University Place

If You Want to Be a Band Director

Welcome to today’s University Roundtable. I’m Benjamin Schultz-Burkel, assistant director of the Mead Witter School of Music, and a member of the Roundtable Planning Committee. I’d also like to take a moment to thank the sponsors of University Roundtable, the Office of the Chancellor, the secretary of the Academic Staff Office, the Wisconsin Union, and the Office of Learning and Talent Development.

[applause]
Thank you.

Our guest this afternoon needs little to no introduction. His years on this campus likely outnumber any of us sitting in this room. He has sustained a tremendous career of 50 incredible years at the helm of the UW-Madison Marching Band, a distinguished part of the Mead Witter School of Music. He has led school spirit on this campus for decades having created the beloved fifth quarter tradition. He’s dazzled us with his sequins, and, yes, he’s flown over us like Superman. At the Mead Witter School of Music we pride ourselves as being the Wisconsin Idea at its most audible, and Mike is the true embodiment of that mission. As Governor Evers recently said, “He’s a Wisconsin institution, “and embodies both the soul of our campus, “and the spirit of our state.” Here to share with us what it takes to be a Badger band director, please help me in welcoming Professor Mike Leckrone.
[applause]

– Thanks a lot, thank you, thank you very much. Thanks a lot.
[applause]

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. As you’ll soon see I don’t deserve that.
Audience laughter]

The introduction was very kind, and it’s a lot like the last one I got. I was introduced and said, hearing Mike Leckrone speak is a lot like going on your first blind date. It’s not everything you’d hoped for, but it’s better than nothing.
[laughter]

I would like to start just by talking about something that I talk about with the band all the time. We talk a lot about with the band moments of happiness. It’s one of my favorite themes over the course of years, and what I try to tell these kids when they come in to see me for the first time is that their life at the university is not going to be filled with joyous continuous events. There are going to be moments when they don’t have a good feeling about what’s going on. There are going to be moments of concern. There are going to be moments where they really feel quite disastrous, and I tell them that’s very normal. You should not come to university expecting happiness. You shouldn’t expect to get this luncheon.
[laughter]

But what I’d rather tell them is that during the course of the year with the band you’re going to experience moments of happiness. And there’s going to be moments of happiness that you need to live with for the rest of your life. I talk about that almost inevitably. I’ve had in my career here incredible moments of happiness over the last 50 years. Many times in a luncheon like this, or a meeting like this people say, “What was your most memorable moment?” Frankly, I don’t have to think very long about that. It was at Rose Bowl, 1993, ’94, and if you’re old enough to remember that the entire state was in our hands over that few days. It was the most miraculous thing.

I’m not going to tell a lot of Rose Bowl stories, but I will tell you a couple. You may not know that the night before the Rose Bowl, there used to be a meeting of all the bands, and you would meet in a big large convention room, and they would tell you how to do the Rose Bowl Parade. Now the Rose Bowl Parade lasts about six miles. You will be performing for about three hours continually, and they tell you how to do it, and where the cameras are. They make sure that you know exactly what you’re doing.

As they explained it around a guy looked at me and said, “Wisconsin,” and said, “What we’d like for you to do is play for the first

“half hour continually, “and then when you see the TV cameras end, “and there will be a sign that says, ‘TV cameras end,’ “when you see the ‘TV cameras end’ you can play,” he said, “then from that point on for the next two hours “you can play whenever you feel like it.” Then he looked at me and said, “We’d suggest you play whenever you see “some patches of your fans along the parade route.”
[laughter]

We played “On, Wisconsin!” 47 times that morning.
[applause and laughter]

It was a great moment, and one that I… You know, I’ve been at 24 different bowl games over the course of my career. I’ve been at seven national championships that have been won by the Badgers, and that’s been a great thrill. I remember a lot of those particular events. I remember one of the great memories I have was performing in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

You ever been in Grand Forks, North Dakota?
[laughter]
There’s an old vaudeville saying, “I spent a week there one night.”
[laughter]

I found out when I was visiting– I’m kind of a history buff, and anywhere I travel I like to find out what the local history is. I found out when I was in Grand Forks, North Dakota it was the last outpost that General George Custer visited before he went to fight the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Before Custer went to fight Crazy Horse, he stopped at Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was the last place he visited. And he was so impressed with Grand Forks he told the Chamber of Commerce, “Don’t do anything ’til I get back and they haven’t.”
[laugher]

But I’ve had the chance to be at three Final Fours, and, of course, a score of basketball and hockey tournaments. It’s just been a wonderful existence that I’ve had. The title of my– It’s supposed to be what it’s like to be a band director, and I’m not really sure I can answer all that, but I will tell you some things. I’m a teacher, that’s what I do. I consider myself a teacher more than anything else. Now I will tell you that some of my colleagues, some of my colleagues, don’t think what I teach is very important.

