Forward march: How one band prepares for parade season

As J.D. Foell addressed his students in the Stephen Decatur High School band room on Wednesday, Dec. 2, he began to evaluate his band's performance at the Pocomoke City Christmas Parade, which took place the night before.

The parade was the first of five Christmas parades — along with Berlin, Selbyville, Ocean City and Snow Hill — the 31-member band and 22-member color guard led by Karen Krummel took part in over a scheduled weeklong stretch.

"How do you think you did last night," Foell asked his students.

The response was mixed.

"The performance in front of the judges stand," he said. "Was that equal to any rehearsal we had here?"

"No," his students responded.

"I agree," Foell said.

The teacher had previously warned his students about the length of the parade and how fatigue might set in by the end of the march. He had stressed the importance of conditioning and proper posture, having the students make sure their instruments are held in the air and not pointed to the ground, so the sound can project better.

"That's the way all these parades are," he said. "By the time we got to the end, you were all like wet noodles. It's not the adjective I want to use, but it's appropriate."

"It's like an electricity"

Foell is in his 24th year as band director at Decatur. The parades have been part of the job since the beginning.

"I call it hell week and I say that lovingly," he said about this first week of December, which includes a stretch of back-to-back-to-back days of parades.

While music is given to students prior to Halloween for them to memorize, after the holiday is when class time is devoted to the Christmas parades.

For every two days inside — where the band concentrates on music quality and memorization — the band spends three outside, where it learns the marching routine for the reviewing stand. As the band rehearses outside, Foell makes sure his students walk in step, both individually and as a unit, because there are times it has to move together, and he makes sure they start and stop marching together.

To be successful, each move is intricately designed. As the band practiced marching in a hallway on a rainy day, Foell and the band's drum major took a tape measure before and after the students marched to make sure each student remained exactly three steps behind the other.

"As simple as it might seem, once you put an instrument in front of a kid’s face, all of a sudden, it changes," he said.

Over the course of the parade, as the drummers play a cadence throughout its duration, when there is a large group of spectators, Foell will signal for the band to perform the memorized song — "Angels We Have Heard On High" this year.

"My idea of a parade is that you’re there to entertain wherever the community is," he said. "Yeah, it’s about the competition, but people want to be entertained."

The moment of truth is the 90 seconds or so the band has in front of the reviewing stand, home of the judges who evaluate each band and determine who wins. In the parades the band marched in, the group is typically evaluated by three metrics, with scores that add up to 100 points — marching (20 points), music (20) and general effect (40).

"Everybody’s there. It’s like an electricity," Foell said about the reviewing stand. "It’s just like, 'let’s go, let’s do this', and hopefully we can knock on wood and everything works out."

While students enjoy the experience of playing music for a crowd, they also get into a competitive spirit when parade season comes along.

"There’s just kind of a thing where we always want to try and one up the other schools," said senior trombone player Chase Dolbey. "It’s just been the mentality that’s kind of encased everything throughout all four of my years here."

"That's the reason why we're so picky"

On the chalkboard in Foell's classroom, he listed the six schools that took part in Pocomoke's parade in the order of how they finished. One by one, next to each school, he wrote how many points each band earned.

Decatur was fourth on the list. But the number he wrote next to it — 92.1 — shocked the students. The class bursted into cheer, high-fiving each other, proud of the mark. But Foell had some other thoughts.

"That stings," he said. "Four-tenths of a point to tie, five-tenths of a point to beat Crisfield."

From there, it was time to review what happened.

"I've heard rumblings amongst you about how picky I am. 'Why is he so picky and why does he always look at the details and why does it matter,' " he said to his students. "I'll show you why."

He then wrote a 86.7 next to the 92.1, representing last year's score. A dramatic improvement, despite many new faces and the departure of familiar ones. Foell graduated 24 seniors last school year, while the majority of the color guard is new to the program this year.

"That's the reason why we're so picky," he said, as he was about to play a video of the band's performance in Pocomoke to watch with his students, as they prepared for the parade in Berlin the next night and the others the rest of the week. "That's the reason why we're so picky."

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