Standing atop a podium in front of 396 Million Dollar Band members, whistle poised and ready to blow at a moment’s notice, the MDB drum majors wait to make a critical call. The stadium shakes from the cheers of more than 101,000 excited fans. The referee calls the ball down.
Once the work of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team ends, the real work for the MDB’s four drum majors begins.
From the moment a play ends, the drum majors have approximately 10 seconds to process the play, decide on an appropriate cheer and get the attention of the entire band in order to conduct a 25-40 second cheer – all before the football team returns for the next play. For the MDB’s four drum majors, life never slows down.
“One of the strangest feelings is finishing your quarter, and then you sit down and you can’t stop your brain. It’s like trying to walk off an escalator and you fall completely on your face,” said Ben Carmichael, a current drum major and first-year graduate student in mechanical engineering.
Along with Carmichael, Connor Fox, Jenny Shelton and Jared Horton comprise the four-man team of drum majors. They are responsible for conducting the members of the band during halftime, pregame and every tune in between.
Two years ago, all four current drum majors auditioned against 23 other band members for their positions in a three-round process. The first round was conducting a piece of music. The second round was an interview. And the third round was, as described by Horton, “mind-boggling”: conducting A-Day.
Randall Coleman, associate director of bands, said it takes a special type of person to be an MDB drum major, but the benefits of the experience are invaluable.
“It’s a tremendous responsibility,” Coleman said. “It’s life in a pressure cooker most of the time. It takes a person who is up for a challenge, organized, musical, a tremendous leader and a huge Crimson Tide fan.”
Along with being drum majors, Carmichael, Fox, Shelton and Horton are involved in a wide variety of other campus organizations including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Alabama International Relations Club, Creative Campus and the Culverhouse College of Commerce Student Services.
Horton, a senior majoring in business, said the key to being an MDB drum major is mastering the art of time management. He said he usually schedules his harder classes in the spring because there is less of a demand on his schedule.
Outside of their gameday duties, the MDB drum majors are responsible for regulating rehearsal etiquette six days a week and acting as liaisons between the band members and directors. Despite being one of the largest organizations on campus, Fox, a second-year drum major and junior majoring in public relations, said the MDB is an extremely close-knit group.
“At the end of the day we’re all members of the band; we’re all part of this extended family,” Fox said. “It’s motivating for us to be in front of all these people and be the face of a long tradition.”
Jordan Matthews, a former drum major, said he would not trade his three years as a drum major for anything. He said many of the connections he made through being in band have helped him tremendously, both personally and professionally in his post-graduation life.
“From the moment I stepped onto campus, I had a 400 person family, which both held me accountable for my actions and gave me lifelong friendships,” Matthews said.
If the entire band is an extended family, then the four drum majors are its patriarch. The four current drum majors are in the particularly influential and extremely rare position of returning drum majors. Shelton, a third-year drum major and senior majoring in international relations, said over the past two years being a drum major has been like working with three of her best friends.
The strong bond between Carmichael, Fox, Shelton and Howard has allowed them to take the MDB drum major program to a new level. The four started practicing for the 2013-14 football season in May 2013 and continued to work until band camp at the beginning of August.
With their combined experience, this year’s drum majors have been able to choreograph and perform two different mace routines for their entrance onto the field during the band’s pregame show. The mace routines include the run and synchronised spins set to the band’s entrance video playing on the stadium’s jumbotrons. Traditionally, there is only one mace routine and only two drum majors perform the run.
Fox said while the mace routine is extremely nerve-wracking and high pressure, it is one of his favorite parts of gameday and the overall drum major experience.
“It’s one of those things where you can’t think about what you’re doing because if you put into perspective you’re about to perform for about 101,000 people,” Fox said. “To think that there are 101,000 pairs of eyes that can see your every move and your every mistake, that is a huge part of the stress that we feel.”
Despite being together for an average of 20 hours per week, he and the other three drum majors have made the clear distinction between being friends and being professional. Fox said this distinction has enabled all four of the MDB drum majors to hold each other to a higher standard in everything they do.
“We really have learned to respect one another and really value each others opinions because if one of us isn’t performing to the best of their abilities, we have to say something,” Fox said. “That’s the nature of what we do. You can’t hold grudges; you can’t be mad. You have to respect it and move on.”
Three of the four current drum majors were drum majors in high school, and all four have been a part of the band community for many years. They said going from band member to section leader and finally to drum major was a natural transition to make.
Shelton said she auditioned to be a drum major because she wanted to take a more active role in the band.
“You just always want to be improving,” Shelly said. “I wanted to be in a leadership position so I could help with that. I wanted to be a part of helping the band be as awesome as it is.”
Shelton said the band’s performance of key tunes between plays helps set the mood for the entire stadium. She said if the band were to neglect playing the first down cheer after a first down, the atmosphere of the entire stadium would be thrown off.
Although the cheers led by the band may become second nature to fans in the stadium, the moment a song is dropped or played incorrectly, everyone notices. On gameday, the atmosphere of the stadium depends on the focus of the MDB drum majors. Carmichael said for that reason, although their backs are turned to the field for the majority of the game, they often watch the game more closely than those facing the field.
Horton said he has never witnessed a game as just a fan and not part of the band, but he can’t imagine what an Alabama football game would be like without the MDB’s support.
“I always try to imagine a game without the band,” Horton said. “I feel like our student section and the stadium as a whole wouldn’t be as engaged. I think that we contribute a lot to the atmosphere of the game, and coach Saban has actually accredited us with that.”
Fox said particularly with big games like the LSU game two weeks ago, all the drum majors feel extra pressure to make sure everything is perfect, but he said it’s also very rewarding to know that the energy of the stadium is in their hands.
“It’s crazy, but we’re crazy enough to do it,” he said.