I mean, I don’t teach the great works of art of the Renaissance. I don’t teach about great scientific discoveries.

Basically, as one of my colleagues said, “You teach a bunch of kids how to play a beer commercial.”

Whenever they start giving me the business like that I always have a comment that I respond to, and you might find it enlightening. I always say, well, how would you like to take a group of students you met for the first time on a Tuesday out in front of 80,000 people on Saturday, and show what you taught this week?
[laughter]

That’s what I get to do. That’s the thing that I’m facing almost every time we go out on the– Every year, every game we start with a brand-new show. We start with some people who have never done a show before, and in many instances early in the season. Some people have never marched on a field before. I get to present a show for an audience of 80,000 people, people who don’t necessarily know, and I find that very stimulating. I find it very exciting to do. During the course of doing that I find myself often being compared to a coach.

I get compared a lot. People make that inevitable comparison. I don’t find it… I don’t find it too annoying to me because I admire coaches. I admire what they have to do. They start with the raw product, and perfect it, and try to get people to get better by practicing, and making repetitions.

I know that a lot of the things that we do are similar to coaches. For example, coaches talk a lot about teamwork, as do band directors.

And it just so happens my definition of teamwork is exactly the same as Coach Alvarez, we’ve compared notes.

Teamwork, a whole bunch of people doing what I say.
[laughter]

We also talk a lot about the whole idea of taking responsibility. That’s something that I find the students really respond to very well. They appreciate the idea that I put some responsibility on them to make sure that they know what they’re doing. We also talk a lot about what it takes to make the season work.

Well, for lack of a better–

I’m searching for the right word for it.

Let me see what I wrote down.
[laughter]

Well, oh, it’s very simple, we talk about leadership. We talk a lot about leadership.

I have a couple definitions of leadership. Leadership is the ability, and the willingness to inflict pain.

Now that sounds very harsh doesn’t it? But it doesn’t really come off as harshly as it sounds because, first of all, it doesn’t necessarily mean physical pain. It might mean mental pain. And, secondly, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re inflicting it on someone else. Sometimes leadership means taking the pain upon yourself.

That’s not a bad definition, but my favorite definition of leadership is the ability to negate the unwanted presence of unpleasant conditions, or unwanted circumstances, if you want to negate those unpleasant circumstances.

I like to tell another Rose Bowl story about where I was at my very best in a leadership role. I always felt that I was very best. This was back when we were playing a marching rehearsal in Pasadena.

We went to the practice the day of the game, and the practice field was under two inches of water. They’d forgotten to turn the sprinkler system off during the course of the game.

I could tell that the kids in the band were devastated. We were in a Rose Bowl. We were having an opportunity to play in front of 80,000 people the next day. It was a great day for us.

It was a wonderful time for the kids, and suddenly they felt the air had been let out of their balloon. They looked around, they didn’t really know what to do. They looked to me for leadership, and I looked down the street at Santa Monica High School there, and there was a soccer field… no lines.

What do you think lines are on a football field for?

Football players don’t pay attention to the lines. They’re there for the band.
[laughter]

We march a system called eight to five. Every eight steps, if you’ve watched the band perform, every eight steps we hit a yard line, and next eight steps we hit a yard line, so that’s the way we march, and there were no yard lines here. So I told the band, well, let’s get out some instrument cases, and we measured off with a tape measure every five yards.

I laid it out and I said, look, we have a wonderful opportunity here on the day before the Rose Bowl to practice without the benefit of lines. We’re going to be able to go on that field, practice, and what we’ll have to do is we’ll have to guide. We’ll have to look at each other. We’ll have to pay attention. We’ll really have to have our antenna up finding out where we’re supposed to be, and when we get done with this rehearsal we’ll be better because we marched that rehearsal without the benefit of those lines.

And they bought that crap.
[laughter]

The truth of the story was we really didn’t need the rehearsal. At that point in this show we were ready. The band was ready. They may not have known they were ready, but they were ready. They were ready to perform, so all I did was reassure them, and they had a great time. They enjoyed the rehearsal, they had fun, and that’s really what it is that I try to do. I try to make sure that what we do is fun. It’s very hard work, don’t get me wrong. The kids have to work very hard, and as they say they put in a lot of hours for one lousy credit, and that’s what it amounts to. So that was probably my very first best time at offering a leadership role.

I also learned a long time ago that you can’t take yourself very seriously.

