Flathead High marching band performs its only halftime show of the year tonight

The swagger wasn't there.

That flamboyance, that nervous energy that comes with being a drummer.

Nowhere to be found on the practice field.

Instead, all 10 drummers stumbled tentatively on their first run-through 10 days ago of "Crunch Time," the first song of tonight's Flathead High School's marching band halftime show.

From the sideline, all marched forward - sort of.

Two or three beats apart from each other. More walking than marching. Some taking bigger steps than others. Ten heads staring down at music, sheets of marching directions, or the ground.

As the drummers marched, a few half-heartedly and haphazardly played portions of "Crunch Time." Others just concentrated - with mixed success - on being in the right spot at the right time.

Six had never been in a football game's halftime show before. And none of the 10 were seniors.

A question swirled in band director Allen Slater's mind: Who would step up as leaders in the drum line?

Maybe half of the 10 have played on drum sets in garage bands.

The basic hand-foot coordination was there.

But marching, maneuvering and meshing with others -that's much different than being a garage band's sole drummer, able to change beat patterns and drum fills on a whim.

These 10 must learn to play and move as one with each other -and with almost 130 other musicians.

"Percussion is the pulse of the band. We mess up, we throw off the rest of the band," sophomore drummer Aamon Jaeger said.

Flathead High School's band

program plays only one halftime show a year, and usually has less than two weeks to go from Marching 101 lessons to performing before a football game crowd.

The reason dates to a 1982 Montana court case on 1972's Title IX federal law requiring equality between the sexes in sports.

That 1982 ruling addressed differences in girls and boys teams at Columbia Falls, Missoula and Whitehead - with a tangential ripple effect that all Montana high-school bands must play at an equal number of boys and girls sporting events.

Girls basketball is much conducive to pep-band performances than volleyball. So, since the 1980s, Flathead High's band has performed at girls basketball games and at slightly fewer boys basketball games as the most effective way of complying with the law.

For 2005, that equation left room for one in-the-stands gig at Sept. 23's homing game, plus tonight's show during halftime of the Flathead-Missoula Big Sky game.

When Slater designed tonight's show, he considered numerous factors.

Such as:

The numbers of seasoned seniors and rookie sophomores in the band. Concentrating the sound at midfield. The band uniforms' colors of black, white and orange -band members facing different directions will display different color patterns to spectators. The difficulties of the music. What the show will look like at an angle from the bleachers.

Another factor complicated things.

The marching band's 136 members are split among four classes, each meeting at a different period each day for slightly less than a hour on the practice field.

Three days ago, the 136 practiced tonight's show as an entire band for the first time in an after-school session. Until then, the drummers practiced without melodies. And until then, the other 126 practiced without any percussion.

"At first, it was weird to do it without the drums. Then we got used to it, and now we don't realize that they're not there," sophomore clarinetist Sarah Stratton said. Sophomore sousaphone player Tiffany Klein said: "You kinda get (the beat) in your head."

And 10 days ago, Slater pondered something else.

Would the band play three or four songs for tonight?

The playlist already had "Crunch Time," written in 1993 specifically for marching bands; Usher's 2004 hit "Yeah!," which the students picked for the show; and the school song "On Old Flathead," which is really "On Wisconsin!" under an alias. Slater would add Rick James' 1981 hit "Super Freak" only if he thought the students could handle the extra music and pressure.

"What I saw looked good," he said.

The next day, "Super Freak" was added to the show.

Eight days to showtime.

Rain sprinkled on the students. Breezes snatched loose papers of music and marching instructions.

Football season. Marching bands. Rain and wind come with the territory.

Meanwhile, trombone players Aaron Rold, a senior, and junior John Andenoro had to learn how to dance around each other.

It was a box-step-like move - both facing forward, one circling back, the other circling forward. The entire band tried to master this move.

Andenoro was taller with longer legs than Rold. Then there were trombone slides, which continuously jab in and out to whack the unsuspecting.

Again and again, the Rold and Andenoro - along with a few dozen other pairs - talked and walked themselves through the maneuver. "John, you gotta go out a bit further," Rold coached.

