After 50 years of entertaining crowds with their four-part harmony, the Keystone Chorus has been silenced.

Originally formed in the late 1960s, the Dauphin chapter was established by a group interested in barbershop quartet singing, with the intent of joining the international organization.

It wasn’t until late 1971 that the Dauphin chapter reached the required 35 members and was finally recognized internationally, Feb. 28, 1972.

The organization distributed their remaining funds to organizations within the community, recently. Parkland Crossing received $1,000, Dauphin and District Community Foundation received $1,500 and the Watson Arts Centre received $1,000.

“The community has given so much to us. We tried to be part of the community and tried to give them a lot in song. It’s been a mutual thing in the sense that the community and the businesses in the community have given us so much, that we simply wanted to give something back to the community,” said Keystone Chorus president Dale Friesen, adding Parkland Crossing provided a home for the group’s meetings in the past.

There are several reasons, Friesen said, for the barbershoppers shutting down, with COVID-19 being the last straw.

Membership has been dwindling in recent years and the group has been having difficulty finding new members.

“We had too few singers trying to do too much. I guess it’s the story of we’re getting older and we don’t have younger blood coming in,” Friesen said.

All of the current members, Friesen said, are incredibly disappointed in having to disband the group.

“I spoke to every member on the phone before we started to make this decision. Everybody regrets the fact that we have to (disband),” he said. “Every member that I talked to, even past members, they love singing. They love to hear acapella harmony. There’s just something unique about barbershop harmony.”

The Keystone Chorus did not limit their shows to Dauphin, but performed across Manitoba and Saskatchewan and even in the U.S. And the songs they would sing varied from the Beatles to other contemporary songs from the 1950s and 1960s to gospel music.

“We sang quite a variety of songs. And we seemed to have always struck a chord with our audience,” Friesen said.

Don Allen and Larry Love are charter members with the barbershoppers. Allen did not become aware of the group until local businessman Boris Zemchyshen mentioned he traveled to Yorkton every week to sing with a group of barbershoppers there and eventually invited Allen to join him.

“It was kind of good. I just sat at the back for a few minutes. But it wasn’t long until somebody comes down and drags you on stage,” he said. “I had never sung barbershop music at all. I had a lot of experience with church music, quartet singing. So it wasn’t hard to do at all, I found.”

The group often performed at Clear Lake. Friesen said there was a Mini-HEP program in Clear Lake where they brought in award-winning barbershoppers from the U.S. to conduct workshops with local groups, to teach the different aspects of barbershop singing. But it was the friendship and love of music that attracted members to the group.

“Some of us could read music, but there’s lots that couldn’t and they just kind of followed along. It worked out good. Amazingly good,” Love said. “It’s not hard music to sing,” Allen added. “It’s kind of in a very narrow box. That was the only thing I didn’t like about it, was that you were so constrained as to what type of harmony you could sing. But that’s what made it barbershop singing.”

Early in Friesen’s years with the group, a group of members stopped at a local restaurant after returning from a Mini-HEP in Clear Lake. Allen, Love and two others, he said, broke out in song in the parking lot. That, Friesen said, had him hooked on singing with the group.

“I just loved it. I never had the courage to do a quartet. I know they put me in one once in a while. But I loved it. I just loved it the camaraderie,” he said. “We had a great group of guys. That’s a key to it,” Love added.

The group was a broad mixture of society, but it was the love of music that brought them all together.

“Just normal people. You didn’t have a lot of foul profanity or anything like that,” Friesen said.

Friesen, Love and Allen knew their limitations when it came to singing. Allen did not have the range to sing soprano, alto, tenor or bass, but he started as a tenor because no one else in the group could. ‘I’m neither a tenor nor a bass. I’m in there somewhere. Baritones always say they sing in the cracks,” he said.

Friesen, a bass, could not sing baritone because he was not well versed with the music, but his range was baritone and when they were practicing, he would quietly sing with them.

“Because I could get most of the notes. And when the leads were singing, I could get most of the notes there, sometimes a little high, but usually I’d sing with them. And when the tenors were singing, I could somehow tighten up the shorts and get up there, as well. I enjoyed it,” he said.

As much as they all love singing, they all agreed there is nothing better than when they hit the note just right.

“To reach the unreachable star,” Love called it. “If you hit it right, the hair on the back of your neck was guaranteed to stand up.”

“I love those times when they hit the note right,” Friesen said. “That’s what you sing for. You sing for those few times where everybody gets it perfectly right. The spine is tingling.”

At its peak, the Keystone Chorus could number more than 40 members, which lasted for a number of years. Allen was thinking about coming back to the group this winter, but that will not be possible now. But there is some talk about someone starting a men’s chorus, but it won’t be barbershop music. Membership had dwindled to roughly 10 or 11 men, but there was only one strong singer in each of the four parts, which Friesen said, is not enough to continue.

“One guy gets sick, you’re done,” he said.

Performing in front of an audience was a fun experience.

“Some of those audiences, they just enjoyed it. We got a few standing ovations the odd time,” Allen said, adding there was the odd song people would know and sing along with the group. “And then when we sang some of those Beatles songs that have been put to barbershop. You’d have half the audience singing with you,” Friesen said.

Anyone who ever attended a Keystone Chorus show at the Watson Arts Centre will know they always started at 7:59 p.m., sharp, a tradition started by Love, just to be different.

The group’s last show was held in March 2019 and the last meeting was held in March of this year.