Ben already related. I put on funny clothes, sometimes, and do strange things. You can’t be too serious about what you do, but you can’t take it too seriously. I mean, here’s a man who climbs up on a ladder, puts his hat on backwards and flaps his arms like a chicken.

But I would relate to you an example of somebody that I didn’t think took herself very seriously.

The University of Wisconsin Band marched their first performance in Lambeau Field in 1989.

First time, can you imagine that? All those years of the Packers and the Badgers having great history, the first time the Wisconsin Band ever performed in Lambeau Field was 1989, and we were thrilled. We were absolutely thrilled to be at Lambeau Field, and we got a chance to perform on that field.

During the course of the game the bands came to me and said, “Mike, could we have the tubas do the Tuba March, around the field?” And I checked with the Packer officials and they said, “Oh, sure, that’d be a nice addition to what we’re doing.” So the band, as we started the fourth quarter, the band got up, the tuba players got up, and they marched around, and they marched around in front of the press box in Lambeau Field… standing ovation.

Standing ovation.

I knew they weren’t that good.
[laughter]

They turned the corner and as they turned the corner at Lambeau Field at the north end, they came back, and people stood it looked like the wave. As the tubas passed people stood and cheered.

Then when they made the corner, and started coming back towards me I saw why. My tuba players had taken pieces of cardboard.

Got some Magic Marker. And written on the cardboard as they passed, and pasted it on their bells, as they passed Lambeau Field audience, The Bears still suck.
[laughter]

Well, as they got back to me, I tried to remind them, you know, this is 1989, that’s pretty strong language in 1989, that’s pretty strong language, and as they got back to me, I could see that they were having a good time.

I wanted to remind them that, you know, remember you’re still representing the university. Remember, that’s kind of edgy language. Make sure you think about it before you do anything like that again.

But the real bumper to this story, and this is a true story, by the way.

The day after we had performed the chancellor was having a reception at her house. And this came back to me as pretty direct line of what had happened. And a very pompous individual had gone to the chancellor, and said, “Well, we saw the band at the game, and they looked quite nice. They did a nice job, but you know what those kids said? They had up signs that said the Bears still suck.”

And Chancellor Shalala’s response was, “Well, they do, don’t they?”
[laughter and applause]

There’s so many events that I could relate to you. I know there’s an opportunity for a question and answer. I’m going to get to that in just a moment. Well, let’s get to it right now. Do you have any questions you’d like to ask?

By the way, while we’re waiting on that, some of you even know about some of the academic requirements for getting into the band. There are a number of things we have, for example, you may not know, but we have the tuba player intelligence test,

that if you plan to be a tuba player in the UW Band you have to pass this test in order to show that you do have the basic background to perform on tuba with the University of Wisconsin Band. The tuba player intelligence test goes something like this.

Which hand has the marble?
[laughter]

Do you have a question?

– Audience Member: Thank you. I was wondering if you could speak to the history of the marching style, the high step?

– I’d be delighted, yeah, and that’s kind of the question. I didn’t know where to start with this thing because I could talk about band all the time, but the marching style which we use is a thing that’s called stop at the top. We use that frequently.

It’s a very unique style. It’s one which I sort of evolved. I don’t want to take credit for having done it, because years ago every band in the Big Ten marched with what they call a high step style, every band. There were no exclusions in the Big Ten. Of course, in those days there were only 10 bands in the Big Ten.
[laughter]

I don’t even remember how many there are now, but all of them used a high step. And as a matter of fact, there was a point in history where that was called by band directors around the nation, that was called the Big Ten style, everybody did it that way.

When I came to Wisconsin I was using that style, that high step style with bringing the foot up. And there’s a lot of little fine-tuning that has to go into the style, but I’ll just say that basically is lifting the leg. As I looked at it, and I saw it within the realm of Camp Randall I thought there wasn’t enough energy for what I wanted to see the band do.

And they were doing it like all the other Big Ten bands had been done, so I did two things. I asked the band to always keep the toe pointed, and not bring the foot quite maybe as high as some of the bands did, but to keep it so that when you bring the foot up the thigh part is at a 45-degree angle, and then the lower part of the leg is straight down. I said that’s the first thing that you have to do, and then I said as you do that maneuver slightly stop at the top when you lift your leg. Bring the foot up and stop slightly. Just hesitate before you put the foot back down. That hesitation gave us energy.

I felt watching it performed there was a sense of energy that happened when you made that almost a jerky motion that I liked the way it looked, and it portrayed energy to the people who were watching, so that became a part of our mantra. You learned to stop at the top. It takes away the smoothness of it. It takes away the flow, perhaps, but it does convey energy.

