Guerillacapella's healing harmonies

Just don't ask them to sing Christmas carols

(L to R) Dennis Drury, Jim Paschal, Judie Liebling, and Keith Blackstone of Guerillacapella. (Photo by Laura Hagar Rush)

I first heard Guerillacapella when I dropped by the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center the day after the election. They were singing their hearts out to a small audience in one corner of that cavernous space—and the music was so sweet it literally stopped me in my tracks.

Their goal that day was to lift people’s spirits and cheer them on to greater things, despite the election results. That’s generally this group’s goal, no matter where they’re singing.

Guerillacapella is made up of Jim Paschal, Dennis Drury, Judie Liebling, and Keith Blackstone. They’ve been singing together for 12 years.

Given their name, I expected them to specialize in political or labor songs, but Liebling said they sing just about everything: pop, barbershop, doo-wop, even gospel. (“Just don’t ask us to sing Christmas carols,” Blackstone said.)

“This is our work, you know?’ Pachal said. “Like we had jobs—though we’re pretty much all retired now—but you know, there’s a distinction between your job and your work. Work is something that your heart is into, and this is what we do. This is our mission: to bring this to people, to experience connection and peace, and bring a smile.”

“Plus it’s fun,” Liebling interjected. (And I have to admit, the two times I’ve seen them sing, it certainly looks like they’re having a great time.)

Guerillacapella also does paid gigs, but that’s not what motivates them to sing.

“The money is crap,” Liebling said with a laugh.

“We love it, not because we’re getting paid,” Blackstone said. “Really, for me, it’s a combination of service and therapy. Jim could tell you all the details about how music affects people, physically and mentally, and how doing it, singing in harmony with people, brings people’s heartbeats into unison, brings people into a community, and that’s what’s exciting about it for me: this opportunity to be a vessel for that to happen.”

Guerillacapella sings most often on what might be termed “the senior circuit,” appearing at various senior living facilities, the Council on Aging events, and the Sebastopol Area Senior Center.

“I gotta say the Council on Aging respite groups are much better behaved,” one of them joked. “These Sebastopol elders are a wild bunch.”

Working with seniors, they have come to see what they do as a form of medicine.

“Very often, we see people that that are kind of down, you know: their shoulders are rounded and their heads are a little low, and then we engage and start singing, and they start—we invite people to sing with us, it isn’t like a concert. But when we’re done, they’re lifted. They’re just lighter—and so are we,” Liebling said.

“This is really gratifying for me,” she said. “I think it is medicine in a way. It is definitely therapeutic. It’s like nutrition—for us, as well as our audiences.”

Guerillacapella member Jim Paschal brings the medicinal power of music to the Sebastopol Area Senior Center in a class called “The Harmonic Method for Wellbeing.”

“I do a harmony workshop here so people can experience the therapeutic effects of blending your voice with others in a very soft, non-threatening, nothing-to-learn way that enables people to connect viscerally and vibrationally to the frequencies in the room and to become connected as one thing, which is just gorgeous to watch.”

To contact Guerillacapella, reach out to them through their Facebook page. Hear them here.