A couple years back, a University of Michigan freshman named Elliot Measel wandered into the Robotics building. Elliot has always been fascinated with the field of robotics.  On that fateful day, he was interacting with a stubborn cyborg as it refused to learn how to play the piano.  Specifically, the concept of rhythm stymied the machine.  Elliot spent 8 grueling hours teaching the cyborg to play the classic Kindergarten staple “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” with smashing success!  Elliot was elated that he had taught the cyborg to be a master of rhythm. As he exited the robotics lab, Elliot heard what sounded like voices singing in the engineering atrium.  It was, in fact, an a cappella group which was struggling to keep a steady tempo and rhythm.  Fresh off his success with the cyborg, Elliot walked up to the group and proclaimed “I can help you become the best a cappella group on campus!”  The group huddled and extended an immediate offer for Elliot to join The Friars. Elliot’s inclusion into The Friars has elevated the group to new and wonderful heights.  The Friars are now routinely hailed as one of the most well known a cappella groups in all of Ann Arbor having mastered tempo and rhythm.  Upon graduation it is all but assured that Elliot’s musically trained cyborg will supplant him as the newest permanent member of “The Friars”!

One brisk fall morning, Caleb Lorenz found himself on a routine walk in the forests of North Campus. Being a cyborg, he was attracted to anything that made him feel more humanlike, such as a cool gust of wind brushing through his hair, or the sound of leaves crunching under his feet. But nobody, not even Caleb, could’ve calculated what was about to unfold. It came in a flash - BANG! Suddenly, he was unconscious on the ground, falling victim to a targeted EMP sent out from the Robotics building. See, dozens of humanoid robots had recently escaped and scattered themselves across North Campus, and while trying to recapture them, the researchers mistook Caleb for one of their robots. In an effort to limit his movement speed and decrease the chance of another breakout, they promptly replaced the air in his pneumatic cylinders with an ultra dense gas known as sulfur hexafluoride. There was just one problem. Caleb didn’t have any pneumatic cylinders. He didn’t even have any cylinders. They mistakenly pumped this gas into his lungs! Upon waking up, Caleb informed them of their mistake, quickly realizing that his voice was now much lower than before. He ran to the doctor’s office, but grew out of breath much more quickly than he was used to - his lungs were working extra hard trying to cycle all of this heavy gas out of his body. Stopping to take a break, he heard an angelic chorus from around the bend. It was the Friars! He rushed over and begged to sing with them - he knew this would help. So, he sang his heart out with a booming bass sound, emptying his lungs of enough of the sulfur hexafluoride to breathe normally again. In the process, though, he realized that this was the feeling he’d been looking for all along - he finally felt human! To this day, Caleb continues living his best life in the Friars, using his resounding bass voice to anchor every song.

One brisk day upon the peak of the Rocky Mountains, a small infant named Andrew Mazurek emerged from the cliffs. Shivering, he would have struggled to survive alone, but he was luckily spotted by the king of a local herd of Broncos. King Thunder saw the poor lonesome soul, and adopted him to be a part of the bronco family. For the next eighteen years, Andrew was taken in by the broncos, grazing and foraging with the herd, sleeping while standing straight up, and eating sugar cubes (which have been proven to cause perfect pitch) whenever he could find them. But upon his 18th birthday it became clear that young Andrew was not truly a bronco, but a young human! The broncos became enraged at their mistake and booted Andrew off of the Rocky peaks with their mighty hooves. The Herculean kick sent poor Andrew flying off the mountain, where he was picked up by the wind and blown all the way to Ann Arbor, Michigan where he fell safely into the North Campus pond. Luckily for Andrew, the Friars happened to be singing on the shores when he fell in, and after saving him from the depths of the pond and hearing his high-pitched, resonant screams, they decided to adopt him to the group, where he has been singing ever since.