It’s sort of a combination of what the Big Ten used to use. I sort of took a step the Michigan Band had used that they had called in those days they called it the chop step, and I refined that a little bit because it’s Michigan you have to refine it a little bit.
[laughter]

And I refined that and brought the leg down a little bit, but emphasized the stop perhaps more than they did. So that’s really where it all came from. It’s a step that, you know, I think right now the band almost automatically goes into it without much thought. It has become a part of their vocabulary, their marching vocabulary.

– Audience Member: How did it feel to be asked to be on the poster with Bucky Badger?- You know, anytime anybody asks me to do anything, anytime anybody asks me to speak I’m honored. I’m really honored, I mean, I’m just a dumb band director.

And really anytime anybody asks me to do this, I’m greatly honored by the fact that people feel what we do is important. I realize what I do is not the most important thing in the world. As one of my predecessors in athletics said, he said, “What I do is the toy department at the university. I don’t do anything that’s terribly important, but the fact that it gets recognized it’s very humbling in a lot of ways that people think enough of what we do.” So I’m very gratified. It’s not a very good picture of me, however.
[laughter]

– Audience Member: What do you consider your greatest legacy to the University of Wisconsin?

– Students. Students, because what I have seen over the years, my students, and I consider them my students, although, we don’t have a lot of music majors in the band, but some of the music majors we have had in the band have gone onto great things of performing, conducting, and doing other things, and to see that happen is the greatest legacy, and to feel that I might of had a part.

I think one of the nicest things people say to me, and have said to me in this last year or so is that they wanted to know if I understood how much they meant to their lives. When somebody says to you that’s very, that’s very powerful when somebody says you’ve affected their lives somehow, and to see it in students. I have students who are doctors, who are lawyers, well, we’ll exclude the lawyers.
[laughter]

But who are doctors and who are scientists. And I consider that the fact that I may have. What I try to instill in them is a work ethic. I think more than anything else, if I have anything that I’m trying to teach, it’s that if you’re going to be good at something there’s a price that has to be paid. You cannot be good at something, and just wish that it’s going to happen. There’s a price that has to be paid for excellence. If you’re not willing to pay the price it’s not going to happen, no matter how much you want it. I’ve tried to say that from the time I started here, and if that has been instilled in any of those that to me if is, if I have any kind of a legacy, I think that’s what I’d like for it to be known as.

Yes.

– Audience Member: Over the 50 years that you’ve been here have the number of students in your band is that the same every year, and do you have spares if somebody gets sick?

– Yeah, people are always curious about how the band works. We have basically a nucleus of around 290 people that are in the band. They’re the people that you see uniformed, 290 people that are uniformed. Now of those 290 people that you see, you only see about 260 of them at any one time, because we have to have, as football teams have to have, we have to have extras. We have to have substitutes.
We have to have people that if somebody gets sick. And, incidentally, it rarely, you rarely get to a game day morning when we rehearse at seven o’clock in the morning I rarely get there and somebody doesn’t come up and say, “Oh, somebody’s going to be out today. They sprained their ankle, they’re sick, they got the flu.”

It happens almost so much regularly you don’t even think about it anymore. What you try to do is to train those people that are not in the show how to do the step, get the basic ideas of what their maneuvers are like, and then you have a chart that you would give to them, and say, okay, you’re on, and do it. And sometimes it has to be that fast, so we have that nucleus of about 60 people who know how to do the show, and are willing to go in at any particular point. That then is the basis for what the band is.

I taught a halftime show at the Rose Bowl during the pre-game, during the first quarter. We had a young woman get sick. We had to teach the pre-game to her. I stood there with her with a couple of field assistants, and with charge and saying this is what you do. This is where you move, learn this chart. I had a sheet of music with it. Learn what you’re supposed to do, and then the last thing I said, don’t play a note.
[laughter]

Just get through the drill because if she wasn’t playing nobody knew about it, but if she would have gotten out of line they would have known, and she did a great job. She did a great job because they understand that that’s part of their role, and they take that very seriously, too, that role of being an alternative, of being a substitute for somebody who comes in at the last moment.

– Audience Member: As a band director for 50 years, you’ve been around your fair share of instruments, right? So I’m just curious about what your favorite instrument is to play, and if it’s different? Also, your favorite instrument to listen to other people play?

– My dad was a band director. My dad was a high school band director, and I grew up and that’s the only life I’ve ever known.

When I was about six or seven years old he started me out on drums, and his reasoning was, I want you to learn to play an instrument, but you don’t have any teeth, so wait, your permanent teeth get in, I’ll teach you drums so you’ll know rhythm.

