Episode 12 - Dr. Frank Tracz

Episode 12 of the Aggieville Lifestyle Podcast features Dr. Frank Tracz, the now *officially* retired Director of Bands at Kansas State University. Host Tyler Jackson sits down with Dr. Tracz to reflect on his life and remarkable career, the traditions and excellence of the Pride of Wildcat Land, the lasting impact of music education, and the legacy he leaves after decades of inspiring generations of students. 

Settle in and join this incredible conversation as we celebrate the stories, leadership, and unmistakable passion that made Dr. Tracz one of the most beloved figures in Wildcat history.

This episode is an absolute banger! 

Go Cats! 💜🎶

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Agieville Lifestyle Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Jackson. Thank you so very much for stopping by. Man, it is so hard to believe it is already halfway through the year of our Lord 2026, right? Man. Well, we're going to be talking all things Aggyville in the summertime. We'll be talking about America 250, and then our special guest this episode. I've been excited for this one for a while. This might be the best one yet. We're going to be talking to the now officially retired, the one, the only, the legendary, Dr. Frank Trace, the marching band director from Kansas State University. I think in this podcast, he lets his hair down just a little bit more than he probably has on the other ones. I mean, they can't fire him now, can they? It's a great listen. I promise you, you'll really enjoy this one. Welcome to the Aggie Vill Lifestyle Podcast. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Welcome to the Aggieville Lifestyle Podcast. I am your host, Tyler Jackson. So grateful for you to stop on by. And uh yeah, man, halfway through the summer. I don't mind it when the kids are here. I don't mind it when the kids are gone. You can always tell the difference, of course. But personally speaking, I live basically directly across the street from the Pike fraternity, and there's such a noticeable difference on my street when all those cars aren't here. That's the one thing I look forward to in Manhattan anymore in the summertime or even Christmas break. It's like, man, the the lack of traffic up and down my street, the cars parked in front of my house, all the trash. It's amazing how much the college kids honestly litter these days. I'm calling them out. I gotta do it because there's a lot of trash when they're around. It just drops out of their cars. But uh, but yeah. Hopefully you've been having yourself a pretty good summer. Hopefully this weekend you don't blow any fingers off with the 4th of July. America 250, 250 years, man. She has never looked so good. I know it's been uh uh I I I one of my favorite things this summer with the World Cup soccer. I'm not a big soccer fan. Shout out to all the people that are. I I love hockey. I know there's people out there that can't stand hockey and love soccer. It is what it is, right? I I've tried to embrace the World Cup as much as I possibly can. I've watched the Americans play a little bit, but uh definitely cheering for them to win every game. I will say it's been pretty refreshing and very awesome to see all over the interwebs, all the Europeans, all the people from around the world that have been coming to America saying, man, this really is our our media's been lying to us. They've been lying to us all my life about saying that America was a terrible place with terrible food and mean people, and it couldn't be more opposite. In fact, we don't ever want to leave. We we don't we don't want to leave America. This is the greatest place in the world. This really truly is what they say it is. And so for America 250, that's been one of my favorite things this entire summer is just watching the reaction from the people that's been coming from all over the world during the World Cup to really see for themselves that America truly is the greatest nation in the world. I always say it's you know, we are American by luck, Kansans by the grace of God. So just even a further zoom in on that is I'm so grateful that I'm not only an American, of course, but that I'm from the state of Kansas. When I was a little kid, Kansas, you know, it is what it is. I thought it I thought it was what it was, right? Growing up in Dodge City, we we had a 6A school, so uh my class had north of 300 kids in it. And and so we were we were big enough to where we had a lot of diversity, we had a lot of different ideas, a lot of different walks of life, but we were small enough to where we had to rely on each other. And it was it was a good and a bad thing when you're 14, 15, 16 years old, right? But the older I get, the more I thank God every day that I am from Kansas, and I made the decision in 2006 when I was 21 years old to move to Manhattan, and I'm even more grateful that I had never that I've made the decision to have stayed here for the last 20 years. So I'm 41 now, I've been here since I was 21. So literally half of my life has been in Manhattan, my entire life has been in Kansas. I'm an American by birth, American by luck, and I'm I'm so grateful for it. And and we all should be. We get a lot of privileges afforded to us because we are Americans, as a lot of the people that are coming from around the world for the World Cup are seeing firsthand, or people that have visited here in the past, people that come here, you know, however their immigration, whatever their immigration status is, how the people that come here realize that America truly is the greatest place in the world. And so I I know for one, for myself, this 4th of July weekend, I truly am grateful to be from America. I'm grateful to be an American. I'm I'm I'm humbled and honored to pay tribute to all those that came before us to build this amazing nation that we have. Those that have given their lives, those of the that have given their blood, their time, their effort, their sweat, their tears, the whole nine yards. You know, my on my paternal side, on my on the Jackson side, I know I'm 14th generation on that side. That that side of my family came over. My my 14th great-grandpa came over here during the Civil War of London, the War of the Roses, in 1642, and had came over on a ship. My 13th great-grandfather, Seebus Jackson, was born on that ship. They they settled in what is now present Newton uh Newton, Massachusetts, where Boston College is. And from there it was uh Massachusetts to New York, then they were in Virginia. I guess my eighth great-grandmother on that side was an Indian princess, which is kind of cool. And I had family that was directly, I had some uncles that were in the Revolutionary War, and then from there they moved to Kentucky, to Illinois, to Indiana, where my great-grandfather moved from Indiana to Kansas. He was an oil field worker down by El Dorado. So to be able to be able to even know that, to be able to trace that back, man, I've got a lot of pride in that. And then on my mom's side, my great-grandfather came over in 1850. He was born in 1821, came over in 1850 from County Cork, Ireland. They were in Rockport, Illinois for a long time, and then the late 1800s, they homesteaded in Hodgman County, Kansas. And and honestly, just to be able to know that as well, to know where I've come from, to know where you're going, you have to know where you've come from. And I'm so grateful that I know the story on both halves of my of my existence. That uh yeah, I mean, gosh, I'm the luckiest person in the world. And to be able to host this podcast with you and for you to take your time out, if you're hearing my voice right now, for you to take the time out of your busy schedule, you can be listening to anything, watching anything. There's so much competition for our attention at all times. So for me to be an American from Kansas, talking in this podcast, for you to be listening to it right now, man, I'm telling you, it's so much gratitude. Every day I wake up, I'm so grateful. Today's the greatest day of my life. I'm the greatest to ever do it. Two things I always tell myself, and thank you, God, for today. So, anyway, America 250. Been a lot of American flags, a lot of talk of America this summer at the World Cup, and so I just wanted to say that. Just uh I I love this country. We're so grateful to have to be who we are, where we're at, and to be in Kansas and Manhattan specifically. My goodness. And to have Aggieville, the oldest shopping district in the states, all 137 years proud. But yeah, man, that's so gnarly. That's so gnarly. Um some Aggieville talking notes. We got uh construction still going on, you know, Morrow Street. They're gonna be closing it off in between 12th and Manhattan Avenue. That's down the road still, so don't be worried about that. It is nice that the parking garage is free all summer long. That's really awesome. Um, the hotel is almost finished at the corner of Laramie and 12th, so that's pretty cool. They'll have the cityscape all the way down to City Park, and then they'll close down Morro. Again, Dennis Cook, our director of Aggieville, of the Aggieville Business Association, has mentioned several times. He said, Anytime that there's not a water leak in Aggieville or on Morrow Street, it's a good time, uh, a good thing. That infrastructure's been down there for so long, and so it needs to be done. We get that finished, then they'll do um, I know they're gonna be doing it in segments so that way it's not completely 100% closed off all the way from 11th all back to Manhattan Avenue. They're gonna do it in segments. It's gonna take a little while, 18 months, a couple years, but once it's finished, Aggieville is gonna be awesome, man. It's gonna look so cool. So, accessagiville.com. Accessagiville.com will take you to where you can have some real-time live updates on the construction in the ville. Also, gotta give a big shout out to my boys, to Casey McCool and Jeff Czar for the the owners of McCool's bar and kitchen back on May 30th. She shut down. It wasn't a financial thing, it wasn't anything like that. It was just it was more of a so that way they could have more time with their family. And it's running a bar, running a restaurant, man, it is not easy. Rising costs, um you know, finding labor, people to help run stuff, just being there day in, day out, day in, day out. It's pretty tough. And so hats off to Casey and Jeff for doing a great job with McCool's. It was a really awesome place for several years. I bartended there a couple times because I was part of the the McCools. They also own Mojo's as well. I was a long time bartender at Mojo's. But I was part of the family that was uh the McCool's family, and so hats off to Casey, hats off to Jeff. I will eternally miss your wings. The the the wings there were fantastic, um, but and also like their taco tots and all the all the food that they had. They all Jeff was such a good cook. He was uh really good at uh he took pride in his chicken wings, but everything else there was fantastic. The Jay-Z burger uh was my favorite one. So big shout out to McCools. Thank you guys for being around, thank you guys for being awesome. We will miss you without a doubt. And uh yeah, otherwise it's just July and Aguivo, man. Get your free parking, get into Taco Lucha and so long while you can, while there's not a long wait. The kids will be back before you know it. Well, without further ado, let's get into the guest this week. This one is one that I'm really excited for. He is officially retired as of June the 30th. We did record this uh a few weeks ago, so you'll hear that a couple different times. I just I've been busy. I just had to, I just now got around to putting this together. Again, happy for the July week. But congratulations to Dr. Frank Trace on a career well done. Dr. Trace, you are awesome. It's exciting to have you. Uh, thank you for what you did with Kansas States, not only, not only the marching band program, the band program, all the stuff that you did, all the all the the lives that you've touched, but just for what you've done for Manhattan and Agivil and the whole nine yards. Just you have made this a better place, and so we are grateful for you. And so, yes, without further ado, our guest this week is Dr. Frank Trace. That's coming up here in just one moment. This is the Agiville Lifestyle Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Agivil Lifestyle.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

