Since winning BBC 2 Naked Choir back in 2015 Sons of Pitches have been going places and show no sign of stopping with their latest Around the World Tour.
The group is made up by five lads, Midé Adenaike, Joe Hinds, Joe Novelli, Joe Belham and Josh Mallett who come together to form an award winning A Cappella group currently touring the UK – appearing at the Wyvern Thursday 7th of November.
I was lucky enough to catch up with Joe Belham to ask him all about it.
What been the most memorable part of your journey with Sons of Pitches so far?
Winning Naked Choir back in 2015 has allowed us to do our tours, we have done 5 tours now, which wouldn’t have happened without it. The highlight has been able to tour, sometimes twice a year and see all the fans that really love what we do. We are incredibly lucky to be able to do this as our jobs!
How did you get into A Cappella?
I was massively sporty when I was young and that’s all I wanted to do, but when I was 16 I got a really bad injury and broke my arm, so as the other boys in my year were getting into working out at the gym, I totally missed that trick – so I was just this scrawny kid when I came back from injury and I started getting into music and acting and realising there is a whole other route I can go down. That led to me auditioning for the A Cappella Society at the University of Birmingham and that’s where I met all the other guys. The rest is history!
What are the group members unique qualities?
There’s a lot of them!
The most obvious one is Midé, who is our beat boxer and he is absolutely incredible – I would say he is the best in the A Cappella world, I can’t think of anyone that’s in an A Cappella group who is as good a beatboxer as him, as well as that he got through to the top 10 in the UK in the UK championships!
We all have our individual tones and ranges, Joe Hinds has an amazing light tone that lends itself towards more dramatic and spine tingling songs, Joe Novelli has a really amazing really really high voice that can do crazy synth sounds to sound like synthesisers, Josh is our very deep bass and as I come from an acting/comedy background. I can do improvised songs with the group and we get ideas from the audience – so we will ask “what’s your favourite piece of stationery” and I will make up songs on the spot, sing the lyricsand the guys will come up with the backing.
We all have our special things in the group that we bring and it adds together to be something pretty good.
What can we expect at the Wyvern in Swindon?
This is the Around the World Tour, so all of the songs have been picked to represent different parts of the world, so different genres, different languages and the content has a few improvised numbers and covers of songs that you know from all around the world. We also play some games with the audience, we have this great game where we get a member of the audience to guess which country a national anthem is from. It’s always a good laugh!
Its really big mix of stuff so covers, comedy, original songs – it’s got it all to be honest!
How do you select your audience member?
Totally random, we send out Midé and Josh out into the audience and find the person that looks the least up for it!
I heard a rumour that you all live together – is this still the case?
We don’t anymore, we used to but thought it might be quite nice to live with our partners instead – which took quite a while. The three of us Joes used to live together in a house in Birmingham, which as you can imagine was quite confusing with three guys named Joe! We lived there for about three years and it was amazing and had so much fun. Great for creative reasons as well, as we were constantly singing – sounds a bit annoying – but coming up with ideas and having a laugh and I think its testament to the fact that we are just a bunch of mates at the end of the day.
How did you come up with the group name?
As far as we know, all A Cappella groups have some kind of music based pun or joke in the title, it seems to be the done thing. It reflects what we are like and we are quite cheeky and we try to do everything with a good sense of humour.
I understand you do workshops in your local community?
We go into schools (and community workshops) and spend day doing workshops with pupils. We show them how we arrange our music, teach them best way to sing and all the tools needed to sing A Capella and then at the end of the day or evening do a show for the whole school.
We absolutely love doing it, we have been doing it for ages now and its one of our favourite things to do, it’s hugely rewarding for us to feel as if we can pass on our gifts to more people.
It is quite a unique talent and we like to spread the word about it and there are so many schools up and down the UK that don’t necessarily have the best music department, or do a lot of music, so it is great for us to go into those schools and do something the pupils have never done before.
Tell me something totally unique about yourself
If you come to the show you will hear that there is a voiceover that goes on throughout the show, we wanted you to have the feeling that you are being taken over the world on a tour and a lot of people haven’t realised its my voice. I’ve done a little bit of an impression, one of the things I like doing is impressions, so you might notice when you come to the show. I’ve got a few impressions up my sleeve, not that I’m going to do any for you now!
We don’t take ourselves too seriously and want the audience to go away feeling they have had the best night ever and we’re pretty confident that they will do that on Thursday night.
I am really looking forward to seeing Sons of Pitches on Thursday 7th of November at the Wyvern Theatre and will making strong eye contact, to ensure I am not the audience member picked on the night!
Tickets are still available online at the Wyvern Theatre or by calling the box office on 01793 524481