As soon as I was old enough to play a wind instrument, and had my permanent teeth in, I fell in love with the trumpet.

I am a great fan of jazz, particularly early jazz. I teach a class in it, and I’m a great fan of early jazz. There was a young player named Bix Beiderbecke I’ve always revered as a great player, and I sort of fell in love with his playing. My favorite instrument probably would be the trumpet to play.

I love to play the piano, but I wouldn’t let any of you listen to me because I’m not very good, but I love to play. And I think that’s part of what music is. Part of music, I think, is to being a participant. Most of the students I have are not music majors, they’re not music majors. 40% of the band are engineers, did you know that?

40% of the band are engineering majors, and that’s good because they understand some of the intricacies of music, and they also understand the mechanics of what they have to do. John Bollinger, former dean, was someone I had a number of very interesting conversations with, and he was convinced that the two went hand in– Incidentally, John was a terrific trumpet player. But he was convinced that that relationship was due to the fact that engineers have that mind capacity to do intellectual things, but they also wanted to have good times and some fun doing it, so that combination of things made for a good engineering/musician. I sort of subscribe to that. I feel like that’s what has happened to me, but I enjoy playing the instrument.

I think everybody who goes through the Wisconsin Band should play for the rest of their lives, something, even if you pick up– And I’ve had kids who come to me and say, “You know, I didn’t used to play a wind instrument, but now I am, or now I’m playing piano after all the years of being a trumpet player.” I think that’s the best thing that you can do to keep that alive because I tell you there’s nothing like the joy of making music. There’s nothing like it. And that’s what’s kept me doing this for all these years is because there is a joy that I really can’t even describe.

– Audience Member: First and foremost, please don’t go.

For so many us you are the University of Wisconsin.

– That’s very kind of you.

– I just want to thank you for all that you’ve done, and for all of us whom you inspire. My question for you is what does the Wisconsin Idea mean to you?

– Well, I almost spoke to it a moment ago. The Wisconsin Idea is what we do all the time, I think. The Wisconsin Idea is going out into the state, and showing what accomplishments we can do, what we can achieve through hard work, through dedication, through devotion of what we’re doing. And so each time we do a lot of performing. We do a lot of what we call run-out concerts. We’ll go out doing different parts of the state, and it’s great fun because some days the kids play well, sometimes they don’t, but the audience often never knows.

It’s one of the mantras that I also tell the band all the time. I tell the current band, I tell the band of last year. I’m telling the band probably as we rehearse this afternoon that you’re probably not as good as people think you are, but because you’re not as good as people think you are you have to live up to that expectation the next time because the next time they will have an expectation that you have to do.

That’s part of the Wisconsin Idea, I think, is have that expectation, which you’re willing to take on that responsibility and grow. It is a responsibility. I think the kids that I have understand that each time they go out into the community they’re representing the university.

Some of the letters that please me the most, and I just got, in fact, as I just left my desk reading one of the notes, it’s from a lady in Oak Creek who said she was so impressed with the kids, not with the way they played, but that after they had finished their noonday meal they had cleaned up everything.

And I thought, well, then she must be working with slobs all the time.
[laughter]

But those kind of letters really please me because I feel like the idea has gotten across.

– Audience Member: I wonder if you could say what, if anything, has changed in how you create, and teach the charts over 50 years?

– Well, things have changed a lot.

My first year with the Wisconsin Band we had 96 people. You probably have heard the story related. My year, the year that I came in ’69 you understand that was a tough year to be in a band.

In the first place, this was a really tough time at the university. The riots were going on. I can remember looking out my office window at fixed bayonets my first year at the University of Wisconsin. The National Guard was on campus almost all the time. The football team had not won, had not won a game in two years, more than two years, they hadn’t won. It wasn’t a popular thing to put on a uniform, and march around campus, it wasn’t popular.

The band’s spirit was you know, sort of iffy edged. They weren’t sure about me, they weren’t sure about– Because I had some different things I wanted to do, and I will tell you right now I know for a fact there was a lottery.

There was a lottery going on how long he would last.
[laughter]

I think I won.
[laughter and applause]

But it was difficult times. So what I tried to do immediately is to bring in change, but bring it in so that people could accomplish the change. I didn’t want to set the standards so high that they were frustrated, so I set the standard very low, but I was very insistent that they meet that standard. I remember the very first thing I tried to teach, and this sounds so dumb when I relayed it, I tried to teach the kids how to do a great horns up.