All right, Mike Check one, two, mic check one, two.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Check one, two, three, one, two, get it. Absolutely. I could do I could do that too.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

I'm sure were you ever much of a singer? Oh, goddamn. No, no singing, you don't want to hear you don't want us to hear you singing? No, not at all. If we did uh is there any lost, is there any the Dr. Frank Trace lost recordings like that you find with those bands?

SPEAKER_00 12:16

I wouldn't tell you.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Somewhere deep in the depths of Ohio of the Ohio State University, I'm sure there's some some golden records of you singing.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Oh god, there didn't record stuff back then. Or had cell phones. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

We'd all be could you imagine him growing up or even going to high school or any of that college with cell phones?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

None of us would be where we are. It wouldn't be as fun, it wouldn't be as enjoyable, it wouldn't be as creative, it wouldn't be anything.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Did you see a change in your students when it came to cell phones being prevalent?

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Oh, I see it now, yeah. They're they're uh emotionally dead because they listen to each other and they they live for the amount of likes on their Facebook posts and things of that nature instead of trying to figure out how to be happy and do the right thing and make people look at people in the eye and talk to them and stuff. Nobody you know, a lot of people don't do that. I think that's where the problem is. And then we we have faculty that just uh promote that stuff and we want to make the kids feel good about themselves and instead of teaching them and I don't want to make you feel good about yourself. I want you to make yourself feel good about you. I want to teach you how to do that.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

So I'll give you a hug when you need it, but I'm gonna grab you by the ear and say, listen very carefully. Quickest route to success is get your happy ass up out of bed in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

And go to class and go do the work that's needed. Not the extra tutoring, not the extra time. Not I don't understand this. Figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

You know what the cure to anxiety is? Action.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Action is action alleviates anxiety. Just get up and do it.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Movement. Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

I mean, if you think about it, we all sit around. It's pretty easy to door dash Panda Express or or something that's like super heavy carb loaded. You know, we eat like athletes. Yeah. You have all this stored energy, then you just lay around. Well, all that potential energy has it has to go somewhere and it just it starts to create anxiety within us.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Yeah, if my grandson comes over every time he goes to bed and give him a kiss good night and he falls asleep and I say, I'm fucking sorry, man. We're leaving you a mess. We're leaving you a mess because nobody has the balls to do the right thing and nobody wants to take the extra time and do what is necessary. They just want to especially at the collegiate level, they're all interested in tenure and promotion. And I'd never worried about tenure and promotion. If it didn't work here, I was gonna could I'd just go someplace else.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

I've gotten the mentality, the mentality over the last several years that if it's uh if there's any rejection or redirection, it's always divine protection. Yeah. Always. Because you can't you can never connect dots looking forward, you can only connect dots looking backwards. Yeah. And as I look at my life, I know that everything looking backwards is always connected, even if the path in front of me isn't clear.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

The best example I can give you growing up of why I learned to be a fighter and figure things out is my dad used to we used to go outside and we used to play killer catch. And he was a steel worker, and he'd come home, we'd go outside and play baseball. And you know, you'd I was young and you'd stand fifty feet apart and he'd throw it and I throw it back and he'd throw it harder and harder, and you'd say, take a step forward, he'd take a step forward, and we'd keep throwing as hard as you can. So you learned how to that's why I love third base. I could I could protect myself, I can stop the ball and catch it because the consequences of not doing that were were pretty severe.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

I've never heard of that. Like that's genius, really.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Yeah, and we'd take a step forward and still and I'd give up every time and I'd I'd throw it back to him. So I'd quit and I'd run away.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Oh, so the winner would be the last person to throw the ball? Yeah. Or the first person to bow out.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

So it's like basically the chicken of baseball. Yeah, I'd run it, I'd run into the driveway and stuff, and he'd always turn and he'd throw the ball and hit me in the back and back of the head or the back of the butt or something, and he'd laugh, you know. And I remember the last time that we played, he was uh he was he was eventually in a wheelchair and he could barely walk. He had a bunch of steel mill accidents. And uh we'd I'd said let's go and play catch. And he goes, All right. He had his cane with him, you know, and he'd prop the cane up and catch the ball. And I'd I'd say, You want to play kill or catch? And he said, Ah, I wonder if I can. I said, Sure, you can. So we played, you know, and then he said, Ah, that that's enough. And he started walking away with his glove. And I couldn't resist. So I hit him right in the ass.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

And he turned, he's like in the 70s and he turned around and got a cake and he looked at me. I thought I was gonna say something. He started smiling, he goes, at a boy. And I thought, okay, no, we made it. But that was it. So, you know, you'd get close and he'd be firing that ball at you, man. And you'd have to pay attention and protect yourself and catch it. Because if you missed it, it went down the street, six houses, and you had to go run and get the damn thing. So that was just as worse as getting hit bad as getting hit. Absolutely. So I I I used to I used to be a good third baseman.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Well, thank you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that would desensitize you. Uh, you're not scared of a baseball, are you?

