Back in the mid-90s, Mac had long hair down to his shoulders

When it came to audition for any drum corps in the mid 90′s I’m pretty certain that you had to request the audition material by snail mail, but I don’t remember.  I recall practicing the audition material, but not being extremely confident.  I showed up on the cold November morning in Madison, Wisconsin at East High School for auditions.  Back then there was only one audition weekend, and you had to show up in person.  I quickly realized that this audition wasn’t going to be easy.  There were about 700 people who descended on Madison to get their moment to shine. Only 38 slots were open in the whole corps.  That’s when the total number of members in a DCI corps was 128 (today you can have 150).  My audition wasn’t until around dinner time so I went back to the motel where I was staying and played through the audition material on my tuba over and over.  It wasn’t getting any easier, and I was convinced that I wasn’t going to make it.  I went back to East High and hung out in the hallway for a good hour before it was my time to go in for the music portion of the audition.  I was incredibly nervous and the pressure seemed to get stronger with each person going in and coming back out.  About five minutes before it was my time suddenly something changed.  In all honestly I don’t know what it was, but all the nervousness went away.  Maybe it’s because I decided that I had nothing to lose.  It was either meant to be or it wasn’t.  I went in with a high level of confidence and played through the audition material and a piece that I brought in.  It was something that involved me hitting the tuba as a piece of percussion periodically which in retrospect came off as something different and unique.  I didn’t play everything perfectly, but I could tell that the panel of staff members were impressed.  The panel of seven made some comments, asked me a few questions, and I left feeling very good about the whole thing.

The next day was the marching portion of the auditions, and I got to meet a couple of veteran members from the contra line.  They were friendly, but intimidating… certainly guys that I wouldn’t want to mess with, and it was evident that I would have to rise to a whole different level to match their level of strength and fearlessness.  The marching part of the weekend seemed to go fine, and then it was time for the applicants to hear the decisions.  Veteran members did not have to audition to be in the corps again and there were a lot of members from ’94 returning.  There must’ve only been four slots in the contra line, and I believe there were at least 17 hoping for one of those positions.  The news came down…..and I did NOT get into the corps.  I was disappointed, but I decided that it wasn’t meant to be.  I could’ve tried to get into one of the other corps over the next weeks, but the Scouts was where I wanted to be.  They told me that although I didn’t make the corps I was chosen as an alternate which meant that if someone got injured, dropped out, or decided not to come back then I would be eligible for that slot.  Nowadays the corps travel with alternates, but this was not the case back then.  I went back to Iowa City to resume my second year at the U of Iowa with a pretty good attitude.

About two weeks later I received a phone call from the Madison Scouts’ Executive Director, Scott Stewart.  He was calling to tell me some news.  Scott told me that someone from the ’94 contra line was not returning after all, and asked me if I was still interested in being in the corps.  I didn’t hesitate and accepted the position.  Then he proceeded to say “With his death, comes your life in the Madison Scouts”.  It seems like a pretty profound thing to say, and it’s almost like Scott was looking into a crystal ball.  Like he could see what effect this was going to have on my life, but that’s the thing about the experience of being a Madison Scout.  It has a profound effect on nearly everyone that marches in that uniform.  Often times it doesn’t really become evident until many years later when you have been away from that fraternal experience, but there’s something really meaningful that sticks with you.

As I get older I realize that being a musician is so much more than just picking up an instrument and playing the notes.  I’m very thankful to all the musical influences that shaped me over the years, but I’m most appreciative to my parents for giving me a childhood that was so full of music.  It’s been a incredible musical journey for me.

Mac

Since the inception of this project, we have been overwhelmed by the support that we have received via social media.  Did you know that our Facebook page currently has over 1,350 “Likes” and that we have over 800 followers on Twitter?  And chances are good that if you are reading this you are one of the thousands of folks who are following us through these sources.  That is why we are asking everyone to get one person excited about “Scouts Honor” today.  Pick that person who you’d like to take to see this movie, and get them onboard!