Horns up, so what’s so tough about horns up? The horn is here you bring it up. No, when you bring the horns up you go out up and it’s a quick motion, and you get that flash of the motion. The band was a little bit lackadaisical about it. They were a little bit relaxed about doing it, and I insisted you bring that horns up, you bring it up this way. So by the time I got done in 1969 we had the best horns up in the country, but we couldn’t do a lot of other things.
[laughter]

But I built on that and each time I tried to do it.

Now, you ask about charting. Charting has changed so much in the way it is now. I mean, now the interesting thing, I think, today now is when I started in ’69 one of the big things we were doing on the football field were making pictures. We’d make a picture of a dog, and play “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?”

Or we’d make a picture of a mill stream, and play “Down By The Old Mill Stream,” and those kind of things. Now they’re going back to that, but they’re going back to it with computer images.

They’ve taken that next step, but they’re doing the same thing I was doing in 1969. They’re not changing it very much. The only difference is the charting has gotten more sophisticated because now it’s done by computer, and it could be a little slicker, a little bit smoother, a little more all-inclusive.

My early charts were very, very simple. I tried to keep it as simple as I possibly could. I remember one year I opened an umbrella. Now that sounds simple.

But I opened the umbrella, but you bring the umbrella up like this, and then as the umbrella goes out like this you had to have the inner mechanism come up, and form the inside of the– And I remember I brought the umbrella up, the people looked at it and said, “Oh, we’ve seen an umbrella go up before.” There was no response. I rolled a wheel down a field once. You know how hard that is to roll a wheel down a field because every student has to have his own individual arc, the circumscribes, as he goes down the field. Every student has to have an individual arc, and that’s really hard, and when I got done with it, what did I get? “Oh, I’ve seen a ball roll down the field before.”

People don’t understand that to me the intricacies of charting get lost sometimes without making it very simple to understand, and very simple just to see. That’s really what I try to do so far as the charting. I don’t know if I answered your question or not.

Charting is something now that because of computers, I mean, I probably added 10 or 15 years to my career because my eyes are still working because when I was doing it the old way it was very, very difficult to draw all those dots, and every dot that you see you had to do it. Every student, by the way, has a chart, and they look at the chart, and they’re supposed to figure out where to go. I maintain if you use the charting system that I use you can take that chart, you can stand out in the middle of the field by yourself, and do the drill. You might look a little strange, but you can do it, and that’s the basis of what– I don’t know if I answered your question really well, but I tried. Anything else, yes?

– First of all, you need to write a book called Conversations with Mike based on these kinds of things that you’re doing right now.

– Oh, that would be a dull book.

– Audience Member: But, approximately, how many students do you estimate you have directed over these 50 years?

– That’s a question I get asked a lot, how many students? Well, I’m going to make you do the math because I’m a band director, I’m not a mathematician. And the room is filled with scholars, so I’m going to let that up to you. But if you take the fact that I get about 70 to 80 new students a year, and if you figure out over 50 years that’s how many new students that I’ve had each year.

I’ll let you guys do the math.

Again, I keep using the word gratifying. It’s very gratifying to see what the kids still remember about the band, and see how it means a lot to them. Our alumni are some of the most loyal people we have because they loved being in the band, and they still love those memories of the band. Moments of happiness, yeah.

– I just wanted to thank you for your positivity and your energy. Also, want to know do you have any plans for the future?

– Well, I got rehearsal at 3:30.
[laughter]

That may be as far as it goes.

You know, this whole thing, when I made the decision this past summer, when I made the decision that this would be the last time, things have happened so quickly and so fast. It’s been such a none ending time event. I mean, think about it, when the season was over, I mean, well, the season was a football season. I don’t know, I still don’t know if you appreciate how hard that is on the people who have to do it, and I’m not talking about myself. I’m talking about the students and the assistants, and everybody. It’s very time consuming because we rehearse four days a week.

Then we have all day Saturday. Then I have to be prepared then for the next Monday, they start it all over again, so it’s none ending. Before the football season is over we were in basketball and hockey. I’m still in the middle of basketball and hockey. Soon the tournament season is going to be here. Then we have a concert. I’d put in a plug for the concert, but we’re sold out.

But then that starts, and then it will probably be a little bit of grace period before commencement, so I haven’t really had time to think about what I’m going to do. I’m sure I’ll be doing something with music, if it’s nothing more than learning to play the piano better, which I plan to include in some of the things that I want to do, but I love to write. I don’t have as much time to write music as I used to. I miss it a lot, I miss writing because all the writing I do now is done almost on command. I have to write the shows. I have to write the shows for the marching band. I’m writing the shows for the Kohl Center right now, so that is by demand. I’m going to get to a point where I can write some things for me. Those are some of the things I plan to do.