SPEAKER_00 17:01

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

No, you just react and make it happen.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Right back pitch, I'll get out of the way, and you do it again, I'm coming after you. But I'm bringing the bat with me, pal. Absolutely. I'm not gonna get in a fight to send a message, I'm gonna get in a fight to destroy you.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

My my favorite, I think my favorite all-time baseball picture is the picture of Nolan Ryan fighting Robin Ventura. Yeah. I could see a picture of Dr. Frank Trace. Yeah. The same thing, just kind of got a guy in the head and headlock in your throat and a hangmaker.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

I'd be the first off the bench. My favorite baseball picture is when uh Randy uh the tall guy. Randy Johnson hit that bird the big unit. Hit that bird?

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Man, he obliterated that bird.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

That had to have been a one in a trillion baseball throw.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

And the look on his face and the catcher's, and everybody just stared like, oh my god. And then he got in trouble for it. It's like, seriously? Yeah. If you would have tried to do that to a bird, you couldn't. No. You would never be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah. Why would why would anybody want to do that anyway? Well, did you see the video of the guy in Hawaii la a couple weeks ago, I guess, uh, that threw a rock at some type of native seal just swimming just off the beach, and then he got beat up by a local after that? Same same video. It was like, well, why would you do that? Like that that's a deliberate action.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Throwing a baseball as a major league pitcher from a mound and smacking a bird as a big thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Randy Jackson's like 6'8. Remember, he was tall, long hair.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

The big unit.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Yeah. He was kind of menacing looking, kind of ugly, and he just he threw that ball 102 miles an hour. Oh man. Of course, the bird had no idea. It just it was over before you could you could scream.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

I mean, dude, that he would probably have the velocity or any picture of that caliber, like the Tom Glavins or the Greg Maddox's or El Duque for the Yankees, like uh uh Rondus Chapman. I I think you'd have to even just be standing outside of the batter's circle to to feel a 102 mile an hour fastball coming by you. That'd be we a normal person that's not trained would not be able to see the ball.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

My brother in law and sister were uh very wealthy people and they in the seven in the eight nineties when the Cleveland Indians were in the World Series. He only dug out lows behind home plate.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

95 or 97?

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Uh both. He had it for about five years.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Incredible.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

So we used to go to the games and sit right behind home plate and watch that ball come in. There's just no way you could pay me. First of all, I came to see it. My reaction time is just not that fast anymore. And just to see that ball come in there, it's like, oh my god, how does a catcher see this?

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Right? It's amazing. You know, well you're a drummer.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Every once in a while, like when you're playing on a drum kit trap set, every once in a while you'll you'll hit your hit a finger with a stick.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

And it just you can't do anything about it. You just have to just take it, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah, it hurts.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Being a catcher, you know, every once in a while with that catcher's mitt, you're having a 100-mile-an-hour fastball coming in and it hits just in the right spot.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

There are enough sponges you can put in that.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Oh, for sure. Or like a hockey goalie. Yeah. You get a hundred mile an hour slapshot coming your way. There's a few spots in those pads. They're not completely 100% proof. They're about 90%.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

You're hurting. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Man. Well, I'm hanging out with the welcome to the Agiville Lifestyle Podcast, hanging out with the one, the only, the the legend himself, Dr. Frank Trace. Boom, boom, boom, chig, baby.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Still alive, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

You're still alive in our uh we've got just uh I mean, shoot, dude. You're just a few minutes left on the uh on the on the payroll at Kansas State University after 33 years, right? About five more weeks, yeah. Five more weeks. And then it really truly will be happy trails, too. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

I've heard that a lot, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

I'm sure you're probably tired of it.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Do you know how that tradition started?

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Uh no, I'm not. I I I I guess I don't know. I'm I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Nobody knows. There's a lot of things that started here on in the WeFold Bosco, Wren's Snyder, Trace era.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Gosh, what an era, huh?

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Uh not that I belong in that group, but that's the era. Bull honky. Um 98 before the Big 12 championship that we played and we beat him in a regular season. Here.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Texas AM? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

And uh I called my good buddy, who was band director at Baylor at the time, and said, uh what would what tune could we play in the stands that would really get into the fans of AM that they don't like that you know really make them a little bit agitated. And they said, Well, they hate being called cowboys in that era. And so if we did something like uh Happy Trails by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, nobody knows who Roy Rogers and Dale Evans are, the band doesn't have no idea. So he arranged it for us and we won the game. We played it, and then of course our friends down at Lawrence always waved the wheat at the end, so we started waving the wheat and happy trails and waving goodbye. And then Band sings it and a whole bit. And in fact, if you look at the band arrangement, and it's it's now it's it's a game, it's it's when we're gonna play it. The f the soonest we ever played it, the quickest we ever played, it was end of the first quarter at KU. We're up, I think, 28-0. And we played it, and our fans loved it, and Snyder even smirked a little bit. That's amazing. Yeah, he smirked a little bit, but that's all because I know athletics gets nervous when we hold up the sign, like, oh, don't play it yet, don't play it yet. So, but anyway, if you look at the arrangement on the arrangement, whenever somebody writes a piece of music, in the right-hand corner of each part, they write their name Smith, Trace, Jones, whatever. And in the arrangement, the guy that did the arrangement for his name is Jay Gilbert. He wrote the word trigger.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Oh, for the horse for Roger's trice.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Or you know what the horse. The band had no idea. And I told them, I said, How many have ever heard of an arranger called Trigger? Nobody raised their hand. They said, Does anybody know where this arranger is from? And nobody did. And I told them what it was, and they didn't believe me.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Of course, they Googled it like they do now, and they came back and said, You weren't lying. It's it's a white horse.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

It's didn't they stuff that horse and put it in a museum somewhere? It is. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Roy Rogers Museum, it's Trigger. And so that's that's kind of the funny thing. So we play it now all the time after every victory.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

So, what do you mean by doing the arrangement to it? So you find a piece of of music that you want to play.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Yeah, we have to arrange it to fit our band. Uh with the instrumentation we have, with the ranges of the kids that we have, there's a lot that goes in. It's just not pick it out and play it.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Well, and uh how how many different instruments are in the K-State Marching Basic?

