It’s probably not the best time for me to be blogging, but oh well....

I’m on a tour bus headed to Missouri. I’ve never been to Missouri. It’s one of the few states that drum corps never took me to when I was a member of Southwind. But here we go.

So....I’m on a bus. It’s 10:19 pm. The show at Samford University isn’t even over. We left early since there was no critique tonight. The corps administration decided we’d get a jump on our seven hour ride....

On this bus are former members of the Madison Scouts, Carolina Crown, Troopers, Cavaliers, Spirit of Atlanta, Teal Sound, Blue Knights, and of course, Southwind. We’re like “a band of gypsies” rolling down the highway. And I love it. We sleep on air mattresses. We eat food cooked in a makeshift kitchen that is actually a converted bus. We walk into stadiums and crowds go wild.

The kids....the kids come from huge band programs that make national headlines and they come from tiny programs in small towns you’ve never heard of. And every kind of program in between.  They work. They sweat. They cry. They ache. They pay A LOT of money to be part of this.
They sacrifice. And most of all,  they WORK THEIR BUTTS OFF.

The staff...we don’t coddle. We don’t tell them it’s good when it’s terrible. We sacrifice. We drive long distances to teach in this idiom because, somehow, a multi-hour drive is worth it when you can teach for 4 hours straight and NEVER have to say “stop talking.” Not once. We pour all we have into the kids because we did this activity, and we know the value of it. We know we learned more about marching music while doing drum and bugle corps than we ever did in college. It’s a thrill for us.

And the fans....we couldn’t do what we do without fans. Our visual caption head likes to say that the members’ utmost responsibility is to make people want to buy t-shirts from our souvenir booth. Truly,  it is. The fans are why we do this. A performance is just noise without an audience.  And I can’t thank the fans enough because without them, we wouldn’t be doing this.

So....I’m 45. And I’m riding 450 miles on a tour bus full of stinking, tired kids and staff.

And I love it.