Microsoft’s Baudboys head to San Francisco this week to compete for national a cappella singing title.

By Fred Albert

April 29, 2008

The Baudboys have been performing around Microsoft since the early 1990s. The current group includes (back row) Graham Sheldon, Ric Lewis, Owen Braun, Elliot Lewis, Dave McEwen and (front row) Jon Schwartz, Mark Adolph, Paul Eng.

It has all the makings of a Hollywood hit: Eight nerds band together to form a singing group. On the eve of the big competition, one of the members breaks his back, but the show goes on, and in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds, the geeks beat out the pros to nab the grand prize. Microsoft’s own Baudboys, an eight-man a cappella singing group, took top honors March 8 at the Pacific Northwest Harmony Sweepstakes, besting more experienced groups for the title of top a cappella group in the region, despite the fact that first tenor Ric Lewis had to spend much of the concert confined to a chair due to a degenerate disc.

“The fact that we won Northwest Harmony Sweeps was the upset of the year, because we were going up against six other professional groups,” marveled Dave McEwen, Baudboys president and a content project manager for Developer and Platform Evangelism. “When they finally announced who won, we were all in shock.”

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