The Madison County High School Band took a charter bus to Annapolis, Maryland, Nov. 5. Along the way, they visited historical sites in Washington, D.C. They rented out a laser tag facility, testing their aim on the run.
But the aim of the three-day trip up north was to show off another skill — their chops as a marching band. The MCHS band took 13th place in the USSBA National Championship last week. That followed a first-place finish Oct. 24 at the USSBA Southern States Championship in Chattanooga, Tenn., where the band topped schools from Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama.
“The Southern States Championship, that was a huge deal for us,” said second-year MCHS band director Nick Golding. “You could see the pride they (the band) had when they carried that championship banner off the field.”
On the bus ride back from Chattanooga, Golding spoke with assistant Freshman Academy principal George Bullock, who has a child in the band.
“We were talking and I said, ‘if we won this, we could probably qualify for nationals,’” said Golding. “‘Would it be too much to try to get into that? Am I being overly ambitious here? And he was like, ‘why not?’”
But arranging a trip to Maryland for 50-something kids in a week and a half is no easy task. Plus, there was the matter of funding.
“There’s a lot of kids who right now just don’t have the money to make a trip like that,” said Golding, noting the tough economic times. “But the community stepped up in such a big way that we were able to cover the kids’ transportation, their lodging and the food for those with a real financial need.”
All band members made the trip, with the bus pulling out of Danielsville at 6:30 a.m. last Thursday. The band stopped at Golding’s old high school, Orange High School in Hillsboro, N.C., for a two-hour rehearsal on the way.
Golding said his outfit performed well at the championships. But he looks back to the halftime show of the Apalachee game as the band’s best performance of the year.
“The entire Apalachee band was standing on the sideline,” said Golding. “So this whole band is standing right on top of them and they really stepped it up.”
Golding said the band has a swagger that it didn’t have last year.
“The cool thing for me to watch was just the level of confidence,” said Golding. “The one thing I love about these kids is you can put them anywhere and they’ll throw down, no matter who’s in front of them.”
Of course, developing that swagger hasn’t come easily.
Golding calculates the hours of practice, which stretch back over summer band camp, the numerous after school rehearsals. When it comes to music, repetition is so necessary. And the band spent over 150 hours this year getting their six-and-a-half minute routine right. It’s an exhaustive process, requiring focus, commitment, cohesion with a group.
Golding saw improvement last year, noting that the outfit earned the school’s first “Superior” concert rating in 10 years. He said he was ready to push them further in 2009.
“I just thought the group had grown so much that maybe they were ready to kind of step it up a notch and take it to the next level,” said Golding.
So the director planned a more difficult show for 2009 — “Pathways,” a three-movement routine focusing on “control, tension, breakaway.”
So, could the young group pull it off? Could they understand the harder aspects of the new routine, the nuance of intended dissonance in the first movement?
“It really appeared that they were going to make it happen at rehearsal, but something happened at the beginning of this season,” said Golding. “It just wasn’t clicking. I just wracked my brain. Did I bite off more than we could chew?”
But the band kept practicing. And finally, early kinks were worked out.
“I don’t know the exact day,” he said. “I know that it was about three and a half to four weeks ago, where, for whatever reason, the show just clicked. There was a mental barrier, a wall there, that once they got past, they were really able to take off … This show, I really feel like we peaked at the end.”
The director, an accomplished French horn player and arranger, said he’s excited about the rest of the band season, pointing out that the jazz band is “cranking back up next week.” He said the Christmas concert will be held in mid December, followed by the concert band performance in March.
Golding notes that brighter days are ahead for the band program in Madison County, adding that the middle school program is in good hands with MCMS director Phillip Smith.
“It’s definitely moving in the right direction,” he said.
