Meaning "in the chapel style" in Italian, acappella music is singing without instrumental accompaniment. Occasionally, percussion is used to enhance the sound. We prefer to spell it acappella even though we know it's technically wrong. When you put the space in there about 1% of the population get confused and say stuff like "a cappella group" as if they're saying "a rock band". Then they ask us what kind of music "cappella" is. When we explain that it's "acappella" and not "cappella", they usually make some joke asking us if we learned to sing "acappella in Acapulco".  Again, this is just about 1% of the population but enough to drive us to surrender to slight grammatical imperfections on our website. You don't start your own. You just listen to our group, and you like it. When the CD is finished, you put in another one of our CD's and keep listening. We like to be the only ones singing this style of music and getting all of the gigs, so don't even try to start another group. (Yes, we're joking.) While in high school, Joe Oliva started a group that ended up morphing into The Essentials by 1992. Dan Speck joined in 1996. Thom Speck was touring with a now defunct Saskatchewan-based acappella group called Streetnix and joined in 2005. Janet Turner completed the puzzle in 2009. Althrough the Specks see Jo3 as a "brother from another mother" and Janet as a "sister from another mister", Dan and Thom have the same parents, so they're the real kind of brothers. And, if you're curious, Dan is older but Thom claims to be wiser.