On September 8th, at Hillgrove’s first home game of the season, the Hillgrove Marching Band performed the first part of their show entitled “After Dark”. The band performs the show, not only for half-time at football games, but also in competitions within the region, state, and out-of-state as well. Tobias Haymes, who cues the start of the show, explains, “It’s a factory, during the night time, and the machines come alive. The machine is made up of the band. So when we come out of the machine, there's a whole story to it, then in the end we all go back in the machine like nothing happened.” Drum major, Kerigan O’Kelley, further describes, “...the factory produces marching machines and it’s like the machine comes to life, but then it breaks and there’s this whole big storyline that goes with it.” The show, which features a 70 foot prop, is started by a singular percussionist, Tobias, signaling the rest of the band to begin by tapping a beat on the rail of the prop. Each of the band sections then reveal themselves by marching out from behind the prop using precise robotic movements, followed by the color guard.
When asked her opinion on the performance, Kerigan replied, “I thought it was okay. There were some things we could improve on but, for the most part, I think it went really well for the rehearsal time we had. I think we could work on just playing more together and with a better tone quality. Although, I think we did pretty good on our drill and kind of just going with what we needed to in a difficult situation that we were in during the performance. We had something go wrong with the prop so we had to fix it mid-performance. It kind of messed up our performance time a little bit but I think we did a great job of just staying on top of it and going with what was needed.” Tobias expressed, “It was definitely a little hectic because we hadn’t really done it under pressure or time before, so there were a couple of things that went wrong but we pulled it together as best we could. As a band, I think we did a good job at recovering well from the situation. As a drumline, I think we did exactly what we needed to do to help the band get where we needed to be.”
“I like the movement we’ve been working on, we’re going to show it on Friday night.”, Kerigan explained, “It’s basically like, the machine breaks and it gets all dark. The drill's really cool. There’s like this guy on stilts and it's crazy!” Tobias claims his favorite part of the show is, “Definitely the third movement, which we haven’t played for everyone but will on Friday after the game. It’s like the climax of the story: there’s a fight scene and a lot of drums, which is why I like it.” The marching band will be performing part one through three this Friday after the home game. There will lots of surprises so you will not want to miss it!
When asked her opinion on the performance, Kerigan replied, “I thought it was okay. There were some things we could improve on but, for the most part, I think it went really well for the rehearsal time we had. I think we could work on just playing more together and with a better tone quality. Although, I think we did pretty good on our drill and kind of just going with what we needed to in a difficult situation that we were in during the performance. We had something go wrong with the prop so we had to fix it mid-performance. It kind of messed up our performance time a little bit but I think we did a great job of just staying on top of it and going with what was needed.” Tobias expressed, “It was definitely a little hectic because we hadn’t really done it under pressure or time before, so there were a couple of things that went wrong but we pulled it together as best we could. As a band, I think we did a good job at recovering well from the situation. As a drumline, I think we did exactly what we needed to do to help the band get where we needed to be.”
“I like the movement we’ve been working on, we’re going to show it on Friday night.”, Kerigan explained, “It’s basically like, the machine breaks and it gets all dark. The drill's really cool. There’s like this guy on stilts and it's crazy!” Tobias claims his favorite part of the show is, “Definitely the third movement, which we haven’t played for everyone but will on Friday after the game. It’s like the climax of the story: there’s a fight scene and a lot of drums, which is why I like it.” The marching band will be performing part one through three this Friday after the home game. There will lots of surprises so you will not want to miss it!