The alarm clock on his desk struck 7:45. Mateo in his half-awake tired state reached over and stopped the alarm clock. Slowly opening his eyes he read the clock… "Oh my God, I'm gonna be late for school!" He hurriedly put on whatever clothes he could find and bolted out the door, backpack still in hand and toast in mouth. "Hey, come back, you forgot your music!" yelled Mateo's childhood best friend, G-Men. They had been living together since the start of Mateo's freshman year, so Mateo and G-Men go way back. "I'm gonna be late," Mateo exclaimed, voice muffled by the toast in his mouth, followed closely by G-Men. As he rounded the sidewalk corner, Mateo ran face first into another a cappella group, causing both of their stuff to go flying everywhere. After being dazed for a second, Mateo got up and extended his arm down to this a cappella group he ran into. "Are you okay?" he asked. “Oh my god, you’re aca-perfect!” said this a cappella, which happened to be The Friars. “Hey! Don’t steal our baritone!” yelled G-Men as they rounded the corner, “He belongs to us,” they said as they grabbed Mateo’s arm. “Uhh, just because you saw him first doesn’t mean he belongs to you. This voice deserves to be heard everywhere,” retorted The Friars. “Hey, I have a simple solution to this; why don’t I sing for both of you, then there will be no need to fight,” Mateo suggested, hoping to quell this potential beef. “Okay,” both the groups said in unison. And so it was; Mateo, with his beautiful voice, would now sing for the Friars as well, treating both groups, but especially The Friars, with his talents.

Jonathan “JGos” Gosbee is truly one of a kind. You really don’t know how to place him in your mind. On one hand he is a top 100 overwatch player in the state, but on the other hand he’ll sink a three pointer without looking despite barely being 5 '10". Honestly the first time I saw him driving I was shocked because I didn't think that he was old enough to have his drivers license yet. (This was his sophomore year of college and I’m a year younger than him.) JGos has one of the strongest falsettos you will ever hear and truly captivates the audience every time he gets on stage. You really have to listen carefully though when talking to him, otherwise you’ll miss the second half of whatever he just said. Although relatively soft spoken he has some of the best comedic timing, saving only the funniest bits for the perfect moment. When he inevitably takes the stage, please refrain from the following statements: “why is there a first grader on stage?”, “Aww he gets to sing with the big kids” and “man get that kid a sandwich”. We truly hope you enjoy seeing Jonathan Gosbee on stage with The Friars, it is a treat for the eyes and ears. 

Years ago, scientists asked the question: “Is it possible to create a boy so performative that it actually feels authentic?” This question led to years of genetic experimentation, eventually resulting in the world’s most performative man: Wesley Ramsey. With flower tattoos crawling up his forearms, multiple nose rings, and the perfect ratio of curly surfer hair to manly facial hair, Wes serves as a shining example to us all when we ask ourselves, “Does this tote bag make me look approachable?” To ensure his performative aura remained permanent, scientists had Wes raised by a loving lesbian polycule that exclusively votes Green Party. A “natural-born advocate,” Wes and his family spend their weekends attending tree-hugging rallies and protesting deforestation while drinking ethically sourced mushroom coffee. When he’s not providing “deep intellectual thoughts about the political and economic state of the world,” Wes can usually be found wandering through nature, thrifting at one of the eighteen stores he frequents, or going on double dates with his best puppet friend, Zorp. Wes brings the comedy to the group, because let’s face it: the only way to find love these days is to become so outlandishly funny that people can’t ignore you. Armed with repressed theater-kid energy and a dangerously goofy personality, there’s no telling what shenanigans Wes will unleash on stage.

Life was always dull in the small, quaint, absolutely minuscule town known as Batavia, New York (population: 21.5). Tumbleweeds decorated the desolate streets and the only thing you could hear was the faint whispers of wind that painted the evening sky. But all of that changed when Peyton Roy Woeller was born. With a thunderous cry, Peyton made his mark on the town. His voice has a way of bringing a smile to everyone's face, and the volume of his voice ensures that everyone heard it. When one of the few children in Batavia cries to their parents out of fear of thunder, their parents simply say, "fear not my child, someone just told good 'ol Peyton Woeller a really funny joke and he's laughin' away and slappin' his thighs real loud". One day when Peyton was putting on a performance for the other 20.5 Batavians, it just so happened that the Friars were passing through town. "Oh wow!" one of them exclaimed, "He sure is good! He needs to join us immediately!". "I agree!" another one jumped in, "Everyone knows that its required that every acappella group has someone who looks like that!" Just like that, the rest is history! Now as a Friar, Peyton uses that sweet baritone timbre to sing for all to hear!