SPEAKER_00 23:33

And you have to arrange it. And then the thing that nobody knows about is we have to pay the copyright licensing fee to arrange it. So if you're ever wondering why we don't play some modern stuff, too expensive.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

To copyright um the uh I forget what show we did a couple years ago, maybe the I forget what it was, but it was a modern one. It was eight thousand dollars for one halftime performance.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

To pay the mid-level management of these rock groups, and most of the groups and the people that wrote this stuff aren't even alive anymore. For sure. So it's family and it's mid-level, mid-range, mid-lawyers and producers, and it's the Michael Jackson's other world about the Sonny collection that belongs to the Beatles and all the other arrangements. And if you get caught playing that stuff without having it paid the royalties, you'll get it's ten to fifteen thousand dollar fine.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

So last year, 2025, you guys had had Journey. You guys did a journey arrangement.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Did a journey though, we did Queen, we did a lot of stuff. We probably paid $10,000 to $15,000 in royalties last year. Wow. Just on halftime music.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

And that's just for the rights to be able to arrange it yourself.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

And play it once, perform it once. Oh my goodness. It's it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

I lived basically college heights and sunset, and last year I was able to hear you guys playing Journey. I'm out in front doing yard work and I'm hearing don't stop believing during band camp.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

If the uh if the wind's blowing right and the band's playing, you can hear them from a lot of places, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Yeah, you absolutely can. So say we wanted to do journey like you did last year. Who comes to you with that? Like, how does that work throughout the band department itself?

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Is it is it an idea that one of the we have arrangers, we uh we have staff meetings and decide what we're gonna do, and we try to try to do some stuff we've already had arranged, so it's not we have a we don't have an unlimited budget. We have a limited budget, so we have to we have to kind of mix it up to what stuff we've already have and what's cheapest to do sometimes. That's just an that's Kansas State.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

So so now Wabash Cannonball was a real song. Do we have to pay royalties on that year after year?

SPEAKER_00 25:31

That's public domain. That's been around long enough. That's public domain.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

So how long does it become how long does it take for it to become public domain? 50 years. Oh, fifty years?

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Um and then so K-State, like the fight song, that's our own song, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Yeah, that was written by uh um Harry Erickson, who's a student here in in 1926, and he wrote it in 28.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

It's pretty genius. Yeah. And the lyrics are great, and it's just it's it really truly is timeless.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

It's it's quite a gift to your your your university, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Man, could you imagine that? Almost a hundred years later, it's still a celebrated song.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

And pretty cool. You know, they say we die three times, right? Once you quit breathing, once they put you in the ground and once they stop talking about you.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

And you just said Harry Erickson and he still alive.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

His wife just passed away.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Oh, really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

We got her up here, gave her a black and maybe ten years ago, and thanked her for that.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

It's a pretty cool piece.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

That is awesome. Yeah. Well, I mean, you do just such a good job, and all a lot of the songs are un are recognizable, but then even songs that are brand new that you might not know from a pop culture standpoint become well known because of the bands.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

Well, not all music fits marching bands. Um, you know, not all attire styles fit me. So it's it's gotta fit the band.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

So you're let's take a step back. Let's let's go from the beginning. So you're uh famous to be originally from Cleveland, Ohio.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Cleveland, Ohio. Go Cavs, go go Guardians. Yep. Yeah, hey, they're doing all right so far. Go Browns, but we haven't cheered for like 60 years.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Is there any minor like hockey teams around there?

SPEAKER_00 27:10

There used to be the Cleveland Barons when I was growing up, but it's not there anymore.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Shocking, they never had an NHL team.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah. I mean you It's a Browns town, it's a football town. Hard to believe, but it's diehard football town. So Cavaliers and Indians or Guardians have to they work really hard. And the Cavaliers and Guardians, the one that's been winning conferences and championships. The Browns of terrible management. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Terrible general manager, channel, terrible owner.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Just I mean, did it did it burn your ass whenever Art Modell moved them for? I know that I know the movie burned, yeah, but but when they won the Super Bowl just a couple years later after they did that?

SPEAKER_00 27:43

That didn't bother me as much as the move. My my dad, I is a is a steel worker. I saw him cry twice. Oh man. When my mom died when I was eight, I saw him crying. And then he called me the night, the next morning, after Art Modell loaded up the trucks in the dark and moved him out of Cleveland. I could tell he was crying. He said, God damn Art Model stole our goddamn Cleveland Brown, sons of bitches. And he hung up.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Well, I mean factory work is tough work. It's monotonous. You do the same thing day after day after day after work for a living.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

You work for a living.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

You work for a living. Those are long, hard days, and it's the same day every day in a lot of ways. Yep. And so there's an outlet like the Cleveland Browns.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Indians, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Like that's that's the beautiful thing about sports is it's an outlet.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

That's when the team was the towns, the town owned it. Not anymore. Especially with even with college, they're players in and out all the time. It's really hard to get them to claim ownership.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, so I bet I bet yeah, when the Browns left, I bet that was just such a just a blow to the whole entire city.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

It was it was a blow, and and the best thing that Art Modell did was he announced that where they were called the Baltimore Browns, and he put that ball cap on and said Baltimore Browns. Cleveland went through the roof. Lawyers, lawsuits, and they got the name back, got the name of the history back.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Yeah, because I've I mean a lot of kids probably these days, I mean, this is pushing 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Browns blowing Cleveland, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

That don't realize that the Browns are actually an expansion team. Yeah. In the 90s. Yeah. Which is weird to think about. Yeah. Even though it was a one of the original NFL heritage teams.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

I think we have the record for the most number of quarterbacks since we've been in business by like thousands. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

I love that dude that wears that jersey every year that I think it was an Eric Crouch jersey. Yeah. And then it just no, it's Tim Couch. Tim Couch. Tim Couch, yeah. And then it has all the names that have been serving life sentences for something.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yeah. It's just been terrible. Yeah, but that's Montown, man. That's Montown.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

You know, I've been to I had the the privilege of a good friend of mine had moved to Shaker Heights. Dodge City Kid. He was a he was a food and the Kelseys are from Shaker Heights.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Yeah. Cleveland Heights, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Yeah. He was uh my buddy James was a he was an AIB student here. He was or he's a food and bakery science student here, and he just always wanted to be a pizza guy. He was a valedictorian at Dodge City High School's class in 2003. He moved to Chicago to work for Kraft Foods, and he was actually one of the inventors of the DeJornos Pizzeria crust. Wow. Which is pretty cool. One of my best friends in the world. Yeah. Well, Kraft had sold DeJornos to Nestle and they moved to Cleveland. Yeah. Oh, he was upset about it, but it ended up being the coolest place ever. I went there and visited with them three times, including for their wedding.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio. I wrote an article about it last summer in Manhattan Lifestock magazine. Visit Cleveland. I was thinking, where's a cool place to do a visit for the Explorers? She was like, well, Cleveland Rocks. And that's what I called the name of the article.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Because Cleveland, Ohio is the one city that had the worst reputation going into it. That was by far and away the coolest place I've ever been.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

I have a t-shirt when I was growing up. I used to wear it.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Dude, I bet you do. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

I had to come up with a team of people that wanted to do something and accomplish something or take something over. I'd go to Cleveland and find them. They survive. They fight.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

Yeah, I mean, it's uh for one, you got the Lake Erie right there. So you got those lake effects snows, you got the cold weather. You've got you've got the people you say, Oh, I'm hey, I'm from Cleveland. They're like, oh. Yeah. I loved it. For the outsiders. Yeah. But yeah, what was it like growing up there? Was it pretty great?

