By Steven Jong | Associate Fellow
“Weird Al” Yankovic, whose “Mandatory Fun” was the first comedy album in 50 years to top the Billboard charts, brought back the comic song parody. But if you’ve attended the STC Summit Open Jam, or the Boston (now New England) Chapter publications competition banquet or end-of-year meeting in the last 10 years, you’ve seen STC’s own song parodists, the BossTunes. They lament the struggle with technology, coworkers, and schedules, in musical styles from folk to Broadway and jazz to opera.
The Birth of the ‘Tunes
The group began in 2002 when Taryn Light, then incoming president of the Boston Chapter, attended the inaugural Open Jam in Nashville, Tennessee, as part of the 49th annual conference. Taryn, who had sung in Europe with an American choir and participated in local church and community chorus shows, thought, “We can do this!”
Back home, Taryn recruited outgoing chapter president Hans Fenstermacher, and Val Rushanan, both colleagues at Hans’s translation agency. Hans, an accomplished keyboardist, was the son of an opera singer, and sang small roles himself in three productions of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Val, who played multiple instruments, quickly became the group’s music director, arranger, and choreographer. She articulated the BossTunes’ performance goal: “from the sublime to the ridiculous at the same time.”
The trio invited Anna Pratt, who had sung with Taryn in Europe, and myself to join them. Anna was a natural, and I was a community chorus veteran. To boost the group’s musicianship, we recruited Ed Marshall, a semipro bass player with area orchestras and big bands.
When Hans left Boston for Washington, DC in 2008, we inveigled Fred Wersan to join the group. Fred brought a welcome comic sensibility, plus a banjo, concertina, and fiddle.
Gigs and Gags
The name BossTunes combined the ideas of music, place, and leadership. (Five members have served on the chapter’s council—three as president—and four eventually became Associate Fellows.) The group debuted at the 2003 Open Jam at the 50th annual conference in Dallas. Val remembered the parody of “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” was “so successful that people were dancing, cheering, and even bowing to me!”
For the 51st Summit (in Baltimore, 2004), I performed Caruso’s signature aria “Vesti la giubba.” I produced an outrageous “soundex” translation about a bad tech-writing contract. The BossTunes showed up in gowns and tuxedos, and I launched into a full-throated, red-faced operatic solo while the ludicrous “translation” was projected behind me to an audience that roared with surprise and laughter.
For Boston (now New England) Chapter performances, the BossTunes teased the then-current president. In 2007, for example, they parodied the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have To Do Is Dream” and Silly String-ed Mike Ball, who never saw it coming. Yet afterward he graciously said, “You were huge last night. People just raved to me, as though I had anything to do with it—other than being the foil. I particularly appreciated the funny, fresh, and highly relevant material.”
Although the staple of the BossTunes’ songbook has been original song parodies, some were performances of comic songs, such as Hans’s bravura keyboard and vocal performance of Tom Lehrer’s witty “Lobachevsky” (Seattle, 2005). Others featured parody lyrics and a humorous setting, but straight-out performances, such as “Nessun Dorma” (Minneapolis, 2007). “Peel Me A Grape” (Boston Chapter publications awards banquet, 2008) was a jazz song sung by Val with the original lyrics, but set in a vignette of a put-upon technical writer turning the tables and taking charge. And some performances were serious songs sung sincerely, such as Val’s wistful “Memories Of You” (Seattle, 2005).
The BossTunes have managed thematic shows too: a luau-themed chapter end-of-year performance in 2011, and for STC (and the Weavers’) 60th anniversary in 2013, a folksong performance.
The Next Ten Years
By now the BossTunes are something of an institution. “Every year,” Fred says, “when the chapter asks us to do some entertainment, we look at each other and we say, ‘Why do they keep asking us?’ And then we look at ourselves and say, ‘Why do we keep doing this?’” But we have numbers in the bank for future performances.
