Live from … celebrating their 80th anniversary, the U.S. Navy Band showcases talent on a Southeastern U.S. tour

All Hands, May, 2005 by Charles L. Ludwig

Most deployed Sailors could have related in Petty Officer 1st Class Andy Wheeler as he spoke to his master chief, Bob Snider, early one sun-drenched but windy Sunday morning.

"So," Wheeler said while taking a break from his morning routine, "it's Tuesday. I guess we'll be in ..."

"No, it's Sunday," Snider interrupted with a chuckle. "You're way off. Jacksonville was yesterday ..."

"And Sumter is today, right?" Wheeler jumped in, trying to finish Snider's thought.

"Nooo, you're still thinking of Tuesday," Snider quipped. "Savannah is today. Did you lose track of what day it is again?"

"Yeah, that's the third time in a week I think," Wheeler sheepishly answered.

Losing track of what day of the week it is has been a time-honored tradition in the Navy, but what made Wheeler's conversation unique was the setting.

If someone didn't know much about the Navy, they may have thought these two Sailors were talking about their ship hitting foreign ports. But instead, these two musicians were talking about the next several stops of the Navy Band's three-week, 20-performance 80th anniversary tour.

For the tour, the band put on a show that they have never taken on tout before. For the first time, the concert band was joined on stage by the Navy Sea Chanters chorus and a 1960s rock act, the Cruisers, for a series of shows.

In all, the tour took the hand through five states, with performances in high school and college auditoriums, convention centers and outdoor band shells. Fans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida turned out to see the free 90-minute live show.

Performing those 20 shows in 20 different cities over 21 days makes some members a little worse for wear when it comes to the calendar, Musician 1st Class Wheeler observed. "That's something that happens a lot with some of the guys here," he said after his conversation with MUCM Snider. "You get out on the road and you get so into the routine of traveling that you forget everything else-even what day it is. [That] seems to happen to everyone at least once."

It may not be so bad to the hand's performers if that was the worst thing about the tour. But performing a show a night is really just the easy part.

"If performing was the hard part, we'd always be happy," said Navy Band Leader CAPT Ralph Gambone. "But it's the other things that go into a tour that wear people out. Everything from scheduling the tour to traveling can be a pain."

A Navy Band tour, especially one with the prominence of an 80th anniversary, is an ordeal to arrange, explained Snider, the band's tour coordinator.

"Some of the appearances are easy to take care of, since you know the sponsors and have worked with them before," he said. "But even then, you still have to make sure everything else on the tour is ready to go."

To do that, Snider heads out to the various tour stops and surveys the dries, including the hotels they may stay in, the surrounding areas and potential performance halls.

Everything must be up to the Navy Band's standard before a tour is officially set. "We've had to move shows to other dries before for a variety of reasons," Snider said. "But we cheek everything out before we go. We even send people out to drive the actual tour route to make sure the rides aren't too tough."

Once the plans are set and the tour begins, that's when the headaches start for band members. "On a tour, everything gets thrown out of whack," said MU1 Andrew Oppenheim, one of the band's tuba players. "I would imagine that it's like going on a deployment. Your body gets used to eating at different times and just everything changes for your daffy routine."

Instead of waking and arriving for work early in the morning, on tour most Navy Band members wake, eat breakfast and prepare for an hours-long bus ride to the next city.

There, after checking in and unpacking the few things they have the time to unpack, it's time for lunch, usually around 2 p.m. "That can be seen as a positive and a negative of life on the road." Wheeler said. "For some people, eating in restaurants and getting served is pretty cool, but for those of us who may have some trouble beeping off weight, constantly eating out can be trouble. I usually gain about 10 pounds on the road."

After the late lunch, buses start rolling from the hotel several hours before a show to begin shuttling musicians to the concert hall. Then, after warm-ups and the actual show, band members return to their hotel rooms around 10 p.m., leaving time for a late dinner and sleep.

Also in the mix is a rotating set of band members who serve as the "crew." They take off from the hotel earlier than the other band members to take two moving trucks worth of equipment to the concert site to be set up.

"The crew is as important a group of people as we have," Snider said. "They are always ahead of everyone else to make sure all the groundwork is set up. without them volunteering to get there early and have everything together, we'd have a heck of a time doing a quality show."