JC's June 2009 Report
The Kilties began their busy month of June with a full corps camp at our home base, Gilmore Middle School the weekend of June 13th and 14th. The finishing touches were put on our 2009 field production titled “Renaissance Le Parte Due”. Great weather and great attitudes allowed us to make great strides cleaning the show. On Saturday night following rehearsal, the Kilties were treated to a private performance by the 2008 defending DCA mini corps champion “Star United”. Our friends from Indiana assembled their corps in the acoustically wonderful loading dock area of Gilmore and performed their show for us as a sort of dress rehearsal for their public debut the following day at the Illinois Brass Band Championships on Sunday afternoon. The Gilmore parking lot was goose-bump city. The performance was, in a word, awesome. What a treat! Special thanks to Star United members / Kiltie alumni Frank “El Guapo” Cardenas and Jeff Banyots for helping to arrange this special event. It was one of the coolest things ever!
Sunday’s rehearsal session was capped off with some fine full show run-throughs. To me, the show really felt solid for early June. I left rehearsal camp feeling really good about where the corps was at and looking forward to our upcoming 3 gig weekend.
On Saturday June 20th, the Kilties were slated to do a parade in Libertyville, IL, a concert at the Chicago Highland Games, and a parade in Elk Grove Village, IL. Southeastern Wisconsin and Northeastern Illinois had been pounded Friday night by sever thunder storms and in some cases tornados, causing severe flooding in some areas, but Saturday weather was good… 80 to 85 degrees and sunny. About half the corps opted to take the bus (me included) and we departed from the Wal-Mart parking lot at 7:15 AM. After warm ups, and such, we stepped onto the parade rout at about 9:30 AM. The Libertyville parade is always well attended and Main Street is always lined with Kiltie fans. The rousing ovations were welcomed, but the constant stopping every block or so made the short parade seem much longer. I’m not sure what was going on in front of us, but the constant stopping was bordering on the ridiculous.
An early lunch and a little down time was waiting for us at the end of the parade. Then it was off the big Chicago Highland Games at the Chicago Polo Grounds. It was our second ever appearance at the games, and I was excited to be back. Crowds of 10,000 or more are common, and a large number of attendees are kilted just like us.
Logistically, this gig turned out to be a challenge. Parking was a problem, even for the bus, and the grounds were soggy and muddy from the previous evening storms, not exactly optimal conditions for white spats. The polo grounds are next to a championship golf course, and the horn line found a secluded little area behind the grounds keeper’s shed next to a practice putting green to warm up. The area had great acoustics, and I thought we sounded fantastic. Then we took the long march through the grounds to our performance area.
Scott had scouted out the grounds earlier in the day and had chosen an area that was a bit more intimate and centralized than the area we performed in 2 years ago. It was near the area where all of the various individual clan tents were grouped, very near the Clan Buchanan tent. All of the Kiltie membership are proud associate members of Clan Buchanan, so we were delighted to see so many Buchanan clan clad folks in the audience, including former Kiltie junior drum major and the man responsible for us all being clan members, Bob Cormak. We put on a great performance and I was delighted at how well received it was, especially for a non-drum corps savvy audience. The boisterous crowd kept cheering until the last of us had left the staging area. It did my heart proud to play for all of my fellow clan members, and I think we made them all proud that we are their official musical representatives.
After the performance, Scott announced that our scheduled 6PM appearance in the Elk Grove Village parade had been cancelled. The parade route was under water after being pelted with 4.5 inches of rain the night before. So the bus riding contingent decided to stick around for an hour and a half or so to give us a chance to meander through the Highland Games. I searched in vain for some Scottish haggis to dine on, but had to settle for authentic Scottish Meat Pie which was delicious. I did some shopping at the many cool Scottish and Celtic vendors on hand, and watched a little of the Scottish caber toss competition and a little of the pipe band competition before heading home early at 4:30 or so.
Sunday found us back at Gilmore for another great rehearsal session. We clarified our entrance onto the field, which doubles as our on field warm up. Basically we set up a parade block in the end zone, and play the first half of Auld Lang Syne which takes us to the 50 yard line. Then we disperse to set up the opening set. It is very cool, and oozes Kilties! Our final run-through of the day was smoking, and it set us up nicely for our big field show trifecta the following week.
Saturday June 27th found the Kilties back home at Gilmore rehearsing and preparing for our first public performance of the 2009 field show at the half time of the Racine Raiders football home opener at Historic Horlick Field. After breakfast and stretch, we broke up into sectionals where we spent much of the morning. After lunch we hit the field for work mostly on the closer. At about 3:30 PM we ran each of the 5 show movements top to bottom with the full corps. I was impressed with the extremely high level of retention that was displayed during our runs of Movements I through IV. They were pretty much at the level that we had left off last week and in some cases a little better. I think we surpassed the expectations of the staff and it gave us a lot of confidence moving forward. At 4PM or so, we took an extended break and dressed from the waist down for an “almost dress run” of the show. This was done mainly to get the membership used to marching the show with an extra 10 pounds of weight tugging at their waist. It was a very good run and it set us up well for our evening performance.
