Day 4: The Hardest Day is Over for the Kids at Band Camp

Day 4:

Thursday is always the hardest day of camp. Everybody’s tired, sore, and cranky. It didn’t help that it was the hottest day yet with absolutely zero clouds in the sky. That sun is quite intense when there are no clouds and no shade.

Thursday is also the day where more kids start sitting out of parts of rehearsals for sickness, soreness, injuries, and other random reasons. It’s a very physical activity, so to have nine hours of rehearsal every day and not get sick or injured is quite impressive.

Trumpets played Reveille again this morning (and I can’t believe the luck I’m having, not hearing it) and the day started as usual. This morning we learned the rest of our second movement before lunch. It was pretty hot and uncomfortable, but the kids did a great job. Today I made sure to ask each kid this: “Are you wearing sunscreen?” I wish I could say all of them were. A common excuse for no sunscreen is “I don’t get burnt.” Even so, our record has been pretty good on sunburn injuries this year.

We had corn dogs for lunch! I just had to share because I was so excited.

The music part of rehearsal today went really well. Elon came back very excited about how the ballad, “Adagio for Strings” is going. Today we added another hour of drill learning to the afternoon, and started learning movement three (the ballad). It was still pretty hot, but the third movement isn’t as fast-paced as the rest of the show. That helped… a little. Mallory, the junior drum major, gets to conduct the third movement, so she got some main podium time today.

Dinner wasn’t nearly as exciting as lunch, but tomorrow we get local pizza.

This evening we learned more pages to movement three and put music to it. We now can play and march almost half of the show, and without any crashing or burning. We’re starting to see some of the fabrics the guard will be using to create more illusions of musicians being “attached.” We also have a guard member dancing with a viola as a prop, and we saw that for the first time today.

Some of the woodwind players came to me so excited after their evening warm-up because “Mr. Jamison gave us candy!” Apparently he had given each woodwind player one Sour Patch Kid from his bribe gift this morning. This kind of behavior from Elon is very rare, so the kids wanted to mark the unique occasion.

We also got another look at the space station, which flew overheard at about 9:05 tonight. I distracted the kids by pointing up at the sky and getting all of the adults watching to do the same. Oops… but it was something I didn’t want them to miss!

At the end of the night – about 9:20 p.m. (we pretty much couldn’t see anything) -- we ran the entire show up to where we know. It is always cool to get to this point. It makes us extremely proud and reminds us why we dedicate ourselves so much to this activity.

A skunk ran across the camp upon our arrival. That was thrilling. He’ll probably hang out all night.

Tonight is a free night for the kids. Usually, because it’s Thursday (the worst day to get through), many of the kids just go to bed early. The adults, on the other hand, have a special treat (entirely legal I assure you, just a tiny secret from the kids… you veteran adults know what I’m talking about). We haven’t had that yet; we have to wait for the kids to go to bed. In the meantime, four of us are going to go rehearse a bit for the talent show. Me, Elon, Ben, and one of the chaperones, Jude, play in an Irish band (Seacht) and are going to perform at the talent show on Saturday.

Tomorrow is a new day, and hopefully the kids will be well rested after an early evening. Maybe we’ll finish movement three… and hopefully it won’t be too hot!