Q&A with Eddie Tabb

Written by Cody Harrell . Updated at 4/25/2022, 3:33:00 PM


Tell me a little about yourself and your chapter.

So I started with Harmony Town I think about seven years ago now. And they were walking through the downtown Farmington Founder’s Day festival. And they were doing a little singing on streets. And at that point in my life, I had considered getting back into music—I had kind of let it exit my life. Not on purpose, but it definitely did.

It was their sound that made me go, wow, look, listen to those chords? No, actually, they sounded pretty bad. And I've openly told them that. And what enticed me was, they looked like they were having fun. And I was like, I would love to have fun because there's a couple different musical things I was thinking about doing that were a lot more serious. And I didn't know if I was ready for that kind of commitment. So I was like, I don't know much about barbershop. They passed out a flier that sat on my dresser for about a month. And then my wife's like, ‘you should go.’

When I walked in the door, I knew visitors were not like the frequent thing. So I started singing with them. Things went well. They sing a lot of music, and I got really excited about that. We, I would say, we probably had the biggest library of any of the Pioneer chapters. We easily can do any number of like 80-plus songs at almost any given time.

When did you get started in leadership?

I heard that, you know, there was a board and, you know, ideas can be shared. And so, but after a year, they said, maybe you could do a position. And I was like, opkay, and so I took over the community outreach and marketing VP chair. And thus I took over the social media for harmony town more because I saw it was like, there can be more, we can do better. And so they let me and then there was kind of a vacancy for the top spot. And I took over as president about three years ago, and have maintained that but now, I've got somebody in the community outreach position, and I'm kind of training him on how to do that.

What is HarmonyTown chorus doing right right now when it comes to your social media approach?

So I started posting just by taking pictures. I'd see a quartet over there singing, you know, and I capture these moments, and I would post them and people would react, but we didn't have a very large following. 200 followers, so there wasn't much going on there. So then I started getting people to share it and started doing different ways to try to get more people involved. And I won't say we have a large fan base, but we're definitely almost there. We’re just under 800 followers on Facebook specifically. And that's been the biggest one for us so far, based on just every factor you can think of. And so I started just posting things.

And then our director was like, how do we reach more eyeballs? I was like, well, you can sponsor a post? And he's like, Okay, do you have one you want to do? And I was like, I need a budget, and they're like, name your price. I go 150 bucks, and they're like, done. I was like, sweet, I made this post, and it did nothing. It did nothing. Looking back on it, I've learned a lot from that one post, because I was just like, This is gonna be it for putting $150 on it, all these magical things are about to happen. The post didn't engage anybody, it didn't prompt a response, it didn't suggest that we want your engagement, it was more of a look at us. And I've learned a lot from that $150 sponsored posts. I would love to have 150 bucks back to try something different.

So I focus the rest of my posts and engagements on getting a response out of somebody, somehow. But we want to also stay true to who we are. And we want to make sure that whatever we do is not embarrassing, or controversial or anything like that. So that's the fine line that you have to kind of waver in the barbershop world is, you know, you can't put up you know, swimsuit models on your posts. You can't, you know, put something political up there, to try to drive a reaction out of people. So you have to kind of go with the wholesome aspect. And I've done some that have done better than others. But we also figured out that just a standard post will do so much. But if you create like an event, that's a way that people can engage, you say, like, I'm having a guest night. And then you you create the guest Night event, you could sponsor that. So if I had $150, again, I do like 50 bucks towards the guest tonight $50 to a secondary post that was engaging somehow.

And so you're not gonna get like the same people seeing the same three things, you might get some, but we tried to mix it up. And I tried to make sure that our content is constantly flowing. So when people see us they know that we're alive and well. And that's what scares me about some of the other groups specifically in our district. They look at their social media or lack of, and I wonder, like, how are they doing? Are they doing anything? You know, if I was somebody on the outside looking to book a barbershop group, I might not even ask here because it doesn't look like they've got anything going on.

Who should be running the social media for a chapter?

You need somebody who's passionate about it, not somebody who's doing it to check the box. That's not the easiest thing to find. Because not every chapter has somebody like me—I'm all in, I'm having fun with it. It is something I enjoy, I enjoy the interaction. I love social media. I'm not scared of it. And I'm not afraid to post things and have things fail, I'm willing to learn from the process as well.

So when I look around, I see some chapters posted, like tag Tuesday. Cool! The best thing we can do for each other is engage. And that's one of the things that kind of makes me sad about this district is I don't see a lot of like support for one another. And that's something I really want to change. If a chapter posts something, it's okay to like it, share it, comment on it, give them a pat on the back, let them know you see it and that you're, you know, encouraging them and I think if we started doing that for each other, we'd see more people be excited about it because when you post something and it gets two likes, zero comments on any platform, you're almost like, I'm not very good at this. So I'm not going to keep going or I'm not going to post a picture of a singing again, because nobody liked it.

