What Drum Corps Did for Me, Part 2 by JohnDonovan.biz

// July 24th, 2008

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Survival is another big element that drum corps taught me. How to survive among your peers, and how to stay alive and in the game when the action gets molten hot. You have to be in it, to win it. If you don’t fight to survive, you get passed up. Before you read any further, please note I do have respect for everyone that has done drum corps, whether you are a fan, music educator, corps volunteer or professional performer, however I am looking to motivate the few performance professionals that will come from the marching field in the next few years to join to professional musician workforce. Three new lessons I have to share are: turning the other cheek to naysayers, being innovative as a professional and to never quit.

Turning the other cheek to the naysayers is an important lesson in professionalism. When you are outside of the box, trying to make a world a better place, people will talk behind your back, slander you online behind fake screen names, and try to knock you down with every step you take. I learned a big lesson almost ten years ago when I tried to import The Majestic XTD Marching drums from Holland. With no experience, I tried to move a mountain with little money, but with all the drive drum corps taught me. Long story short, anytime I was flamed online, I fought back. Wrong move. Turn the other cheek, smile, move on, and try harder next time with a better plan, and prove the naysayers wrong. Anytime a naysayer tries to knock me down, I work harder and smarter. My failure with Majestic resulted in bankruptcy, and embarrassment. However, this also inspired me to earn my undergraduate in music business. Looking in the mirror to see your deficiencies is the first step to understanding where you need to go. Every day, ask yourself: “what can I do today that would be better then yesterday?”

Being innovative as a professional. My innovation as a performer has changed my life. I now improve with DJS at really expensive parties, on a mutated marching setup. With the number of drum corps folding and merging, change is needed. This is my challenge to DCI: Hire a few people like myself who actually care about long term popular growth and not just the traditional elitist contentment which is plunging the education that changed my life into the sewers. Yes, I just said something drastic and controversial. Imaging this scenario: The year is 2020. There is an all time number of startup corps educating a greater amount of high school and college musicians entertaining a record number of ticket buyers, on both sides of the field, due to drastic changes. In 2017, a rule is passed by DCI requiring all corps to pick top 40 music from the previous year. I heard from a famous drumline arranger at PASIC last year that you can’t write great drum corps music from pop music. That’s pooh-pooh! I improvise rudimental parts all the time over top 40 music playing with some of the hottest DJS on Long Island/NYC and I know the same can be done by the few professional brass performers that also aged out of DCI. Maybe the writing jobs should go to the guys that actually still continue to eat, breath and sleep musical performance 24/7 after they age out. Let the guys who know what it takes to get people dancing design the shows. Did we forget what the jazz era taught us about entertainment? Anyhow, imagine in 2018 a rule passed by DCI that requires all corps members to hand flyers out house to house, the morning of the show. This would have to broken down by town. If you have 1,000 kids marketing for four hours in a systematic way, how many advertising impressions could you knock out? In groups of two, you could probably, over the course of five hours, hit fifty thousand houses or more. Do the math. How many kids could you flush out of their garage band practices to come see a Godsmack show, a Tool show or even a Shakira show with over a thousand live musicians performing? Plenty. The year is 2019, ticket sales are high, and large corporations are getting involved to sponsor the shows and the corps, thus increasing the amount of scholarships drastically enough to include cross country travel and to support a recruitment organization that travels around to actually scout talent and make the best placements according to all variables. The year is 2020. There is an all time number of startup corps educating a greater amount of high school and college musicians entertaining a record number of ticket buyers, on both sides of the field, due to drastic changes. I dare someone with the money and the guts to make this happen.

Never quitting. Quitting is not an option for me. People told me when I got married to my great wife Lauren, a DCI tuba vet from LVK, and had our kid Evan who will be two this week, that I would have to quit music. Remember what I said about the naysayers? I’m now doing better than ever, and not looking back with regret at all. Even on the hottest day of corps when I marched with Pioneer, I knew that quitting was not ever an option because of my goal to be a professional drummer. If I would have quit, I would have never tasted sweet victory with the Pioneer drumline in 1996. Every year I might meet one or two more full time drummers who did corps, and the respect level among all of us is great, because we all have solid work ethics as professional performers. Drums Corps is all about not quitting, regardless of how hard it gets.

Bio: John Donovan has played with professional dance bands, rock bands, metal bands, jazz bands, musical theater pit orchestras, cruise ship bands and DJ’S.  In 2002, John performed with One Man Religion, which opened for internationally recognized Metal band, Breaking Benjamin.  He is also a multi-world, national and state rudimental drumming champion,  marching with Pioneer, Jersey Surf and The Reading Buccaneers Drum and Bugle Corps.  A music business graduate of McNally Smith College of Music, formerly known as MusicTech, John has served as composer, arranger, instructor, and manager for drumlines across the Northeast and Midwest. John was featured in Modern Drummer Magazine, March 2008, pg 192. John is a performing artist and clinician for Mapex Marching Percussion and  can be reached through http:// www.JohnDonovan.Biz