Colts Drum Corps stops in Abbeville to rehearse

Four tour buses, filled; two semi-trailers, packed; one 20 foot panel van plus a 12 foot trailer, also packed; and two 16 passenger vans, also packed.

The Iowa Corps Colts Drum Corps came rolling into Abbeville Tuesday morning just after 9:00 a.m., which was already four and a half hours late, and unpacked themselves into the gym at Abbeville High School for a quick nap. In the meantime, the 16 volunteers traveling with the corps were busy setting up for breakfast in the back parking lot of the school. Just an average start to the day, according to Operations Director Mike Grimes - except for the late part.

The drum corps is being hosted at Abbeville High School in preparation for the Wednesday night competition at ULL’s Cajun Field. ULL’s Pride of Acadiana Marching Band is hosting the “Drums Across Cajun Field” beginning at 7:00 p.m. and is using area high school bands to host the visiting drum corps. Abbeville band director Wayne Winner said the group is traveling with about 180 people that need space to sleep, shower and, most important to Grimes, practice.

“We have 150 members to our drum corps,” said Grimes. “And their ages range from 15-21 years of age. Some of the younger first time members go through some home sickness early on, but, by the time our tour is over, they’ll never admit to having been home sick.”

The drum corps competition is a major event in the north central and eastern seaboard of America according to Winner. “Most of the older members of the corps are music majors and almost all of them have some experience with high school marching bands. Louisiana used to have a couple of small groups years ago, but there aren’t any teams in the area now.. The closest major competitors are Spirit of JSU in Troy, AL and Revolution from San Antonio, TX. I qualified for a drum corps when I was their age, but wasn’t able to work things out to take part.”

The drum corps is made up of four sections: Brass, Percussion and Drumline. The Brass includes trumpets, mellophones, baritones, euphoniums, and contrabass (Tubas). The Percussion is “The Pit”, as it has become known, that includes xylophones, chimes, keyboards and most anything else. The Drumline is the rhythm of the group - snares, tenor, bass, cymbals. The Color Guard include the flags, rifles and sabres.

The Colts belong to Drum Corps International (DCI), which is an international organization. “Currently, there are members from 26 states, Canada and Japan,” said Grimes. “In addition to the drum corps, our group also has a younger Cadet Corps of 80 members, a youth choir called Vocal Fusion and a steel drum band. The staff of 40 includes a design team and visual coordinators. Jude Boughton is the Program Coordinator that oversees the entire show. We have two full-time seamstresses that travel with us to repair and clean costumes and flags.”

The movie “Drumline” from a few years ago, shows some of the competition events, but doesn’t come anywhere close to what takes place to pull the show together. Practice days of 16 hours are the norm that include practice in sections as well as with the entire group; various breaks, exercise drills for muscle performance and four meals a day.

Grimes said the tryouts for The Colts are generally in December with the final selections in January. “This year, we had 375 people from across America try out for our 150 positions.” While there is a mental and physical commitment that comes with membership, there’s also a fee of $2,100 to cover the cost of transportation, meals and instruments while the members are out on tour. “Instruments are brand new each year from Yamaha, so they’re always playing with the latest and best available.”

“When we’re out on the road, the kids know the rules and we have very little problems. We also make sure they all know what facilities are available for boys and girls, and, when they’re setting up sleeping gear in the gyms, there’s a line they know not to cross into each others side,” said Grimes. The drum majors for The Colts are Doug Botatz, who attends the University of Nebraska and Keenan Cox, who attends the University of Kansas.

Like any army, the drum corps travels with their food supplies close at hand. They travel with six cooks that man the mobile restaurant that includes hot water for washing dishes to almost any and every cooking utensil and type of cooking surface needed. They will serve over 38,000 meals before the summer session is through. Grimes said the cook staff works all day from one meal to the next to make sure everything is ready on time.

Practice for the corps begins monthly from February through the end of the school year. Labor Day is the normal time the members report to their summer home for the next two months of time. And, the majority of that time, that home is on wheels. “We have our initial camp at the University of Wisconsin-Platte Ville. From there, the group spends most of the summer on tour at various competitions that all leads up to the word finals in early August. While we’re on the road, we’ll have major places we’ll be for a few days and plan to have our mail forwarded to there. Most of the time, it takes two vans to hold all the mail and care packages the corps members receive from home,” said Grimes.

The Colts will be practicing in Abbeville Tuesday and Wednesday. After a walk through Abbeville High to make sure nothing gets left behind, the band will load up for the performance at ULL. From there, they hit the road to Houston for another show Thursday night and then move on to the next rehearsal and performance stage in San Antonio for the regional competition this Saturday. “Sunday will be a free day for the kids. We’ll let them have some down time along the Riverwalk or something to cut loose. We’ve been in the top 25 for the past 20 years, and are back in the top 12 in the country now, but we don’t play the numbers game. We believe success is built on an individual basis. After each performance, we ask the kids to show hands if they had a good show,” concluded Grimes.

The motto on their tour buses pretty much sums it up: “We use music and excellence to teach each other about success in life.”