It’s a roundtable discussion with Jeff Sorenson and his co-hosts, Mac Sexton, and Linda McDonald of “Chad Sexton’s Drum City”. The filmmakers will talk to the panel about “Scouts Honor: Inside a Marching Brotherhood”, the documentary about the Madison Scouts drum and bugle corps.

“Drum Smack” is not just a radio show, you can watch it live! Submit a question that you’d like the hosts to ask the filmmakers by emailing jeff@drumsmack.com prior to the show.

The one hour show is broadcast live from Los Angeles every Tuesday night at 9pm (pacific).  Tune in to watch the show live by going to http://www.tradiov.com/la

Click HERE to watch the video of this episode.  The segment featuring “Scouts Honor” starts around the 16 minute mark.  Enjoy!

Following our brother during a high school band parade in Omaha, Nebraska. (1979)

Music was ever-present in my life from a very young age.  I was born with much older siblings who played the tuba, and bass in various ensembles.  They took after our father who played tuba from his childhood through college and beyond.  My Dad was in the Harvard marching band in the late 40′s and early 50′s, and got to play one of the world’s largest tuba’s that was created for John Phillip Sousa’s band.  I think I was about five years old when we took a trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts for one of his marching band reunions.  Now that I think about it, it wasn’t just that members of my family played in bands, but my family was always involved in a strong way with musical groups.  My Dad was on the board of the Omaha Symphony, and played in the band for the Omaha Press Club Gridiron show.  My folks were instrumental in the founding of a musical ensemble that would play a concert at the oldest cemetery in Omaha every Memorial Day.  They helped coordinated a welcome party made up of band students at the airport when Peter Schickele (aka PDQ Bach) arrived in town for a performance with the symphony.  It involved the band members playing nose flutes which were like kazoos, and later Schickele was at our house for a big party and two viola players from the symphony performed his “Concerto for Viola, four hands”, where they faced each other with the viola in between, fingering the strings while two more musicians at the end of a long rosined string moved back and forth over the strings.  This was just one of many big parties that involved a variety of musicians in our home.  My Mother would pull out all the stops with the food and beverages and they would go late into the night.  At some point during the night someone would start playing our baby grand piano and a group would gather around to sing along.  Music was something that brought people together and had a much deeper meaning beyond the actual notes on the page.

When it was time to pick an instrument to play in the elementary school band, my father said, “You can play anything you want, but we have three tubas in the basement”.  Also the sage words of advice from my parents were “Every band needs a tuba player”.  So I started off with the baritone when I was nine years old, knowing very well that I would move up to the tuba within a year.  I was fortunate to have private lessons with the principal tuba player from the Omaha Symphony, who was not only a great teacher, but shared his love of movies with me.  I also had close connections with the band directors at the middle school and high school levels since my siblings had gone through their programs and my parents were closely involved.  I played tuba in concert band, marching band, and picked up the bass guitar to play in jazz band, and a handful of garage bands.

My sister had great times marching sousaphone in the University of Nebraska marching band in the early 80′s.  We would drive from Omaha to Lincoln early in the morning on game days to make sure we were there for the band’s warmup at the music building on the UNL campus.  The giant college marching band barely fit in one room and they would blast through their warmups.  The drums and brass playing at high decibels in a room with nothing to soak up the sound.  I was in awe.  Again my Mother went above and beyond and would cater a gourmet tailgate party for the tuba section of the band at least once a year.  I decided to go to the University of Iowa for college and played sousaphone in the Hawkeye Marching Band.  There was a very strong social element to the HMB, and since “Hell Week” began in mid-August it was terrific to have a bunch of friends before the first day of classes.  There were lots of parties, rituals, and I had a blast belting out the fight songs in a section of 20+ high stepping sousaphones.

