Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Band to use Big Easy music

Gurdon's Marching Go-Devil Band will be marching to some tunes so cool they're hot.

Alan Wimberly, Gurdon band director, said the band will be sporting new uniforms, courtesy of a grant from the Horace Cabe Foundation.

This year, the band will be split into two groups, with no eighth grade members in the high school band. Instead the Gurdon High School band will be made up of 30-35 students in grades 9-12, while there will be a seventh and eighth grade band with around 40 members.

The Cabe Middle School Band, Wimberly said, will play at some junior Devil home football games. However, they won't be marching, but performing from the stands.

And, after two years under the field generalship of Annie Otwell, there will be a new drum major for the GHS band  Kelly Runyan.

Runyan, a junior, competed with other students for the position, Wimberly said, and proved to be the best for the post.

She will be leading the band onto the field during halftime at Devil football games to the strains of tunes from the Big Easy itself  New Orleans.

The halftime show, Wimberly said, will feature blues and jazz compositions associated with New Orleans.

There will also be a new captain for the flag line, junior Christy Stiffler. Her job will be to keep the flag line in order during the halftime shows.

The band will be busy once school resumes in August, as some of the contests it will play in include the Four States competition in Texarkana, the Ashdown contest, which is proving to be a major band event, along with the regional band competition. The regional contest will be held at Lake Hamilton High School in Hot Springs this year, instead of at Ouachita Baptist University. Wimberly said the band might return to the Beebe Invitational, where it won the Governor's Cup in 1999.

Members of the band have just barely got out of school for the summer, but will need to be looking ahead to Aug. 1.

They will hit the field for "preseason" drills on this day, working as an entire unit from 9 a.m. until noon. From 1-2 p.m., Wimberly said, he and Bruce Burson will be doing sectional work.