SPEAKER_00 31:27

It was great. It was just a blue-collar town. You know, you got up in the morning, you went to work and came home. And I remember having a paper out in Cleveland, Ohio, and getting up at 4 30 in the morning while they dumped the papers off during a blizzard in your driveway, and you went out there and rolled them up, put rubber bands around them and plastic, and put them in that little uh cloth thing you had around both shoulders and walked through the snow and delivered papers to have some old Polish lady yell at you because you're 15 minutes late. Supposed to be here at 5 o'clock and it's 5.15. It's like, okay, ma'am, it's seven degrees outside, the wind's blowing hard, and I'm gonna make seven dollars and twenty cents this week.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

So sorry about that.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

I'll be on time tomorrow. So you know, and your dad made you do it. And that's the way you grew up. That's where you learned work ethic, that's where you learned how to be organized, that's where you learned uh discipline, you were learned how to, as we tell the kids all the time, suck it up and deal with it, punch back a little harder.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

So we I mentioned Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights, like uh as a suburb. Did you grow up in one of the suburbs? Were you actually in Cleveland?

SPEAKER_00 32:24

I grew up in Cleveland, 128th miles. It's it's a ghetto now, but it's um it's right uh a half a block away from Calvary Cemetery, which is where our family is. Parents are buried in the largest cemetery in Ohio. That's where everybody uh but it's um I grew up there and then we ended up moving to the first suburb west of Cleveland, Brooklyn, which is like Cleveland light. Okay. You know, but it's uh that's where I went to high school. And it's uh family still there.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Was it Brooklyn High School you went to?

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

And and so, you know, we you'd you'd mentioned it, but to kind of circle back around to this, so you said you lost your mom and when you were eight?

SPEAKER_00 33:02

I was eight, she died of cancer, had six brothers and sisters, we're all home.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Oh, so there's seven kids.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

There's six total. Oh, six of them. And there's six of us, and um we were all at home and she got cancer, pancreatic cancer, and they discovered it in December and she was gone in February. And then back then, that's that's what they did. Any cancer anywhere, they morphined you up, put you in a room, and you died.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

So well, even still to this day, pancreatic is the one that you hear, you hear that nasty P word, and it's like, oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Yep. But so yeah, that was growing up and we were all at home, and you that's just you're throwing a curveball and you learn how to hit it, and then you move on, and nobody felt sorry for yourselves, and my dad just taught us how to how to survive, how to get through it, and we did it.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Gosh, so your dad had to have been just a mountain of a man.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

He was. He was a steel worker, man.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

He was uh and he was a Polish immigrant himself.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

Uh his parents were immigrants. He came over. That's what it was. He he came over, his parents came over here, and um actually our roots go back to the eastern Ukraine, which is now Russia, so I fly a Ukrainian flag in my yard and a tribute. So it's battered and torn and weatherward, but so is the country. But yeah, that's where they're from, and and they came here, and I remember when talking to him and he asked I asked him towards the end there, he was in the nursing home, and I said, Why'd you come here? Why don't you stay where you were? And he says, Well, my mom and him were gonna get married because they wanted to come here and get married. And he said they want to have kids here so that his kids would have a better life than they did.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Man.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

Who says that? Who says that?

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Only people from that generation.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Yeah, and he did. We all did. They're all very successful and they're all out and about and doing their thing and retired and living well and had good lives, and he was right.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Well, now that you're a dad and grandpa yourself, do you look at your kids and wish the same thing?

SPEAKER_00 34:53

I do. I worry more about it. Uh the way things are going and um our fate and the world, and there's a whole nother story about that, but uh you know, I worry about my grandson all the time. Like, geez, are you gonna be able to go outside in summertime in 15 years? Yeah, for sure. Or is the sun gonna be too damn hot, or is there gonna be water in this area of the country anymore?

SPEAKER_01 35:14

Or is there gonna be too many damn ticks out there?

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Yeah, what are the s what are the schools gonna be like? Uh what's healthcare gonna be like?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Yeah, it was uh the the the smaller kid generation today, I mean, their their unknowns are way more than ours ever were. I mean, I I was born in eighty four and mine wasn't too terribly off from the parents that I had who was off from my grandparents. But like my eleven-year-old nephew now, his childhood is way different than mine was.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Yeah, I grew up check to check. You know, if there was a check, you you sp you know you didn't uh we didn't go on vacations, we didn't have big cars, we didn't have new bikes, and you grew up and you survived every every week the check came in, you spent and you took another night job and this and that and survived and you paid bills and you you did what you can, but it's um it's it's it's a different I mean but but but doing that paycheck to paycheck, I mean that really builds character.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Oh, it does. Yeah, it really does. I mean it's um that's where you find how how truly resilient you are you you are to adversity.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Yeah, it's nothing wasted when I was growing up. Everything food-wise was eaten and or soup or something, and uh so you learned you learned how to do that, you learned how to reuse things, you learned how to recycle before recycling was the big deal, you know.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Well, you had no choice.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

No, that's the way it is. And that was good. I'd do it all if I had to grow up again, I'd grow up the same way.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 36:37

No question.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Absolutely, probably the same place too.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

I would. I would. You know, small houses with uh two people to a bed and one on the floor and one on the couch, and yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I was in the one bathroom with four sisters. Oh boy. That's where you learn to expand your bladder. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

Well well, or go outside. Yeah. That's the best part about being a dude is going outside and peeing. Let's be honest. What?

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Yeah. Wait your turn, damn it.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Well, okay, so you grew up in Ohio, or you grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. And you know, what what was it that got you interested in band?

SPEAKER_00 37:12

What was I was interested in very young. I wanted to play drums, so I played drums in probably third, fourth grade started.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

Was it something that you just found yourself tapping on the desk?

SPEAKER_00 37:22

I just I was attracted to the drums. I thought it'd be cool. Did you Cleveland's a rock and roll town?

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Okay, yeah. Well, obviously. Well, that's where the the rock and roll hall of fame is at. That's what I was gonna ask. Did you have any like early influential bands? Did your dad listen to bands? Was there something that kind of got you into rock music?

SPEAKER_00 37:37

He was a big band freak. He loved big bands, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey. So we used to listen to that, and um we had the old Magnavox stereo, which was a piece of furniture with a stereo in it, you know, with a big heat crank it. And you know, that's where I learned uh about volume and stuff. But I was I was a rock and roller, wanted to do everybody was in a rock and roll. There were more rock and roll bands when I was in junior high in high school than there were sports teams and baseball clubs. Seriously, everybody had a rock and roll band. Everybody was gonna be the Beatles and the Stones.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

Heck yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

And so that that was the way we grew up, and it was a good great town for rock and roll, and I liked music, and my whole family was blue collar, and I didn't want to do that. And so in seventh grade, I asked my band director, I said, How do you how do you get to be a band director? And he told me what you have to do, and and um seventh grade, huh? Seventh grade, and then I went back to him a couple months later after I was taking it all seriously. I said, Hey, do you get paid for this? And he said, Yeah, and I said, I'm in. Seventh grade. I played football in high school. I wrestled high school played baseball in high school, I was a jock, but I played in a band.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

And there was always something that well you planted the seed what it was what it was.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

Yeah, I I just remember getting in fights all the time because I was a I was a band nerd, you know, and but I also played an outside linebacker for the football team. That was a pretty good one.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

So your early years did you march with the band in your football uniform?

