Why Band Kids Deserve Stories About Their Own World
My first real high school band camp was at a huge school, the kind of place that made me feel very small very fast.
They brought in a guest instructor. They drilled fundamentals over and over. Push-ups were handed out regularly. We practiced on a parking lot and it was hot in the way only band camp can be hot.
I remember the anxiety. I remember the awe. I remember feeling swallowed up by the size of it all.
Then I made it through the first day. And somehow, I knew I belonged.
That’s part of why I write band geek fiction now. Band kids have their own world, their own language, their own stories, and I think those stories deserve to be told from the inside.
Four High Schools, Four Bands, One Familiar Feeling
I marched at four different high schools in four different bands.
That sounds like something I made up for fiction, but it really happened. Each program had its own personality, and a lot of that personality came from the directors, the staff, the school, the region, and the students.
One program was big and intense. Another was on the coast in Florida, with a laid-back beach feeling woven into the culture. One school had a more urban style, with plenty of rap and hip-hop influence in the way students dressed, talked, and carried themselves. My fourth high school had the feel of a small South Georgia town, complete with pickup trucks and camo showing up as fashion choices as much as anything else.
The funny thing is that band kids were still band kids in all of those locations.
The clothes and accents changed, the local culture changed, but band life had a rhythm I recognized. There were section jokes, rehearsal habits, nervous freshmen, confident upperclassmen, directors with their own favorite phrases, and kids who somehow became family because they were all tired, sunburned, and trying to make the same show work.
That is one of the things I love about writing this world. Every band has its own sound and personality, but the feeling underneath is familiar. If you were a band kid, you probably know what I mean.
Growing Up with a Trumpet in My Hands
I played trumpet, which means I am legally required to admit that trumpet players have a reputation.
We can be loud. We can be confident. Some might say arrogant, although I would like the record to show that this is probably an exaggeration. Mostly. Maybe.
I was section leader more than once, and over time, band became much more than another class or activity. When I started, I saw it as an ensemble I got to be part of, something I enjoyed and something I was good at. By the time I had marched through high school and then four years at Georgia Southern University, it had become part of how I understood myself.
All of my marching years happened in the 1990s, from fall 1991 through fall 1998. I came into marching band as a freshman and left college after years of rehearsals, performances, bus rides, sectionals, football games, friendships, and all the little things that happen around the music.
Somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like just an extra-curricular activity.
The People Who Stay in the Music
The people are the part that stays with you.
Band directors and music professors helped shape the musician I became. Staff members, section leaders, and fellow players all left marks in different ways. Some people were there for a season. Some were there for years. Some passed through quickly, but I still remember them vividly because they were in my section, my circle, or my little corner of the band room.
My college roommate became my best friend. He was my best man, and years later, I officiated his wedding. We first crossed paths through band, and that still says a lot to me about what this activity can do.
The studious woodwind player. The wild flute player. The lovable sousaphone player. The loud trombone player who somehow looked taller than everyone else. The trumpet player who was absolutely not arrogant, depending on whom you ask. At the core, most of the band kids I knew were kind, courteous, funny, well-mannered, good students, and easy to be around. They were also strange in the best possible way, because band kids tend to develop their own kind of humor. You have to, once you have spent enough hours standing outside while someone yells measure numbers from a tower.
The Smell of Cut Grass
Some memories do not announce themselves. They just show up.
For me, one of the strongest is the smell of grass being cut.
I know that does not automatically mean band. Plenty of people smell cut grass and think about yards, summer, baseball, or Saturday chores. But for me, especially in summer and early fall, that warm cut-grass smell takes me straight back to the practice field.
Most of my high school years and all of my college years were spent practicing on grass fields and marching half time shows on actual grass stadium fields. This was before artificial turf became so common, at least in my world. So when that smell hits, I remember rehearsal. I remember heat. I remember lining up. I remember the field under my feet and the sound of horns coming from every direction.