Rehearsing with the Sousie section in the Hawkeye Marching Band (1992)

It was in the Fall of ’94, during my third year in the HMB that a girl in the marching band invited me over to watch the DCI finals tapes that had just arrived in the mail.  She marched in the color guard of the Dubuque Colts in ’93 and ’94.  Drum and bugle corps was not new to me. I had gone to a couple of drum corps shows in Omaha in the late 80′s at Maverick Stadium.  I remember seeing the Blue Devils perform and the Santa Clara Vanguard with their “Phantom of the Opera” show.  I was certainly blown away by the level of performance of the drum corps, but I thought to myself why would I give up my summer to do that?  While I watched the ’94 tapes with a number of people on that fateful evening I realized that I was going to turn 21 in a couple of months and after that I would be ineligible to march in a DCI corps.  She saw the wheels turning in my head and I started to ask her questions.  Something inside me said that I had to go for it.  Since I only had one year to try to march one of these groups I knew I wanted to try out for a top six corps.  Distance was certainly a consideration since there would be Winter camps that I would have to travel to monthly. Rockford, Illinois (home base of the Phantom Regiment), Rosemont, Illinois (home base of the Cavaliers) and Madison, Wisconsin (home base of the Madison Scouts) were all about the same distance, roughly a three hour drive from Iowa City.  She had spent a lot of time with the Scouts on tour that summer while marching in the Colts and thought that I would fit in well with them.  It wasn’t long before I had made up my mind that I was going to audition with the Scouts.  I really liked their ’94 show and decided they were the corps for me.

Mac

(This story will be continued in part two. Coming soon!)

Screengrab from a scene involving Hunter & Madison Scouts' visual staff member, Nick Monzi in Mac's Final Cut Pro X project.

We must have hundreds of hours worth of HD video and audio for “Scouts Honor”.  Our crew shot on and off for just over a year (from July 2011 through August 2012).  Months were spent combing through the material and now we are assembling it into a story.  There are many hours of great material, and there are a million different ways that it could be edited together.  The trick is to figure out how to create the best story.  Our goal has been to expose a wide audience to this activity that we know and love, and in order to do that we need to keep the audience of this film interested, and invested in the characters.  We want to bring our audience along on the roller coaster ride of drum corps, and leave them wanting more. Perhaps we can inspire them to join a drum & bugle corps or to go seek out a live show that is coming to their town after watching “Scouts Honor”.

We’ve already put in many days of editing, and the next weeks will be spent cutting together scenes, sequences and moments that may or may not make the final cut of “Scouts Honor”.  We can’t get to that final cut without taking our best stab at the first rough cut of the film.  Meanwhile (while Mac is picture editing) Tom and Garrick are venturing into the land of music rights.  At times we forget that this documentary is based on a musical activity.  So one of the most important parts of this whole process is securing synchronization rights for the Madison Scouts’ music that we are featuring in the film.  This can be a long process and we appreciate your patience as we navigate these waters.

There’s a good chance that you’ll see another glimpse of the movie in the form of a new teaser soon, but as of right now we are working hard to bring you the best documentary that we can.  If you are excited about “Scouts Honor” please continue to tell your friends about it.  Use your social connections to get the word out and encourage them to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & Google+.

Thank you for your support!

Mac & Tom

Mac & Tom

We want to thank everybody who participated in “The March To The Rough Cut” fundraiser!  Thanks to your support, the campaign was a huge success and the funds raised are going to go far in the post-production activity on “Scouts Honor,” including the assembling of the rough cut of the film.

As you know, the contest portion of the fundraiser included a prize of a bonus featurette for the section of the corps who received the most votes from contributors.  We sweetened the pot at the end of the campaign by offering a feature to any section which received 150 or more votes.

As of Sunday morning, the hornline and the drumline were very close, with 99 and 78 votes respectively.  However, as the day wore on, one section pulled ahead and we are pleased to announce that the hornline is the winner of “The March To The Rough Cut” fundraising contest!

The final tally is as follows:

Hornline: 150
Drumline: 84
Color Guard: 18
Front Ensemble: 15

All in all we raised  $5,766 throughout this campaign, which is fantastic!  That amount of money was raised in only 19 days! As you can tell by the total number of votes cast, a number of contributors did not place votes and instead wished to simply contribute to the project.  If you missed this campaign, but still want to help out our contribution links will remain open.  Just click on the “contribute” link above and check out the reward levels.  It’s a great way to guarantee that you’ll get a copy of the movie once it’s available.