In the distance, Slater's voice boomed over a portable public-address system to a squad elsewhere: "Listen. It's a box dance, not a drunken brawl. Go look at some old movies where they draw feet on the floor. It looks like a diamond."

Rold, Andenoro and the other trombonists were a veteran squad that perfected the move while others struggled.

"It's kinda like driving a car," Andenoro said. "At first, you just think about this or think about that. Then it all becomes automatic."

"Then you crash," a trumpet player interjected. By now, musicianship was on Slater's radar.

"I'm not happy at where the music is," he said.

Slater gave his students a progressive set of goals. First: Get the feet looking right, get the horns up so they look good to the audience.

Second: Be at the right place in the field at the right spot in the music.

When people watched marching bands, they don't concentrate on individual parts, but on the whole show.

"That's because people listen with their eyes. Their eyes are drawn to things out of place," Slater said.

The final goal was to play the music well.

Practice after practice, the students consciously and subconsciously experimented with new and mostly undefined roles as leaders and followers - trying one or another on for size, feeling their own ways into what is comfortable for each.

"Everyone wants that feeling that someone else knows the answers," Slater said.

Four days to showtime.

It was cold. Some dressed for the weather. Some didn't. No one wanted to be outdoors.

Tough.

It was Monday morning, and the band had marched two days earlier in the University of Montana's homecoming parade in Missoula.

On the field, prior to each Monday session, Slater had the students talk about their impressions of the other bands in Saturday's parade.

He had an ulterior motive. Slater wanted his students to mention the bands that performed with precision - role models for the Flathead band's final stretch of rehearsals.

Each group of youths brought up the parade's imported band from Japan - the Senshu University Drum and Brass Corps, which stood out because of its almost inhuman snap, precision and uniformity.

"This week, during our marching show, that's our choice on what we want to look like," Slater said.

Three days to showtime.

Meanwhile, five minutes to the final full rehearsal in front of about 150 parents at the football stadium, the flag girls tweaked their routines again, and for the last time.

Senior flag girls Marilyn Bennett and Lauren Voeltz choreographed the routines, especially the feature performance during "Yeah!" over the summer. Until Tuesday's final run-through, those routines kept changing as the eight girls thought about this or added that.

The final last-minute tweak was a flashier, but simpler up-and-down arm move in "Yeah!"

"We wanted it to be more attention getting," Bennett said.

The 136 youths practiced as an entire band for the first and only time for two hours late Tuesday afternoon.

No sheet music allowed. Everything memorized. Or at least convincingly faked.

The band kicked up to a higher level.

"There's a general focus when you're in (the entire) group. When we're together as a group, we're feeding off each other," said head drum major Amanda Dudis, a senior.

At the end of the two-hour practice, and just before the final run-through for the parents, Slater gave a pep talk to the band.

"If you have a powerful and obnoxious instrument - dare I say 'the brass' -pump up the sound," he said.

The syncopated, staccato "Yeah!" was the parents' show's best performance - up a notch from the other three songs. Punchier, crisper, sassier. Last spring, the students picked "Yeah!" as their choice for tonight's show. It's not a nostalgia piece for their parents. It's not from their middle-aged band director's generation. "Yeah!" is not a musical version of eat-your-vegetables-because-they're-good-for-you.

Some of tonight's flourishes -such the flags in "Yeah!" or some percussion and tuba moves in "Super Freak" - came from the students.

Sophomores watch juniors and senior suggest and try moves, some successfully and not some. The idea is that the sophomores will then feel comfortable in the next couple of years to experiment for future shows.

Slater said: "I want them to know that this is a safe place to have an idea and try it. Creativity is not something to be feared. … There is a place in this very structured place to be creative."

One day to showtime.

The final tweaks.

Spacing between people while pinwheeling needed work. A few students didn't check the straightness of their lines after a move. A few others didn't stand perfectly still at the right times.

The band was good enough at this point that minor mistakes now stood out.

As Slater earlier noted: "There's no place out there on the field to hide."

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com.