Hey guys! I apologize for not posting over the first half of my tour. Rehearsals have been pretty rough and the days have been long and I’ve not had a whole lot of down time to get on the internet from my phone. But I’m posting once more! Let’s get up to date.

I don’t know how many of you know this, but at our memorial day camp we were still lacking a 4th bass drummer. So I made the tough decision of learning how to play a new instrument and I made the switch. So I’ve been marching on the bass line this season and to be honest, I think I’ve benefited from this a lot more than I would have on snare.

Oregon Crusaders 2009 Bassline

All days were a pretty tough time for me. I experienced some new things. (chafing, anyone?) And I also injured my foot, which has just recently healed.

We got our rough draft of the show finished by the last day of all days so we were able to present it at our first show which was awesome. (Yet, slightly unsuccessful) Fortunately for a lot of us the show was only exhibition.

Our first judged show was the next day. It was a definite improvement for all of us and we scored a 65.5 overall, with a 15.1 in percussion.

Some how at our next show we managed to score 3 points lower as well as 4 points lower in drums, despite a better run. And from there we’ve slowly increased in score, still slightly under our first score but with a much cleaner program. It’s kind of confusing how our score would go down after a better run.

But ultimately the scores don’t really matter. We have an extremely demanding program for an open class group and we’re improving upon it every day.

Our first tour concluded with a performance at Corps Encore in Ogden, Utah with a score of 64.65 and a drum score of 12.9.

As of right now, the Oregon Crusaders are on a week break before we start back up with our 2nd set of all-days and as we head out east for Finals. I can only hope that we can all come back and pick up right where we started and not waste a second getting our heads back in the game.

Needless to say, there’s some work to be done. But expect to see OC at the top of Open Class this summer.

Oregon Crusaders 2009

Hey, and welcome to my blog. Here, I will be documenting my 2009 tour with the Oregon Crusaders drum and bugle corps. Let me introuce myself.

My name is Mike, I’m 18 years old and this is my first summer marching drum corps.  I’ve been ‘playing’ drums since 5th grade, but I never took it seriously until my junior year in high school when I seriously thought about trying out for drum corps.  I started practicing rudimental percussion my freshman year in high school but, again, never took it seriously until a couple years later. I went to my first drum corps show in 2006, the summer before my sophomore year. The corps that were features were Santa Clara Vanguard, Blue Knights, Seattle Cascades, Spokane Thunder, and of course, Oreon Crusaders. This was my first time being exposed to this activity however it didn’t really touch me at the time.

So Novemeber of 2008 came around and I decided to give it a shot. At the first camp, nobody was cut. After a couple camps of being allowed to return, I soon figured out that the line was being set. I had made the line! Keep in mind that this was my first time ever auditioning for anything, so this was a big deal.
And that’s my short story. =] I’m marching on the Oregon Crusaders 2009 snareline.

I can’t tell you for sure what our repertoire is, because I don’t know the exact names of the songs. However, the name of our show this year is Equilibrium, and I can tell you that we’re playing arrangements of music featured in The Philadelphia Story.

For more information about the Oregon Crusaders, or to see our tour schedule, visit the Oregon Crusaders website.

Hope to see you guys at some shows this summer.

-Mike