Congratulations to all of the hornline supporters and, once again, a huge thank you to all who participated and made this fundraiser such a success!

Mac and Tom

Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far.  The response has been great!  We would just ask that everyone please pick up the phone, send some emails, and use your social media today to help to spread the word about this final day of “The March To The Rough Cut.”  Get your favorite section represented!  Remember that all of the funds will be going directly to the costs associated with the post-production of “Scouts Honor,” including the creation of the rough cut of the film.

Click HERE to visit the campaign page. There are two videos with Mac explaining how it works. Don’t forget to type in the section you are voting for during the PayPal checkout process.

Hi everyone!

As you may know, we are currently in the midst of a fundraiser for “Scouts Honor: Inside A Marching Brotherhood,” our feature-length documentary on the Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps.  So far the response has been very positive and we want to thank everyone who has contributed so far.

The fundraiser is called “The March To The Rough Cut,” and as the name suggests, the funds raised will be used exclusively for the purposes of post-production on the film, including the assembling of a rough cut of the movie.  This fundraiser is special in that it gives you and your friends the opportunity to directly influence the final product.

“The March To The Rough Cut” works as follows:  Simply visit the fundraiser website by clicking on the campaign page [link] and for every $10.00 that you contribute between now and 11:59 p.m. (PST) on Sunday, February 17^th, 2013, you will receive a vote.  You then use your votes and apply them to your favorite sections of the corps (drum line, horn line, color guard, and front line ensemble) and the section with the most votes at the end of the campaign will receive an exclusive feature on the DVD/Blu Ray of “Scouts Honor!”  To cast your votes, simply type your preferred section in the message panel during your Paypal check-out transaction.

However, we have upped the ante for these LAST THREE DAYS OF THE FUNDRAISER!  The new twist is simple:  Any and all sections that receive 150 or more votes during this challenge will receive their own bonus featurette on the DVD/Blu Ray.  If no section receives 150 votes, then the section with the highest overall votes will receive the feature.

That means that there are only three more days to participate in “The March To The Rough Cut,” which is still plenty of time to reach out to your friends and fellow drum corps fans and let them know about the campaign.  We are really excited about this fundraiser and with your contribution and help spreading the word, we are positive that it will be very successful.  Thank you and please click here to navigate to the campaign page for “The March To The Rough Cut” fundraiser where there are videos of Mac explaining all of the details!

Thanks everyone,

Mac and Tom

Yesterday we uploaded a video to Facebook, and received an unexpected response. While we have been posting all of our newest video clips to YouTube, we thought that posting an older teaser video to our Facebook fan page might be a good idea.  The “Scouts Honor First Show Teaser” video we posted on Sunday was a teaser that we created and released in June of 2012, but had never uploaded to Facebook.  It’s the video featuring a pep talk from Brad Green before the first show of the season.  He’s very good on camera, but honestly this is what Brad does when the cameras aren’t present.  He knows how to motivate the men of Madison. The reason that we upload these teasers, trailers, and extended clips to YouTube first is because we can track views and other analytics, but the advantage to uploading to Facebook is the tagging aspect.

We initially tagged 13 people in the video (members and staff that appear in the video), and within 24 hours this video was shared 48 times! We have never had a response quite like that. At the time of this blog we received 79 likes, and at least 20 new people found and “liked” our page due to this post. What a tremendous response!

Thank you so much for getting the word out about this post and our movie!  You are helping us get people’s attention about “Scouts Honor”.  Please keep it up!  If you like what you see…like it, post a comment, share it and tell people why you like this and why you think they would like it too.  We’re starting to make some strides on Facebook and Twitter thanks to you. Heightening our popularity can only help when it comes to securing support from corporate sponsors and film distributors.  We’ll keep you updated on the movie as we go.

Cheers,

Mac and Tom