I want to change that culture and get everybody to support one another. Because the easiest thing to do from afar, we don't have to spend any money on any of that, we can create a culture of, you know, like, engagement and support for one another. Even though we may not be able to go sing with them on a Tuesday night, or whatever night they rehearse, to go see their show, because, you know, they're four hours away. So I want to encourage groups to I don't want to say post anything, but take a minute at your rehearsal to like, not just take a picture from the, you know, the side of people, like tell them to cram in and layer up and like, let some guys stand get down, and like arms around each other, pretend like your friends, like get a fin, you know, take three or four of those. And then when somebody's saying get a profile picture of them singing, someone's blowing into the pitch pipe, you know, capture that. If the director’s, you know, holding out on some kind of post, he's doing something, you know, capture that, and then you'll find that, like, these pictures will start or even videos will start almost writing their own story, when you go to do a post about it.

And you have to be okay with experimenting. And you can come up with a plan ahead of time, but sometimes adjust whatever plan you had to the content that you have. And be regular about it too. I'm not saying a post every day, but I'm trying to hit up one post a week, right? Different platforms have different specialties. So you may not want to post the same thing on Instagram and Facebook. If you're using both of those, you know, try to mix it up and have you know, some variety, our websites are really good with integrating social media into a sidebar. But if you post the same picture to every single thing, it's just going to kind of show the same thing. So I won't post the same things to different platforms.

What apps do you use to create your content?

What are two things every barbershop chapter can be doing to use social media as a tool as barbershop returns?

I would ask them, not social media, really, I'd say what is the most fun thing that you do at rehearsal? Like what is the thing that you look forward to the most with someone else? Have fun doing that as well? Like why wouldn't you want to share that with others? Like why wouldn't you want to prove that you guys are the coolest guys in the area to hang out with why wouldn't you want to show you know in a free, and at-your-leisure type atmosphere. Like, it's not going to cost you anything, but no one's ever going to find you unless you make yourself available to be found.

And I would say, if you don't want to do social media, that's great. Start putting up some flyers and coordinate a Saturday in a, you know, an area that people are, you know, expected to be in, you know, I, every area is a little bit different, but go out there and ding campaign on your feet, go sing for the people, like just show up and do something. And then tell him about whatever the most fun thing is that you do. And if you're struggling to name something, but if you just say, oh, we sing. Well, that's kind of general. And there's a lot of groups that can say that. So maybe start thinking of ways to engage your chapter with a little bit more activity. Besides you know, singing the old songs, going through, you know, your, you know, your list of repertoire, and then, you know, keep the whole world singing, like maybe find a way to do something different. And that's something we've done at Harmony Town. And we've probably done that maybe even too much at times, cause our two and a half hours flies by. And then we added another thing called two minute bios into our chapter meetings, where we have somebody talk to us for two minutes about themselves, whatever they want to say. And so we added those things on top of other things, and guys are excited and they get involved. So I would say if you don't want to do social media, like start working on what you're doing there, if somebody came and visited, would they have as much fun as you know, you are having?

What should every chapter do to be ready for new members looking for an outlet after COVID?

Biggest thing you can do is have a plan. If somebody walks in the door, what happens? What do you do? Do you just bum rush them? And like 10 of your guys walk up and say like, oh, well, you know, you want to sing with us? Like they don't even know how to, they don't even know how to sing along with you yet.

So have a plan. Have some name tags ready, have a guestbook ready, have people ready to take that person in with them. It's the base, you know, don't be scared because you know you have a plan, and then figure out how to follow up with them as well. And make sure that you talk to them and let them talk as well. And let them tell you about their experience. And I think that's probably the easiest thing you can do.

But probably the most overlooked thing that people don't do is just like, we want to get all these people here. What is your plan to make guests feel like they're not the outsider. If you sing at them, like ‘oh, guest night, here's 10 songs, we know how to sing, sit there, and listen,’ that's not why they're there. One of the things that we've done at guest nights is we start with a brand new song for everybody. Nobody's heard it. Now we're going to start listening to it together. But we'll break into sectional we're all learning it together. We pick a very easy song, usually a very short song. And so the guests are able to be on the same level as everybody else, whether it's your section leader or you know somebody who's just a very casual singer.

To see more of HarmonyTown's content, head to wesingbarbershop.com to follow them on their various social media pages. And request to join the HarmonyTown Community Facebook group to get in on the action with the chorus.

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