—David Menconi, Down on Copperline
Lauren Bromley Hodge, driving force behind PopUp Chorus for more than a decade now, calls herself its “founder, owner, organizer, program director, comrade and dog’s body” (the latter phrase being British slang for one who does menial labor). But as someone whose household she jokingly likens to “a bad-singing version of the Von Trapp family,” she’s perfectly representative of an egalitarian group where the point is to just show up and sing.
“I am my own test subject because I don’t have a good voice and my kids have told me as much,” Hodge says with a laugh. “But I love to sing, howling about in the shower and the car, and I’ve become much better and more confident with PopUp Chorus. So has my husband, who used to not even open his mouth. Now he does.”
PopUp Chorus events are come-one-come-all affairs in which a crowd of singers convene, rehearse, perform and record a couple of songs. The group’s videos then go out over social-media channels, and they’ve attracted favorable attention from many of their cover subjects.
In large part that’s because of Hodge, who has worked in a range of capacities across the music industry and uses her connections to get PopUp Chorus into prominent artists’ field of vision. Duran Duran, David Bowie and Zooey Deschanel are among those who have responded positively. Speaking of PopUp’s 2015 cover of his group’s “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” They Might Be Giants co-leader John Flansburgh said it “defines joy.”
“I’m not easily starstruck, but when I saw that David Bowie had posted something about our version of ‘Let’s Dance,’ I thought I was going to faint dead on the floor,” Hodge says. “My legs got wobbly.”
The origins of PopUp Chorus go back to an earlier Hodge undertaking, Community Chorus Project, which she started in 2011 with a grant from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Institute for Art & Humanities. After Hodge sent a video of “Everybody Hurts” to R.E.M.’s manager, there was enough positive feedback for Hodge to start thinking about the possibilities of taking a singing group off-campus.
Thus the group morphed into PopUp Chorus, which started in 2014. The group’s 2025 season of performances should begin next month with shows at Carrboro ArtsCenter and Cary Theater. Also coming soon is a spinoff series, PopUp Broadway, which will commence with songs from the massively popular musical “Wicked.”
PopUp Chorus has had a number of conductors over the years including Girls Rock NC co-founder Amelia Shull, Duke music professor Allan Friedman and SNMNMNM’s Seamus Kinney. There’s a band for musical backup, too, anchored by members of local pop-noir combo The Old Ceremony.
Musical selections run the gamut, from classic rock and pop songs to hits by current popular figures like Taylor Swift and Lana Del Ray. The singers who show up come from all walks of life, and level of ability. Hodge estimates that the largest group of singers they’ve ever had at one time is 450, but all it takes to achieve what she calls “quorum” is around three-dozen (although she quantifies it as “about thirty-eight-and-a-half”).
“Less than that, and people are hearing themselves and each other too much,” she says. “They can feel exposed, sad, shy, insecure. So it’s about 35 up to any size – maybe someday we’ll get to Yankee Stadium! But there’s a floor you don’t want to go under, so that everyone will feel safe, comfortable and happy. That’s where the magic happens.”
Hodge herself being an uncertain singer herself helps. Empathy and understanding are key to coaxing non-singers into becoming singers.
“People come in saying, ‘I can’t keep in a tune in a bucket’ or, ‘My chorus teacher says I should just mime,’” she says. “Actual trauma stories. So you get this group of people who all insist they can’t sing. Yet it always sounds great, even without going to rehearsals every week or reading music. If you sing in the shower, you belong in PopUp Chorus. The urge to make sounds or music together, chant together, dance together – it’s as old as the human condition.”
Citing studies that show singing together can cause heartbeats to synchronize, Hodge says that it has considerable therapeutic benefits, too.
“I’ve always wanted to team up with UNC School of Medicine to see if singing together can sort out someone’s arrhythmia,” she says. “You can feel the energy of connection in the room as we create an artifact they can listen to and sound great even though they insist they can’t sing. It starts as a show with those onstage and those in the audience, then there’s this democratization where the audience becomes the show. The twist that goes on requires a clever, skilled conductor who can hold that space and turn whoever is there into an artist.”
For details about upcoming PopUp Chorus events and how to join in, see PopUpChorus.com