After dinner we dressed for our performance and had a nice slow warm up. At 8:15 we walked en-masse two blocks east to Horlick Field where we waited for the one of the longest ever first halves of football to be completed. For the record, the Raiders won by the unbelievable score of 87 -7 and the first half took about a half hour longer than a normal half of football to complete. About the time that we arrived at the stadium, a light rain began to fall, so we all waited patiently under the home stands for our turn to take the field.
The official paid attendance for the game was 739 (a little light for a typical Raider game but pretty good for a non-conference exhibition game in the rain), but I would say that there were a little under 500 in the stands for half time, mostly hovelling under umbrellas. That is until we hit the field to a wonderful standing ovation as we played ourselves onto the field with Parade Syne. Despite the less than optimal conditions, we put on a smoking show, IMHO the best first show effort I’ve ever had the pleasure to march with the Kilties. We were rewarded by wonderful ovations throughout by the home town crowd. After circling the wagons around Scott after the performance, we were all delighted to hear that Scott thought that the show exceeded his expectations and that we had set ourselves up well on our journey to excellence. I got a kick out of watching most of the crowd leave the stadium after our performance was done, many of them thanking us for the great show on their way out. The Racine Journal Times reported in the Sunday paper that less than 100 people stayed to watch the 2nd half of the game which made me smile, not because I didn’t want them to stay and watch our own Racine Raiders complete their phenomenal win, but because it meant so many people made an effort to stay in the rain long enough to see the Kilties.
Sunday morning found the Kiltie bus riding contingent, minus me, leaving the Wal-Mart parking lot at 7:15 AM on their way to the Madison area and a busy day consisting of a 4 hour rehearsal block, a performance at the DCI show “Drums on Parade” sponsored by the Madison Scouts, and a second performance at the MACBDA band circuit just south of Madison in Oregon, WI. I had originally planned on being on the bus at 7AM, but unfortunately my lovely wife Lisa’s string of bad luck which began April 16th is continuing. Lisa tore her ACL, MCL, various tendons and broke her tibia ski racing in Breckenridge, CO on April 16th, and had reconstructive knee surgery on Friday June 12th. She was just starting to get around a little better on her crutches when she had a mishap on Friday June 26th at home, falling down our stairs and breaking 3 ribs. OUCH!!! Needless to say, I can’t leave Lisa at home by herself for more than a few hours at a time, so I had to miss rehearsal until my mom and my sister Jane could come over and sit with Lisa. I jumped in the car at 1PM and headed straight to the show site at Middleton High School, arriving at 3PM where I relaxed for a spell at the Madison Scout Tailgate Party with a few early arriving Kilts, Kiltie alumni, and our number one fans, Beth Myers-Landbo’s mom and dad, who have been to more Kiltie performances and parades than any non-marching member this century!
We suited up for 5PM warm ups before reporting for our 6:05 gate time. The show was a sell out and the stadium was packed! The crowd loved our moving warm up and gave us great ovations after movements 1 and 2, then shot out of their seats after we rushed the stands and introduced ourselves up close and personal from the pit area at the end of Movement 3. Charging the stands again in the big full corps company front at the end of the closer had them on their feet well before the final cut off, and when the horns snapped down, we soaked in the great standing-O. I thought it was a very good performance and I was really proud trooping the stands to a very boisterous obviously pro-Kiltie crowd. We proudly marched our way all the way out of the stadium, past the uniformed Pioneer corps, and all the way through the parking lot where Scott told us that he thought that we had pulled off another fine performance, on the level with Saturday night, and maybe slightly better in the areas that we worked on at the morning rehearsal. Mission accomplished.
We were all treated to a great snack of ham and turkey sandwiches, power-bars, water-melon and other assorted fruits and juices in the parking lot next to the equipment truck (which is looking good, having just been freshly repainted). Just what the doctor ordered to recharge the batteries before we moved on to Oregon High School Stadium for our 9:30 performance to cap off the MACBDA band show.
We arrived in Oregon at around 8PM and did a light warm-up before entering the packed to capacity stadium at 9:30 for our performance. I was pretty excited; remembering back to last year when this great Oregon crowd gave us what was probably our best reception of the year. This year, the Oregon audience gave it up for us again. The first big hit in the opener was greeted by a slew of people shooting from their seats, and by the end of the 3rd movement, it was out of control! The crowd gave us one of the longest in-show standing ovations I have ever been a part of (and we have been treated to many over the years). Drum Major Kurt Klingenmeyer was smiling ear-to-ear from the podium as he was forced to wait and wait and wait before starting Movement 4. How cool is that!?! We fed off the crowd and delivered our best show of the weekend and soaked in the ovations. What a great audience.
Scott congratulated us on our performance and said he thought that we had improved all 3 shows which is always the goal. Kurt also congratulated us on our performances and said he was extremely proud of us. We all felt pretty darn good as we made our way back to the bus and our cars. Along the way we were greeted by the very young members of a marching band that had been in the stands for our performance, having been brought by their band director to watch all the great MACBDA competitive bands. They were cheering us like rock stars, and it made us all feel pretty proud to be Kilties. Although the busy day had left me and my fellow Kilties a bit weary, I smiled all the way home.
Til Next Time,
J.C.
