Don’t B-sharp, don’t B-flat, just go viral.
Things have been changing for Adam Cohen. Not his job as a cardiologist or his loyalty to Philly sports teams. Not his golf game. But the number of people who are watching him.
The other day, a stranger approached when he was waiting to tee off. “A big, strong, athletic young guy says, ‘Hey, can I ask you a question?’” Cohen remembers. That question, to his shock, was Do you sing?
Thomas Cappola GM’05 is getting it, too. Coworkers have started high-fiving him as he walks through the wards at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. “They’re like, ‘Dr. Cappola, I had no idea! That’s awesome!’” he says.
Ever since their men’s a cappella group exploded on Instagram this year, Cohen, Cappola, and the other 17 members of the Tonics—quite a few of whom have links to Penn—are experiencing a level of unsought fame that only the internet can bestow.
Their most popular videos aren’t slick productions or even filmed concert numbers. They’re just clips of the guys, mostly dads and grandpas, mostly from the Main Line, standing in one of their kitchens, surrounded by snacks, and singing.
And yet a 40-second video of them casually rehearsing “Werewolves of London” has racked up 4.2 million views. Several more are close behind.
Until late last year, getting a couple hundred views on one of their videos was the norm. “We had, like, 300 followers in December,” says Cappola, the William Smilow Professor and chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine. “Once we started posting our rehearsal videos, it blew up from there. By January, we had 30,000 followers.” As of July, it was more than 87,000.
Now Cohen, who completed his cardiology fellowship at Penn, finds himself saying things like “that one only has 370,000 views.” He immediately laughs in disbelief at his own words—“only 370,000 views? It’s insane. It’s nuts.”
No one quite knows how they got here. Was it that share from a Los Angeles-based influencer who found one of their videos? The comment and repost from Michael Bublé, the Canadian singer who has over 4 million followers himself? Some secret meddling from the Instagram algorithm gods?
Whatever the explanation, “it’s just been unexpected, because our group was sort of under the radar for many years,” Cappola says.
The Tonics formed in 1990 when George Gephart WG’79—new to the Philly area but an experienced a cappellist—“whined and groused about the fact that while there was a big men’s chorale in Philly, there was no small guys’ a cappella group,” by his own account. His wife, Elizabeth “Pooh” Gephart CGS’79, encouraged him to start his own.
There were eight of them at first. Thirty- six years later, most of those original members are still singing with the group—though not Gephart, who moved to South Carolina in 2017 after retiring. “Of the things we left, this one was my biggest give-up,” he says. “It’s what I miss the most, because certainly I could not recreate it.”
He’s watched the Tonics ascend from a distance. “I have a tremendous amount of pride and excitement for the group—and even just a little tinge of jealousy,” he says.
From the outset, Gephart envisioned a low-commitment ensemble that would rehearse once a week (with summers off) and limit gigs to once a month. They’d admit only skillful singers. “Nobody is coming into the Tonics who has never sung in an a cappella group,” he says. There are alumni of Yale’s Whiffenpoofs and Princeton’s Tigertones—but so far, no former Penn undergrads. “That is wrong,” Gephart says. “We need Penn singers in the Tonics.”
Still, the group found modest success around Philly, gigging at private parties, professional meetings, the occasional Phillies game, and even alongside Penn’s Quaker Notes and Off the Beat. Performing with high school and college groups “keeps us young, gives us fresh ideas, and shows our collective audiences that a cappella is a lifetime pursuit,” Gephart says.
That’s apparent in their videos, too, where current members span from age 28 to 77.
Richard Chung, senior medical director at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor of pediatrics in the School of Medicine, is the newest addition. He joined shortly after the Tonics took off on Instagram.
“The nice thing about the group is that whatever people do during their day jobs, when they show up to rehearsal, they’re just another guy,” Chung says. “We leave our professional obligation and standing at the door.”
But this sudden Instagram fame—accompanied by a handful of articles, radio stories, and TV spots—has been a shock to all of them. Once mostly empty, the @tonics1990 comment sections now overflow with playful jabs.
On a video of the group rehearsing Bublé’s “Haven’t Met You Yet,” which shows one member still in his scrubs: “So THAT’S why my surgeon had to reschedule.”
On another of the group standing around singing “Is She Really Going Out with Him?”: “Bad day to be a Dr. Scholl’s insert.”
Other commenters have dubbed them “JP and the Morgans,” “Boys II Gentlemen,” and “LinkedIn Park.”
“I think the comments are absolutely hysterical,” Cohen says. “I don’t think it’s mean-spirited, and they’re not that far off. But ‘not a mortgage in sight’—that’s not true.”
Most of the guys have little interest in social media—Cappola recently joined Instagram solely to follow the Tonics—and they’re old enough to handle this strange taste of fame with both Dr. Scholl’s on the ground. They have kids (and in some cases, grandkids), well-rooted careers, and a sense of perspective born of middle age.
On a social media platform where so many people are faking it, their videos feel deeply genuine. They hold beer bottles and seltzer cans. They wear whatever they happened to put on that day. Partially eaten snacks fill whichever kitchen island they’re flanking.
“I think it’s refreshing to see something that is so stripped of any pretense or trying to sell anything,” says Edward Glassman GEd’16, the group’s vocal percussionist. “It’s pretty raw. We record one take.”
Glassman fell in love with a cappella as a Philly-area high schooler when he saw Off the Beat perform and stuck with it through his time at Northwestern. “Most people stop singing a cappella when they’re 22 and they’re done with college,” he says. “It’s so funny that this little rare pocket exists.”
The group’s gig requests are now “awesome and out of control,” he adds. “We’re so much busier now than we’ve ever been before. And we’re booked solid through next December, with more gig requests coming all the time,” says Glassman.
Brands have approached, asking them to drink a certain seltzer or wear a certain shirt on camera. “But we’re really trying to keep it authentic to what it’s always been,” Glassman says. “For 30-plus years, this was basically just a bunch of guys having fun in kitchens.”
“None of us do this for what’s going on with all this Instagram stuff and publicity and press,” adds Cohen. “It’s fun, no doubt. But long after our moment in the sun has passed, we’ll still be singing, because that’s what we love and that’s who we are.”
—Molly Petrilla C’06