SPEAKER_00 38:56

No, uh, I didn't play varsity in my first two years in high school. I played J V and in my third year got into varsity, but I quit during during summer camps because I wanted to be a band director and I needed to be in a band. Incredible. Yeah, so I I remember getting picked on for that in fights and a whole bit and called me called me names and called you the P-word. Yeah, I was I was I was in the band. I said, Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

So you were oh okay, so you were in a marching band now, and were you more of a snare guy? Did they have quads back then?

SPEAKER_00 39:27

They had toms back then. Didn't have the tonal bass drums, it was different. And I, you know, everybody when you grew up in Ohio, it's Ohio State football. Period. Stop right there. That's what you do. So you rooted for them. So I didn't want to play Ohio State football. I I wanted to be an Ohio State band. It was a great band.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yeah, because it was uh I mean that's probably the most legend the most legendary collegiate band in the world, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:48

The biggest tradition you could possibly imagine. Unbelievable. I didn't think I could make it. I tried hard and I made it. Changed my life.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

And so you Yeah, well okay. What was your path to to getting to Ohio State? What was that what was that process like getting there?

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Just practiced, practiced a lot and physical and ran and did all those sorts of stuff because it's a physical band and they have auditions to get in, and you have to have you're challenged every week, even though you're in to be an alternate and that sort of stuff. So I worked really hard and got in.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

So how many drummers would they have on the drum line?

SPEAKER_00 40:21

They didn't have many, it wasn't a big band. There was when I made the band, it was the first year they expanded to 190 or 100 160?

SPEAKER_01 40:29

160 expanded to 160.

SPEAKER_00 40:31

Expanded to 160.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

For context, what is K-State's numbers this year?

SPEAKER_00 40:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

So this is like three times as small.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

Yeah, the drum line had two bass drums, uh, two tom toms, eight snares, and four siblings. Small band.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

That's really small.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

And how many how many drummers were trying to there were seventy-five kids that wanted to be in the snare drum line, and there were And there's only slots, eight slots. They exp they increased it to ten. Wow. And just about everybody was coming back, would you have a better chance? But even people that come back sometimes don't make it. It's you you have to be the best player, which is great. So I remember making it. Um and it was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

What what what grade were you in at that point when you made it?

SPEAKER_00 41:17

I was a freshman in college.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Dang, so you're a freshman and you made that.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

I was a freshman, yeah. I was one of two freshmen to make it and picked on galore initiations a whole bit, all the stuff you can't do now.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

Cause that's in the 70s, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was in the first band that allowed women to be in it. There were four girls that made it. Wow. These are girls that were in shape and talented, but they could break your nose if they had to.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Ohio gals, right? Oh man. They probably grew up down the way from you in Cleveland.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

One played snare, one made it on the snare drum, and I was the other one.

SPEAKER_01 41:51

That's incredible. Yeah. So just two freshmen out of was it eight or ten at that point, your freshman year? It was ten. So ten snare drummers out of 75 people went to play that.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

Yeah. And it was just like, oh my goodness. Yeah. It was it was intense.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

So did you play Snare all four years?

SPEAKER_00 42:12

I played Snare for two years at Ohio State, and then they increased it uh to three TomToms. So I went and played TomToms for two years.

SPEAKER_01 42:20

So for people that don't know, what what is exactly is a TomTom?

SPEAKER_00 42:23

It's what's it called? The quads now. There's actually six drums. You'll see them. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

Oh, I bet. Yeah. I couldn't imagine and game days, you're walking miles, right? I would I wouldn't do it. I couldn't do it now.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Oh man. Those things are damn they're heavy.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

And then you'd have to obviously play in time.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

You have to move. And see, these are talented kids, they're hard-working kids. I'd hire a drummer from our bandit for anything. They'd work their butts off.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Did you ever you know the Ohio State Band is famous for the the lead drum major? Forgive me if that's not the title, but the person that runs out of the tunnel does the backwards backwards through your hat and state band is got all percussion, all brass, no woodwinds, no flags, no twirlers, no dance.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

There's no there's no woodwinds in the Ohio State band.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

None. Really? It's all brass band. I never noticed that. It's patterned after a British brass band. They have E-flat coronets, they have um uh alto horns, okay. Uh trombones, baritones, tubas, they have flugal horns, which is all brass band. It came from from England. I It's a unique sound. It's a sound that captures you right away.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

And they all play. They're all five-star players, every one of them.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

They're all first chair.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

All five star players. There's no five, there's no four star players that make that band.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

Man. And still to this day there's no woodwinds? No woodwinds. And no flags, no, nothing.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

It's incredible.

unknown 43:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

Well, what what is the number of people in the Ohio State band these days?

SPEAKER_00 43:54

It's uh 225. There's 192 on a field with the rest of our alternates.

SPEAKER_01 43:59

Incredible. So you have to be still a five-star player to be there today.

SPEAKER_00 44:04

You have to have your shit together, yeah. Man.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

So that just okay, that I've always loved Dr. Frank Trace just because you're a cool cat. I mean, I remember being a service writer at Shram Dodge. That was the first time I ever met you.

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Um 15 Before that it was Getcher, and I used to buy them from Getcher. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:23

I started working at Shram in 2009. So it'd have been 17 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. That when I first met you. My point being is I've always loved you and I've always admired you. You need to get out more, man. Yeah, apparently. But damn, dude, like that's it's pretty impressive to be able to make the drum line as a freshman with those small amount of numbers and the the the just the the requirements. Now, in band camp for Ohio State, did you guys have to do dancers and running?

SPEAKER_00 44:49

Did you know it was the same thing we do do here? That's where I got it from.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

It's incredible.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

Yeah. This is a good this is a really good band here, too.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

And it's just um it's from my past and what I've done at Ohio State and Wisconsin. And I taught for four years at Syracuse University. Okay. I taught for two years at Moorhead State. I taught high school for six years in Cleveland and Wisconsin. Um and in here.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

So well, before we move on to that, last I mean last thing on the Ohio State thing. Did you ever try out for the the the drum major that bins backwards?

SPEAKER_00 45:20

That's a whole different set of talents. Those those dudes are incredible.

SPEAKER_01 45:23

Do they were they drummers themselves? To be a drum major, did you have to be a drummer?

