal house, this old Victorian off campus (where she later lived) and the callbacks were in the living room. We learned the songs they tended to sing most often. I went in as a 1st Soprano candidate. We would be singing in a group and the current SoCal VoCals would walk by and put their ears right up to my mouth to check my tone, pitch, how I'm blending. Everything. To this day it's probably the most nervous I’ve ever been. The deliberation process with the group after callbacks are over, everyone sits in a circle in the living room and all decisions have to be unanimous to let anyone in. Sometimes deliberations go until 6:30am. Two of us who made it that year were brand new students. One was a sophomore who had tried once before.  

Initiation, they sort of kidnap you and bring you to the house and then you’re a Newbie for your first year. Every semester there is a retreat where you speed-learn all the music, which is a pretty big repertoire. There was lots of bonding and college-type festivities at a cabin in the mountains. After the retreat you start rehearsing. We had on campus shows, private events, a Halloween show with other groups on campus. We had a Christmas show. That would always be fall semester. We never competed or toured in the fall. Competition years were only every other year because prepping for the ICCA’s was so intense. So I was a freshman the first time we won ICCA’s. (The International Competition of Collegiate A Cappella for those that don’t know.) And that was incredible. To feel like a bit of an underdog and to win it all. It just makes it even more exciting and more fun. The reaction to winning the first time is joy instead of relief. (The SoCal VoCals have won a total of five ICCA National Championships with the most recent occurring in 2018.) It was a really valuable experience and we worked so hard. There are three rounds, our first round was actually at USC and then went up to Marin County for the West Coast Finals and then Lincoln Center in New York City for the finals.

It was really fun to be part of the group that the best singers kept wanting to choose. When Scott Hoying of Pentatonix auditioned for us, we were all like, “Yeahhh, come on in!” But it was always friendly. Just being a part of a cappella in general is such a niche thing to be a part of that we’re always happy to be around people who “get it.”

In 2010 it wasn’t the same because it felt like there were stakes that weren’t there before. It was still exciting but, yes, there was a reputation to live up to at that point. It felt very different. We did not compete my senior year. Because it was so intense we took every other year to tour. It could get a little dramatic with all of us actors and theatre people. We often rehearsed until midnight, and then there were always late-night discussions about everything related to the competition. Training for ICCA’s was draining. (When looking at the SoCal VoCals video from the 2008 and 2010 teams you will see a lot more choreography than many of the other groups at that time. So in addition to musical arrangement and decisions, the choreography component was there as well. Kelley told me that they had an amazing choreographer named Lili Fuller who was then dating, and is now married to, one of the members and she got involved in advance of the 2008 championship. Kelley noted that it is an even greater challenge to choreograph singers in a manner that they can still produce quality sound.) So every other year we would tour instead and that was just a different kind of fun. At that point in my senior year I had also done both seasons of "The Sing-Off". I’m not really a naturally competitive person, I just really like being on a team and collaborating. So I was ready to just do the tour instead.

Pitch Perfect

I auditioned for the character of “Stacie” which became Alexis Knapp’s character. They maybe knew my background, I know they found out after the audition. They found videos of me singing on the Sing-Off. I ran into Ed Boyer during a taping of Season 3 of the Sing-Off (Ed Boyer mixes all the best a cappella groups in college and was recruited to mix the Sing-Off beginning in Season 2 and he mixed all the Pitch Perfect movies as well) and he came up to me and told me he had heard I had a really good audition, but it had been so long that I wasn’t even sure what he was talking about. That’s when I discovered that they hired the seven leads, and the last three roles were going to be local hires (a local hire is someone located within sixty miles of a set and therefore does not receive lodging, travel or per diem according to union rules) and I said, “Hey, I will be a local hire I just want to be a part of this.” And he said he’d mention it if it came up. A few weeks after that I got a call from my manager on a Tuesday and needed to be in Baton Rouge for two and a half months on Saturday. I bought my own flight out there. They did end up putting me up, which was wonderful, but my first three nights in Baton Rouge I was at a Motel 6.

The dynamics of the Bellas in the movie were very different from my experience in a coed a cappella group. The intensity of the competition is pretty accurate. Obviously the dancing in the movie is a lot more than it would be in real life, and nodes don't turn you into a bass. A lot of the movie is just really silly and fun. I remember sitting on the ground at the airport glued to the script. Kay Cannon did such a fantastic job with it. 

Glory Days

Something that was a really cool experience for me and made me feel valuable is that when I did get to set on Pitch Perfect, because I was the only one with a cappella experience, I found a home and a sense of purpose in the music department there alongside Ed Boyer and Deke Sharon. I got the nickname of “The Professional” from my castmates. Preparing the Riff-Off scene I found myself singing everyone’s parts and emailing them out to try and help. Singing in harmony isn't easy. So even though I didn’t have a ton of lines, I contributed in a way that felt really important.

Other Notes:

-Kelley is also part of a group called Robin Alice with fellow Pitch Perfect 3 actor Jeff "Horti" Hortillosa (who is a member of real life band Whiskey Shivers that played the fictional band Saddle Up in the movie) and splits time between Austin and California.

-Kelley is an actress and has been in various films and TV shows. You can find her IMDB page here. During our conversation she shared that her goals were once to find a role on a long running multi-camera sitcom. But as her career has progressed she has come to prefer going to do a project and then having the chance to return home and prepare for the next project.

-Kelley shares her music, and you can support her efforts, on Patreon.  

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