I Was a Reader Before I Was an Author
Before I was writing band stories, I was reading.
I loved adventure, fantasy, and history. The Lord of the Rings. The Chronicles of Narnia. Star Wars novels, especially the expanded universe, which still feels real to me even if it got moved into “Legends” territory.
I was the kind of kid who liked stepping into another world and staying there a while. I also wrote little snippets of stories as a teenager. I wrote music and songs too, so a lot of story came through melody and lyric before I knew what to do with it on the page.
Books gave me worlds to enter. Band gave me a world I already knew from the inside.
What Marching Band is Awesome Taught Me
Years later, I started Marching Band is Awesome as a way to celebrate and showcase the school music arts, especially marching band.
That community grew around something I already believed: band kids love being seen. Not in a fake, spotlight-grabbing way. They love seeing their sections, uniforms, solos, shows, bus rides, friendships, and hard work recognized by people who understand why those things matter.
Band and music jokes were universal. Memories from band camp and marching season connected people from all over the country. Current students related to them. Former students related to them. Parents and directors related to them too.
Whenever we feature “young-at-heart” band kids, the response is always strong. Former band kids send in uniform pictures. They comment. They remember. They show up with the kind of enthusiasm that tells you band did not end for them when they turned in the uniform.
They still carry it.
That helped me realize something important: the same people who loved seeing band celebrated in photos, videos, and posts might also love stories about people like them.
Stories set in the world they grew up in.
Stories that understood the jokes, the pressure, the nerves, the friendships, the directors, the sections, the heat, the music, and the strange little family that forms when students work toward one sound together.
Writing from Inside the Band Room
Social media can celebrate a moment.
A novel can step inside it.
A photo can show a uniform, a solo, a section, or a stadium. A good story can show what it feels like to stand there while your hands are sweating, your heart is racing, and you are hoping you remember the next set.
That is one reason I write music-centered fiction. Readers can see themselves in characters when those characters feel specific and true. When the setting is familiar, that connection can become even stronger.
Before Me & the Marching Bands, I wrote Because, a band geek YA time travel adventure. I’m currently polishing it for a future rerelease, and I’ll share more about that when it is ready. But the idea behind it came from the same place: band kids deserve stories where their world matters.
With Me & the Marching Bands, that idea became even more personal. Wesley Wade moves through four high schools, four different band programs, and four seasons of trying to figure out who he is becoming. That does not match my life exactly, but it is rooted in something I know very well: walking into a new band room and wondering who you are supposed to be there.
Why These Stories Matter
Marching band has changed since I was a student.
Today’s shows often follow the drum corps world more closely. There is more original music, more visual design, more pageantry, more custom costuming, and more year-to-year change in how groups look and present themselves. When I marched, shows often leaned more toward popular music, movie soundtracks, oldies, and uniforms that stayed mostly the same from season to season.
I do not think one version is better than the other. They are different approaches.
What has not changed is the feeling.
Students still walk into band rooms unsure where they fit. They still learn how to work with people who are not exactly like them. They still build inside jokes, survive long rehearsals, make mistakes, improve, perform, and discover that the group can become something like family.
As a current band dad, I see that again from a different angle. I also saw it recently while working a band camp as a brass instructor. It was the first time I had been behind the doors of that particular band room, but the feeling was immediately familiar.
The students were different. The year was different. The style was different.
The heart of the thing was still there.
That is why I write these stories. I want band kids, former band kids, band parents, music teachers, and readers who love school music to feel celebrated and showcased. I hope parents find a little 1990s nostalgia. I hope current students find something that feels retro in a fun way. I hope readers who were never in band still recognize the feeling of trying to belong somewhere.
Most of all, I hope it feels like someone finally wrote from inside the band room instead of looking at it from the outside.
If you love stories about music, friendship, awkward courage, and the kind of people who still remember their show music, start with Me & the Marching Bands.
R.K. Slade