SPEAKER_00 45:27

No, no, drum drum major has nothing to do with drums. Okay. For the record. It's the mace. They don't have a regular baton, it's the mace. If you look at that mace and you watch those dudes twirl that these dudes were the the uh, and there's there's females now that do it, but they were ribbed, muscular, athletic type, incredible specimens of human beings.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Oh, you have to be. If you ever watch the Ohio State bands and you see the drum major run out of the tunnel and then do the the march, that march is so cool. I can never I will always watch that every time.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Yeah, I used to watch them come out and I'd I'd be afraid of them. I mean, they would just have that look on their face like yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

So even back in your Ohio State days, you had Woody Hayes as the football coach, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:12

Woody Hayes was the coach, three yards cloud of dust and do it my way or a punch in the throat, damn it.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Man, so you guys really were just a machine.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

I took a math class, uh math 180, and sat next to Archie Griffin. Nah, back to the only back-to-back Heisman trophy winner ever. He went to more classes than I did. It's incredible. He got a better grade than I did. But I I sat there and wished to go just because I want to sit next to Archie Griffin and say hello to him. He was a student, he was a nice guy, and took notes and you can talk about it 40 years later.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

Archie Griffin, man. Man, that's incredible. What an experience.

SPEAKER_03 46:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

So you graduated from Ohio State since seventh grade. You've wanted to be a band director. Yeah. What was the next step? Did you have to get a master's degree? What was it?

SPEAKER_00 46:55

But I graduated in 78. Okay. 78 was the first oil crisis. You know, everybody complains about gas.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Was that the oil embargo? Is that what they called that?

SPEAKER_00 47:03

That was the Iran hostages. That was um gas shortages here, where you certainly last name begins with whatever. That's the only days you could buy gas was on Monday and Thursday. Your last name begins with T, and you were limited to ten gallons or eight gallons, and then you got in line to get the gas, and most of the time, by the time you got up to the front, the pumps were empty. Oh, jeez. And so people would get shot and beat up, and that's when gas was being stolen out of cars, and that's when you had to go and get a gas lock for your gas tank with a key. Um it was people were siphoning gas, it was nasty. So there were the playoffs, there were layoffs, and teachers weren't being renewed, and everybody was cutting, so there were no teaching jobs. When I graduated in 78, and this was towards the spring, and as soon as I graduated, I get a call from my director, Dr. Droste. He says, Hey, uh, Mike Lecron at the University of Wisconsin's looking for a drumline TA to be a percussion TA and get a master's in conducting. Wants somebody that's a drummer that wants to be a music education major and band director.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

So basically a custom-tailored job for you.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

Yeah, so he gave my name. I went up there, interviewed, got the job, and I moved to Madison, Wisconsin. Wow. Loved it. Met my wife, got a great education, learn how to drink beer. You think you know how to drink beer, you need to go to Madison, Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_01 48:27

Drink Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_00 48:29

They'll tell they'll tell you and show you how to drink beer because they know how to do it. We don't. We are we are minor leagues compared to Madison, Wisconsin. Without question. So after that, then I taught elementary and junior high up there for a couple years. Then I came back to Cleveland, taught high school for four years. Then thought, wonder what it's like to be a teacher of teachers. So I went back to Ohio State and got my doctorate.

SPEAKER_03 48:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Then Syracuse as assistant. So upstate New York? Upstate New York. And then um started having kids and then went to Moorhead State as director of bands. And that's in Kentucky? Eastern Kentucky, Moorhead, Kentucky.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

Okay. Home of the Racers.

SPEAKER_00 49:03

No, home of the Eagles, Moorhead State Eagles.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

What's oh, I'm thinking of Murray State.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

Yeah. Morehead State Eagles. Okay. Um then I get a call on a Friday night after a concert at Morehead State from a faculty member at Kansas State University. Said there's a job open and we keep getting your name. Are you interested? I didn't know where it was. Never heard of Kansas State. Didn't know where Kansas was.

SPEAKER_01 49:26

What uh what year was that about?

SPEAKER_00 49:28

93.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

January of 93.

SPEAKER_01 49:32

What's your wife's name?

SPEAKER_00 49:33

Gerilyn.

SPEAKER_01 49:33

Gerilyn. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

She's retiring too. In fact, today is at 2 30, it's her retirement reception. Oh my goodness. Yeah, we're both we're both done.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

You guys are both saying happy trails. Cookies are done, man. So you have you met Gerilyn at Madison, Wisconsin. She's a Wisconsin gal originally. And I'm sure she probably has been behind you 100% of the way.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

Oh, she had to. This is this is not a 40-hour week job. And never has been, never will be. If you do it right, it's not. And if you do it 40 hours a week, you wouldn't be at this level. Yeah. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 50:06

No way. For sure. No way. So. And so you get this call from Kansas State University, and I'm sure the first thing you you consult is Gerilyn. What was the conversation?

SPEAKER_00 50:16

I called her to ask her if she ever heard it, and she said, Yeah, and I said, never have. I said, Where's Kansas? She says below Nebraska. I said, Where's Nebraska? Oh my god. You grew up in Ohio, nothing matters west of Ohio.

SPEAKER_01 50:25

That's a good point.

SPEAKER_00 50:26

Indiana's a nuclear waste dumping ground for Ohio.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

You got Purdue, you gotta go put a pounding on Purdue every fall.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

Yeah, who in the hell likes corn, right?

SPEAKER_01 50:35

Yeah, absolutely. So what was the discussion like between the two of you? Like, I mean, obviously you're you're like, where the heck's Kansas at?

SPEAKER_00 50:41

And it was director of bands job, which paid a little bit more money.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

And it was because at Moorhead, you were the assistant.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

No, I was a I was director of bands at Moorhead, but it's Morehead State. Okay, okay, yeah. And uh they had a great band school there, but uh K-State was there was nothing here. It was a pretty nasty school music program. Oh yeah, uh nobody and and I called people that are are now retired but standard solid band directors in a profession. I asked him about this job, and one of them who's very famous said, Did you sign the contract? And I said, Not yet, and he said, Well, don't run away from it, it's a mess. It never will be any good. Not right leadership, there's not a lot of support, there's nothing. So I came out, and the first person I met was John Weefall. I changed my mind on everything. John Weefall was a great guy.

SPEAKER_01 51:33

That's the greatest thing that's ever happened in Kansas City.

SPEAKER_00 51:34

There's no question about it. He had a vision, he he had his way of doing it, and he wanted it, he expected it to be done, he supported it to get it done. If it didn't get it done, he got fired. I work for anybody like that any day.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

I I I I think we need to have a main street in this town named after him. Because even Manhattan, Kansas is what it is because of John Weefall's.

SPEAKER_00 51:53

And that's why I stayed. John Weefall, and then you look at there's a guy named Pat Bosco, and then you look at somebody named Amy Rentz. Absolutely. And then you look at a a coach named Bill Snyder, and you looked at those, and every time I got a job offer, which I got many last year, I couldn't find a place that had those four people that had that structure of leadership. No president stays at the university for 23 years. They don't do it anymore.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

Especially whenever I mean, gosh, look at look at the 80s before he came, around the time he came. Yeah. K-State had a super low enrollment. The football team was so poor and was performing so poorly, they're about to kick us out of the big eights. Yep. Basketball was still a pretty good program at those points, but I mean, even then, we'd still hadn't won a conference tournament, conference championship. There's nothing. There's nothing really to write home about Kansas State University. Even Manhattan, the city of pale as a comparison to what it is today.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

It's a good place to live, good place to raise a family. For sure. But a good place to move from afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

It was a stepping stone.

