Favorite Camp/Rehearsal/Competition Stories?

Every band kid has at least a few great band stories. Here are a few of mine, but you should share yours in the comments or email them to us at thebandhasproblems@gmail.com, and if we like them, there's a chance for you to have yours published on the blog!

The Drunk GuyDuring one of our August rehearsals, we were on our practice field, which happens to be right next to two neighborhoods. Now, it was only about 4:00 PM. A guy was wobbling around in the neighborhood right across the road from our Side 2 endzone. He kept yelling stuff at us, claiming we were 'insulting his illness' or something. My BD didn't see him, but me and all the other side two baritones did. We told our staff, but but the time the could do anything, this dude was on our field, yelling and getting pretty close to our members. Our Choreography instructor yelled to one of our BD's to call 911, when the guy threw his drink all over one of our clarinets. Our BD flipped on the guy and yelled until he got off the field. Nothing happened to me specifically, but he was like 10 feet from me. It was terrifying.

The Slip-n-SlideI'll start this one by saying that my band's practice field sucks. Not just sucks, but reeeaaally sucks. There are little ditches everywhere, the grass is totally gone in some spots, and the field somehow shifts a lot, throwing off our hashes like crazy. It rains quite a bit here in Illinois, by the way. Our band is also pretty stupid, in that about 40 of us decided to do the ALS Bucket challenge... right on the 50. The day before a practice. Smart right? Anyways, the next day, it rained again. The field was literally a mud pool slip n' slide. Anyways, I fell in the mud twice that day. The first time, I was messing rith my friend and jumping around when i fell flat on my butt in a puddle of mud. Guess who looked like she had crapped her pants? This gal! I was kinda upset at first, but then I realized that it was just mud, and there was nothing i could do about it. So I had fun, running around and whatever. The second time was even funnier. We were doing a full run. During our second act, the brass would do a feature in which there's a 32 count spiral-ish jazzrun in the the middle of the field. During the middle of said jazzrun, the contra player, one of my good friends, who was a few people ahead of me, totally wipes out in the mud. Of course, I start laughing, lose my footing, and theoretically slide straight at him. I was so close to hitting him, but I didn't. At that point, my BD was laughing to hard to continue, so he let us out early. But yeah, I got a bit dirty.

The Bread FairyBefore Grand Nats, our band parents hosted a little dinner for us. Pizza, Pasta, bread, deserts, etc.. Anyways, we had waaaaay too much bread. They were literally giving half loaves of bread to each kid. The worst part? The bread was stale. So what do a bunch of band/guard kids do with 20 loaves of stale bread? Well, one of the boys in our guard decided he'd take it upon himself to find a use for this bread, so he put it in his garment bag. Guess what he brought to the hotel in Indy? His garment bag. Guess what was still in his garment bag? The bread. So, he did what any teenage boy would do. At about midnight, he started walking around the boys' floor, anonymously leaving bread outside the doors of unsuspecting band guys. Literally no one knew who was doing it, so we named them the bread fairy! One of our drum majors decided to find the culprit, but the evidence kept disappearing. Where was it going? The stomach of a freshman clarinet player. This kid was going door to door, retrieving and eating all the stale bread. I had 6 different people text me asking if I'd received my bread. no one found out who it was until a few days later.

But remember...What happens in band...STAYS IN BAND.

xo Baritone Babe ox