– Audience Member: Hi, so you’ve been talking about moments of happiness, and you clearly love the students you work with, but I live over by the practice field, and I bike past everyday while you’re practicing, and sometimes I bring my kids down there to watch you practice, and my daughter one time said to me, “Why does he yell at them all the time? All he does is yell at them. They start playing music, and he stops them and he just yells at them.” So what should I tell her?
[laughter]

– Well, let’s see. It’s kind of like the same, you know, people ask me the question, “Why do the tuba players act so stupid?”

That’s not an act.
[laughter]

I’m not known for being real gentle with them.

Again, it goes back to what my feeling is. There’s a right way and a wrong way, and they need to be reminded. I think too many times, I’m going to sound like an old man saying this, but I think we let people off too easily. We let them off the hook too easy. They’ll respond to demands, they’ll respond to it, and I try to make those demands so that they will respond. You can tell them that I’m just trying to make them better.

– Audience Member: Hi, thank you so much for doing this today. I grew up with you and the band, and I love everything about it, but one of my favorite parts is the Spring Concert, so I wondered if you would be willing to give us a sneak preview of what we might see you riding in on this year?- As soon as we figure it out I’ll let you know. She thinks I’m kidding, no. The spring concert has become another one of those things that has really become a problem for me. It’s become a problem because inevitably it happened. It happened last year as I was leaving the Kohl Center I got, “What are you going to do next year?” Well, I’m not going to have that problem next year, but what are you going to do next year, what’s next?

That’s the problem that I tried to demonstrate regarding the kids, is there’s an expectation. You’re going to remember the concert is better than it was. It wasn’t nearly as good as you thought it was, but the problem is that’s the standard we have to go against. That’s what we’re trying to do. We have rejected so many things up to this point.

I have a wonderful committee. I have a wonderful committee who works on this with me. People from all areas of entertainment. Some people who know music. Some people who know stage direction. Some people who know costuming. People who know how to light an organization. Your question might be, well, what is it that you do?

The problem is I get to decide which things I like the best. That’s the fun part of what I get to do, and a gentleman mentioned it, it’s an opportunity to be creative. For me, that’s the one thing that’s kept me doing this for 50 years, is I’ve never felt that I was stifled by the idea of, “Well, you can’t do that, you can’t try that.” I’ve always been able to try things, and sometimes unsuccessfully, and sometimes with great success. I’ve had opportunities to do things.

I mean, I’ve done a lot of dumb things. The dumbest thing I ever did at this Kohl Center, and this happened when we were back in the Fieldhouse, the guys came to me and said, “We got a great idea for an entrance, Mike. We want you to slide down a fire pole from the top of the Fieldhouse to the stage.”

The top of the Fieldhouse is three levels, you know, there’s three levels there. They said, “We want you to get on the fire pole, and slide down,” and I thought, well, that sounds okay.
[laughter]

And then they took me up the day before the show, and said, “Okay, now we’re going to practice.” The fire pole was erected, so they said, “Oh, by the way, you’re going to have to jump out, and grab the fire pole and slide down.”

And I said, okay.
[laughter]

And I did it. I wouldn’t do that again today for all the money you could come up with. I wouldn’t do it today, but you do things like that because you think they’re creative, and you think there’s a chance to do–

I mean, we had no safety, there was no safety harness. There was nothing for me to hang onto, except I had to grab a hold of that fire pole and slide down. OSHA would have had a fit about.
[laughter]

Yeah.

– I’d like to reiterate all the thanks that I’ve been hearing, and thank you for getting us through the Don Morton years, and some other dimmer spots, but one of the questions that I had was every fall I look forward to seeing all of the adopt a band people come out onto the football field. Would you like to touch on that program? I’d like to know a little bit more about it.

– Well, a few years ago, I mean, we like every activity are always looking for budgetary help, and the budgetary help when I first started in ’69 there wasn’t really anything. I remember Elroy Hirsch called me in his office once, and said, “Mike, you can do anything you want, just not going to be any money to pay for it, but you can still do anything you want.” That was literally his conversation. He wanted me to try to do things, but he didn’t really give me any– And we didn’t have much of a budget for the first several years.

Then, somebody came with the idea that if we have a fund that people pay and adopt a band, the theory is that if you adopt a band member, then you pay a certain fund which goes into an account, which goes into an opportunity for them to have a foundation fund, which that money then will generate enough money, so that eventually when all the adopted band members are filled you’ll be able to buy new instruments when you need it. You’ll be able to buy uniforms when you need it.

