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If you want to join this marching band, you can't be serious

By Mary Meehan mmeehan1@herald-leader.com

There is madness in this marching band.

It's in the band uniforms, which vary from performance to performance from flouncy skirts to scavenged parts of uniforms past, repurposed into something vaguely recognizable, to the familiar, heavily braided silhouettes.

It's in the collection of instruments — one sousaphone, three flutes, four saxophones, one trombone, three trumpets, one set of cymbals, one xylophone, six drummers (various kinds of drums), one man on the maracas and an assortment of kazoos. One member is learning to play the piano.

And it's in the "hoop girls" who must have a bit of Esther Williams' DNA, making spectacles — think Spirograph flowers turning slowly in the air — with the humble hula hoop and the occasional umbrella.

It's even in the call that opens practice:

"Musicians, assemble!" hollers Tripp Bratton, the band's musical director, whose title on the group's Facebook page is "the Big Kahuna."

"No!" the musicians shout back.

Former musicians dust off their horns

The band made its debut last November and has been gaining members and popularity ever since. The original idea, chief organizer Lori Houlihan said, was to tap an underused well of Lexington talent and create some cross-pollination among artists and arts groups. It has evolved in a different but not unwelcome direction, pulling in not only people already active in Lexington arts but lapsed musicians who had long ago put away their instruments.

On Sept. 12, the band will perform at the Lexington Roots and Heritage Festival and at a fund-raiser at the Kentucky Horse Park.

Whatever they do, they aim to please.

"We really get the crowd going," hoop girl Laura Lacy said.

These are, after all, the folks who, when their bus broke down on the way to a music festival, decided to perform on the side of Interstate 64 while waiting for the mechanic or a tow. "There will always be a little bit of anarchy in the March Madness Marching Band," Houlihan said.

But just a bit.

When the bus got rolling again on the way to Louisville's Fortnight Festival, Houlihan said, "we killed." The group also won first place in the non-float category for the Lexington Fourth of July parade.

And, although they yelled "No!" as if they really meant it, the players and the "hoop girls" soon settled into practice at Lexington's Mecca Dance studio, a two-hour, weekly musical trek through a diverse play list that includes Michael Jackson's Billie Jean as well as 500 Miles! by those early-1990s weavers of a one-hit wonder, The Proclaimers.

That song led to an interesting call and response between the adjoining studios where the dancers and players performed. During a recent rehearsal, the band reached the 500 Miles chorus on one side of the curtain while the hoop girls spontaneously sang in response: Da de lat da ..., Da de lat da ..., Da de lat da ... Da de lat da ... .

Enthusiasm trumps musicianship

The inspirations for the selected music are varied. Billie Jean entered the rotation after Michael Jackson died in June, Bratton said. Twist and Shout is an homage to the iconic parade scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, in honor of the late John Hughes. Sometimes, Bratton said, someone will get an idea for a song, and it will be vetted by the troupe.

As musicians, they are enthusiastic.

But that's part of the beauty of the whole thing, said saxophone player Steve Baron, who also is the owner of Lexington's CD Central.

"I literally haven't picked up an instrument in 40 years," he said. "No one is going to mistake us for a highly polished group of musicians."

"It's just getting together with cool people who like to play," Bratton said. "It's really just sort of an organically created teamwork sort of thing."

"We get to bring out sort of the wacky side of our personality," said Bratton, who does a bit of a moonwalk during the Michael Jackson number.

It has helped some people scratch an itch they didn't know they had.

Having fun 'like when you were a kid'

"I love a lot of the different costumes," said Lauren Sherrow, who plays the cymbals and trolls thrift stores for the proper parade attire. "I really need this in my life."

But the motley crew is filled with people with pretty serious day jobs: lawyers, engineers, teachers and small business owners, said Jennifer Miller, who has dubbed herself the cruise director and says she plays the camera in the marching band. During the week, she's a lawyer.

"It's nice to have two hours in a week where you kind of have fun like when you were a kid," Houlihan said. "It's completely about the joy of doing it."