3rd Annual Scout House Invitational Tattoo
Preston Scout House Alumni Band’s 2012 Invitational Tattoo on Saturday, August 18 will salute the ceremonial band of the Waterloo Regional Police Service, celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. The 3rd annual Tattoo will also feature popular alumni drum and bugle corps and marching bands from across southern Ontario, Quebec and New York state.
In addition to the Waterloo Regional Police Service band and Preston Scout House Alumni Band, the line up of performers for the family-oriented Tattoo includes the Les Diplomates du Quebec Alumni Drum and Bugle Corps, Quebec, QC; Mighty St. Joe’s Alumni Drum and Bugle Corps, LeRoy, New York; Optimists Alumni Drum and Bugle Corps, Toronto, Ontario; United Alumni Senior Drum and Bugle Corps, Simcoe, Ontario; Burlington Teen Tour Band, Burlington, Ontario; Toronto Signals Band, Toronto, Ontario; drum line of the Philippine Heritage Band, Vaughan, Ontario; Panwaves Steel Drum Orchestra, Cambridge, Ontario (pre-show entertainment).
The gates at Waterloo Stadium (formerly known as Seagram Stadium) will open at 5:30 pm on August 18, with entertainment on the field beginning at 6:30 pm. Tickets are $15 at the door. Advance tickets are $12, available from the Centre in the Square box office in Kitchener, at Home Hardware stores on King Street in Cambridge and Park Street in Kitchener and from Scout House Band members.
The family feeling of the Tattoo will flow from the audience right out on the field, with several special performances by groups playing together demonstrating the friendships and common values shared by everyone in the marching music field.
The Burlington Teen Tour Band and Scout House have played If My Friends Could See Me Now together on the street following the Burlington Sound of Music Festival parade in 2011 and again last June. After last year’s visit to Waterloo, Les Diplomates provided their arrangement of Band of Brothers to Scout House, to be performed together in 2012.
The emotional highlight of alumni field shows is a performance by the brass lines of the massed groups playing You’ll Never Walk Alone. During a concert in Durham on August 4, Scout House was joined on the field by members of the Durham Girls Alumni drum and bugle corps to play You’ll Never Walk Alone. Many in the audience had tears in their eyes during the song, the first performance in 28 years by the Durham Girls, who were national champions in the 1950s. Scout House had loaned instruments and provided support to the organization over the winter to help them prepare for their Durham Homecoming parade and concert appearance.
The Scout House Tattoo will also feature a special performance by all the drum lines, playing Three Camps, a drum solo that originated in North American colonial times as a signal between distant military camps that each encampment was safe at the end of the day. During the American Revolution, large American forces in the field were separated into three camps so a night attack on any one encampment would not endanger the entire force.
The Invitational Tattoo will be another highlight of the Scout House summer schedule that has already provided many memorable moments for Band members.
Scout House delivered what members and many observers consider the best field show the Band has ever done to an adoring audience in Hornell, New York on July 28, the Band’s first appearance in that town since 1966. The warm welcome and sense of accomplishment completely wiped out the frustration from every other aspect of a road trip that went spectacularly wrong.
The schedule for the Hornell trip called for two Scout House buses to leave Cambridge early Saturday morning, to arrive in Bath, New York for field rehearsal from noon to 1:30 pm, allowing plenty of time to check into the hotel, eat lunch, freshen up, change into uniform for a short bus ride to arrive in neighboring Hornell by 6 pm. It turned into a scheduling and logistics nightmare.
The buses were delayed at the border for an hour, so Band members didn’t arrive in Bath to start rehearsal until 1:30 pm. When the buses arrived at the hotel at about 3 pm, just a few blocks from the practice field, no one could check into a room because the hotel’s computer system was down. The beer and pizza party planned for after the show was quickly advanced to a mid-afternoon party. Two hours later, people were still standing in line at the front desk waiting to register for rooms.
In the meantime, the town mayor was working with Band officials to look for other accommodations.
At 5 pm, people began to change into uniform in the hotel lobby and parking lot, then boarded the buses for the ride to Hornell. Spirits revived considerably during the warm up, and shot sky high when the Band received the first of several standing ovations after just the first few bars of music when the field show began.
Back in Bath after the show, the hotel didn’t have enough rooms to accommodate all the Band members who were slowly being processed at the front desk, despite confirmed advance reservations, so some were diverted to a downtown hotel. When registrations finally wound up around midnight, the Band was spread over two hotels, with up to eight people sharing a room in some cases.
The Band’s performance in Durham a week later was equally memorable, for different reasons. Scout House last appeared in Durham in 1958. Many parade spectators remembered local performances in the 1950s, and asked if the Band still played Waltzing Matilda.
The temperature on the street was close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit when the parade stepped off at 11 am. Then it got hot! At 2 pm, Scout House performed a standstill concert at the Durham Arena, with spectators sitting on the parched grass on the hillside, or crowding together in the shade of a few trees on the hill. The Band played its field show routine, then brass players from the Durham Girls alumni joined Scout House to play You’ll Never Walk Alone.
Scout House will join other alumni corps in Oshawa on August 25, in the Legends of Drum Corps field concert hosted annually by the Optimists Alumni Drum and Bugle Corps, of Toronto.
The Band’s summer field show season winds up at Navy Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland on Sunday September 2 during the Alumni Spectacular field concert. Scout House will be making its tenth appearance in the alumni show, one of many events held during the Drum Corps Associates (DCA) championship tournament weekend.
Since its first stage show in 1999, Scout House Alumni Band has performed in more than 360 parades, field shows and concerts in communities across Ontario and Quebec, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida and West Virginia.
For more information about Preston Scout House Alumni Band, contact Activities Director Nancy Weiler at telephone (519) 653-3376, email prestonscouthouseband [dot] adm [at] sympatico [dot] ca or visit the Web site at http://www.scouthouseband.com/