The only problem with that is we all underestimate how much costs are going to rise, so we’ve had to try to keep up with it in some ways, but that’s where the genesis came from, and it came from a trip that we made to Seattle, Washington from a group of donors who say, “Why isn’t the band traveling more?” The answer was we don’t have any money, so they fixed it so we could take that trip to Seattle, and then after that was over a group of local alumni and business people said, “We need to try to solve this problem.” So that’s how the adopt a band form was started. We’re very grateful for it, it’s been great for us.

– I’ve had the pleasure of working the Badger Bashes here for the last several years, and you make an entrance at the Spring Concert, but for those who don’t go to Badger Bash you make an entrance every time the band performs here, and we’ve asked you to do some pretty weird things as well. Is there something that stands out as particularly fun, and then something that you’ve gone, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe I did that?”

– They’ve had me put on some pretty funny– This past year there was one that I thought, I’m not really going to do that, but I did.

No, I mean, the great thing about the Badger Bash is they relieve me of all responsibility. That also creates some problems, but it’s like we don’t care what you do, or I say I don’t care what I do just tell me what you want, and sometimes they come up with some very bizarre things. Consequently, I pledged that I would do it.

I’m trying to think of some specific things, but it’s mostly wearing hats of very peculiar ancestry, I’ll put it that way.

– Audience Member: Mike, each and every year you create the “On, Wisconsin!” and it’s fanfare. I don’t think a lot of people realize that each year the fanfare is different. So now there’s been 50 different fanfares created, so if you go to a football game, and you see the band first come out you see the fanfare, and, of course, then it’s “On, Wisconsin!”

What caused you to go down that path to creating a unique fanfare each and every year?

What motivates you because you got to start running out of thoughts on that fanfare?

– Well, you’d be surprised how many ways “On, Wisconsin!” works that little phrase da-da-da-da. Andrew Lloyd Webber uses it. It’s in “Phantom of the Opera” you can hear it. It’s in “Les Misrables” there’s a spot in da-da-da-da, so it works. The great thing about that is you can do it with different combinations of notes. You can do it upside down, you can do it backwards, and it’s still somehow, subliminally it still sounds like “On, Wisconsin!”

The reason I started doing it was no particular reason. I did a fanfare and I thought I could probably do one a little bit better than this, a few more ideas because after all, it was my first year. I was just trying to get going. And so, the second year I tried a different one, and, “Oh, that’s nice.” Same problem, what are you going to do next year?

You create that problem that you just have to try to keep solving, and then it became fun. It became fun to see if I could come up with something that was the same but different, and that’s where it evolved it is.

I would like to leave you with a story that is very important to me because it’s about my father. My father, as I said, was a band director, and he was the one who probably instilled in me a love for music that I still can relate back to things he taught me. And I remember from the very earliest age my dad would say to me… and I’m talking about nine, 10 years old. He said, “Learn about all kinds of music.” He said, “There’s no kind of music that you can turn your back on, everything is important.” And I believe that to this day. I believe there’s great worth in opera. I believe there’s great worth in rock and roll. I believe there’s great worth in the blues. Great worth in country music.

I think there’s good and bad in everything, but I think there’s worth in all those idioms, and my dad was smart enough to say learn about all kinds of music because he says it’s all important. There’s nothing you should turn your back on. Every kind of music deserves some of your attention to study and figure out what works. I started hearing that when I was very young. Then when I started playing an instrument he started adding to that mantra, he would say, “Mike, I want you to learn about all kinds of music.”

He said, “Learn about it all.” He said, “But don’t pay attention to the music they play in burlesque shows.”
[laughter]

Any of you know what a burlesque show is? He said, “The music there isn’t very good,and you would probably see something you shouldn’t see.”

Well, I’m 10 years old, I don’t understand this, but I hear this mantra every day of my high school career. I’m in his high school band. I’m in the high school band for six years.
[laughter]

Well, I started when I was in the seventh grade because I was, you know, he didn’t want to stick me in the beginner’s class, but learn about all kinds of music it’s all important. But kids… don’t pay any attention to music they play in burlesque shows because the music there isn’t very good, and you’d probably see something you shouldn’t see.

Well, finally I went away to college, Butler University, and like any college kid you got to find out some things for yourself, right?

You just have to find some things out for yourself. You can’t take anybody else’s word.

So one night I went to the Fox Theater, corner of 22nd and Illinois. I don’t know how I remember that in Indianapolis, Indiana. I went up in the balcony of the Fox Theater, and I hadn’t been listening to music for more than two or three minutes until I discovered all those years that my dad was absolutely right.

Folks, the music wasn’t very good. It just wasn’t very good, and I did see something I shouldn’t see. Dad was in the third row! Thanks a lot.
[applause]

Thank you, thank you.