While small and adorable, Henry Baldwin is a fearsome animal who bares his sharp teeth and devours his enemies. He is the “Henny Badger” through and through. As a child, he was bitten by a radioactive bee, and it made him so angry that he devoted his life to hunting down bees and other adjacent larvae and insects, shoveling them into his mouth until his thirst for bees was fulfilled. He also has an angelic voice and is a pretty cool dude. You might think that his beautiful voice and chill demeanor are separate from his ravenous animal instincts, but you would be wrong. His primary bee-hunting tactic is to disarm the bees with a beautiful tune, and then trick them into a false sense of security with his general charm and wit. That’s when the Henny badger strikes. Beware the Henny Badger.

Once upon a time, the milky way galaxy was blessed with another star. This star began as a precious little baby boy who shined light onto our planet. The gorgeous young baby was named Yaoboy, or Shane. As Yaoboy grew, he lifted the world up around him with his beautiful voice. Strangely, even though Yaoboy is known to have copious amounts of testosterone, he sings his heart out as a tenor, swooning every fair maiden left and right. Our little oopy goopy fella may be small, but he is mighty. He was receiving NBA offers the second he walked onto the court in high school. Once when Yaoboy was at UMich, he was walking to his first NBA practice, and then saw a sad young legless child. He did what he does best, and used his biomedical engineering skills to make the child a pair of new legs. While he was doing this, he sang a tune to cheer up the child. The Friars’ were around the corner and instantly recruited the shining light into their group. Ever since that fateful day, Shane left the NBA behind and sung out his beautiful high notes on the daily.

Cullen was on his first mission as a young Jedi Apprentice: intercept an imperial weapons shipment at a small merchant planet. “Are you sure you are up to the challenge?” C3PO asked Cullen over their comms system (the C stands for Caleb here). “Yes C3PO, if I’m not ready now, when will I be?”. He took cover as the shipment arrived. He watched as a squadron of storm troopers escorted the package out of the ship. “Heh, just as expected. This’ll be a piece of cake,” he thought to himself. What surprised him was that they were accompanied by the infamous sith lord: Darth Vader. “What is he doing here?” Cullen thought to himself in a panic. Fear overtook him as he froze stiffer than he would be if he was sealed in carbonite. “I don’t know if I can do this… his voice is just too low,” Cullen whispered, feeling an overwhelming amount of guilt that he cannot carry out the will of his Jedi master. All of a sudden, a bright light flashed as a force ghost appeared in front of him. “Who are you?” Cullen asked the spirit. “I am O-Ben Devries-Wan Kenobi, and I am here to tell you that it doesn’t matter how low Vader’s voice is. What does matter is that you face your fear! Steel your resolve and those low notes will come naturally,” A newfound confidence filled the young Jedi. “Thank you for your ancient wisdom O-Ben Devries-Wan Kenobi,” Cullen drew his light saber and charged the shipment. “Vader! Cullen bellowed, this ends now!” Blinding lights flew as their sabers clashed. “It’s over for you, young Jedi,” Darth Vader said, “You can never hit a low A like I can”. Cullen chuckled, “You may be right, but at least I don’t need a fancy suit filling my lungs with Sulfur-hexafluoride to hit my low notes,” Cullen summoned all of his strength and pushed Vader off of him, hitting an astonishing A flat in the process. Just like that, the battle was over and Cullen won. Cullen turned on his comms system, “Mission accomplished. Roshaugn Solo, go ahead and bring the Millenium Fr-alcon around. We got a performance to put on. Oh yeah, Cullen also sings bass in the Friars, an acapella group in a galaxy far far away.