Striking up the bands at annual festival

When the Scott City High School band marched down South High Street in Jackson Tuesday afternoon playing the "Mickey Mouse Club" theme, Mary and Wilferd Glasser sat on a bench in the hot sun waiting. They didn't drive from Kelso, Mo., to hear the band salute the mouse. Their granddaughter, Maria Lett, plays French horn in the band.

In past years the retired couple have skipped the parade in favor of attending that evening's Jackson Marching Band Festival at the football stadium. But, Wilferd says, grinning, "We can't take that night life anymore."

Lett was one of 1,000 high school students from the region who made a day and night of it at the 58th version of the festival founded by Southeast Missouri marching band legend LeRoy Mason.

This year, 14 bands from around the region presented field shows and more bands participated in the parade. The bands ranged in size from the 25-member Oran High School Band to the 204-member Jackson High School band. Jackson has so many student musicians that the school fields a separate freshman band.

An opportunity for smaller bands

The festival is noncompetitive, which gives small bands an opportunity to participate without being judged. The small bands performed first so they would not be compared to the larger ones. In the mass-band finale, all the bands played "God Bless America," "The Star-Spangled Banner" and other songs together.

"This is the biggest thing they do all year," Jackson band director Scott Vangilder said of the smaller bands, some of which come from schools with no football teams. "It's a great feeling for them to go shoulder to shoulder and be playing the same music."

Before beginning the parade, the bands spent the afternoon rehearsing the mass performance in 86-degree heat.

Jackson residents, known as rabid supporters of their football team, also turn out for both the parade and the band festival.

"The smaller schools really like to come to the festival because of the support the community shows," said Tom Broussard, an associate band director at Jackson High School. "There's no favoritism."

The Jackson band streamed down the parade route playing "Everything's Comin' Up Roses," their signature song. The band also plays the tune at the end of every performance at a football game.

Among those lining High Street and applauding the bands was banker John N. Thompson, who played baritone in the Jackson High School band at the end of the 1970s. He still plays the horn in the Jackson Municipal Band.

Thompson remembers having good times at those festivals, when there were many more bands, the parade was in the morning and the student musicians were given much of the afternoon to gad about Jackson. The current festival is more compressed and the students are more closely supervised.

"It was probably wise to do that," he said.

'Nervous and excited'

During their field show Tuesday night, the Jackson High School band played pop hits from recent decades, including "She's Not There" by the Zombies, the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin," Weather Report's jazzy "Birdland" and Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

Jackson band parent Peggy Luehrs read a book in the grandstand while waiting for her team to take the field. Her daughter, Sarah, was going to play a trumpet solo on "Nights in White Satin."

"She's nervous and excited," Luehrs said.

Central High School's band showed off their sparkling new white uniforms for the first time before a local audience. This is the first year in decades that a Cape Girardeau high school's band has included freshmen. Counting sophomores, director Neil Casey has 99 new faces among his 145 band members.

Melding them with the older band members has been a challenge, Casey said, but the band has a second-place and a third-place finish so far in the competitions it has entered.

"It just takes a longer time to pull things together," he said.

Fewer bands this year

Last year, 21 bands and about 1,500 students participated in the Jackson Marching Band Festival. It ran far into the night, and bands with lengthy drives didn't get home until late.

That's the reason the number of bands invited to participate in the field shows was reduced this year. Bands that didn't play this year will be invited next year. Vangilder said the setup is being tried on an experimental basis.

Three members of the pompom squad from Valle High School in Ste. Genevieve, Mo., Kelly Schweigert, Ashleigh Davis and Hannah Fallert, sat on the stadium grass eating slices of pizza before the performance. This is one of two festivals the band plays at each year and an event everyone looks forward to, they said.

"It's a little long in the heat," Fallert said.

"But it's a day out of school," Schweigert added.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182