SPEAKER_00 52:55

But now it's it's different. It's a great place.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

Oh, it's a wonderful place. We're staying here.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

We've been here 33 years. We're our house is paid for, we're staying here. This is our home.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

What was your uh that's really I'm so glad to hear that. What was your first impressions when you guys rolled into Manhattan to check it out?

SPEAKER_00 53:10

We came in in the 93, the floods and tornadoes in 93. We bought a house on Candlewood, built it. It was a spec home. All we did was pick out the interior and stuff like that. And once we bought it and we went back to Kentucky and taught for four more months before we moved here, they cut corners on every way they possibly could on the house. So we weren't around to check it. The guy's not in business anymore.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Candlewood, that's over by Anthony Middle School?

SPEAKER_00 53:34

Yeah. No, it's it's over by uh by Candlewood, the shopping center?

SPEAKER_01 53:37

Shopping center, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:39

It's right in uh in our backyard was uh the Colbert Hills area, which was nothing but meat and cows. Now it's just thousands of houses. But it was um we came in the first night, there was a tornado. We didn't have furniture yet. Took part of the roof off, blew some windows out. Are you serious? Yeah, floods. Second night, same thing happened. We're in this furnace room downstairs, lowest level, my two girls crying. My wife looks at me and goes, What have you done to us? So it was a mess. I mean, we it was just terrible. Just terrible.

SPEAKER_01 54:14

So it uh I'm sure you had some buyer's remorse right away.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

Oh my god, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

Yeah. Hopefully, you didn't sell your house in eastern Kentucky at that point.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

Well, we rented, but it was done, so we we were gonna make it work and we were gonna stay for at least a year or two and then go back home.

SPEAKER_01 54:27

But uh and so you roll into the music department, which I mean, was it McCain at that point then? Yeah. So you roll into McCain and and you get started. What was kind of like the first order of business when you got to K-State?

SPEAKER_00 54:39

Uh just recruit. There's you know, 100 kids in the band, and by the time I got Bandcamp going the first couple weeks, they were down to 80.

SPEAKER_01 54:48

Because they couldn't handle it.

SPEAKER_00 54:49

Could handle it, and there's some kids I didn't want to be there anymore. For sure. There's not a student-run band anymore and I'll charge. So when we follow, you know, he had some had some expectations. He wanted it turned. He he did his homework. He said they call people and they keep getting your name that you're a builder, and you could you could do this. And I started laughing. I said, Well, I've got a lot of enemies and they want to get even with me and send me to Kansas, for God's sake. He laughed, but he was he had some expectations and he supported it and said, get this done. So yeah, he he had he had my back, he had everybody's back.

SPEAKER_01 55:23

So, okay, so this would have been I'm just thinking timeline. So Coach Snyder would have been 89 his first season.

SPEAKER_00 55:28

Yeah, first year rental bowl game was my first season. Okay, so that was the Copper Bowl season. Okay, okay. And to top it off the year when we got to the airport, we got two buses of band kids, that's how small it was. Uh, the first bus hit the airplane.

SPEAKER_01 55:40

So are you serious?

SPEAKER_00 55:46

We spent the first six hours of the Copper Bowl trip at the Manhattan Mall.

SPEAKER_01 55:49

Does that sound like your Dublin trip?

SPEAKER_00 55:52

Oh another. I could write volumes of books on your travels. Yeah, my my title of the book I'm gonna write is is is uh You're not gonna believe this shit. And the first line is going to be it was a Starship Enterprise. Move on.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

Ah, okay. I hadn't even we haven't even got to that just yet. Yeah, of course it is. Oh, I'm sure Jairlyn's over that.

SPEAKER_00 56:16

She was quite upset. We got death threats, man.

SPEAKER_01 56:19

Oh man, I bet you did.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

People are assholes.

SPEAKER_01 56:21

They are.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

But this community. This community rally. Stadium rallied, Snyder rally. Man, what a everybody rally.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

What a what a what a time to be alive, wasn't that?

SPEAKER_00 56:33

It turned out well. Turned out, turned out the best thing that's happened in a long time.

SPEAKER_01 56:37

You know what's kind of funny was on when I was in high school, we I went to Dodge City High School, we played Hayes High, and Hayes High, Hayes is famous for Oktoberfest. And I was my senior year, I didn't play football. We drove to Hayes to watch the game. Well, I was staying at my buddy's house who was going to his older brother was going to Fort Hayes State University. We might have had a couple of uh pre-game libations. We go to the stadium, and I'm the one standing closest to the athletic directors, everybody's yelling obscenities. She comes up to me, and so it's it's her, um, and then a Hayes athletic director, the Hayes City cop. There was a couple others that they took me underneath the stadium at Lewis Field at Fort Hayes State University, and they said, We know you've been drinking, you can either confess it or we're gonna give you a breathalyzer. I was like, Yeah, I've I've had some beers. Well, they uh they told me that I was gonna be suspended for three days from school. Oh, for God's sakes. Three days OSS. Yeah, and I had to call and tell my mom about it. I'm pretty sure my mom bought me the beer before I drove to Hayes. Yeah, uh my dad was pissed about it because I got suspended from school, but it's kind of funny how in my life, you know, there was a high school student that I'd actually spoken to uh not too long ago that had gotten suspended from school for drinking, and I'd said, hey, this isn't where it ends. I mean, it's yeah, it's it's one of those those milestones. Well, I say all that to bring it back to you. You're probably still the only band director I've ever heard of that's been suspended for a game.

SPEAKER_00 58:06

And that was a John Curry thing, man. He didn't we're gonna show the Big 12 that we're serious. I said, serious about what? You know, he said we're gonna we're gonna pay a $5,000 fine. I said, You're paying it. I didn't do anything wrong. It was not what you say it was.

SPEAKER_01 58:20

So it really was a Starship Enterprise.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

Sure it was. Does yours look like that?

SPEAKER_01 58:25

I mean it would.

SPEAKER_00 58:26

Oh, if it does, you need to see a surgeon. If you want me to draw one of those on the field, I can't. It will look nothing like what you saw.

SPEAKER_01 58:34

I know, I'm just kidding. Yeah. But what a what a mess, man. What a mess that was.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

That was that was a political thing. It was a cleaning house thing by some administration people that wanted to get all their own coaches and people of that nature and home band director, and it just didn't work out for me. But it it worked out well because our enrollment went through the roof, our fundraising went through the roof. It did. Oh popularity went sky high.

SPEAKER_01 58:59

It did.

unknown 59:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:01

You know William Shatner even tweeted about it.

SPEAKER_01 59:04

Well, I I remember when he came to McCain and performed his Shakespeare stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:08

He even tweeted about it and he said, uh, I don't know what you people from Kansas are all upset about it, but uh it it it looked like the Starship Enterprise to me, and I should know.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

Did you print that out and frame it?

SPEAKER_00 59:21

I I printed out someplace. I even the next one he wrote was says you people are probably angry with God for cloud formations, get a life.

SPEAKER_01 59:27

That's funny.

SPEAKER_00 59:28

I I even called his his business people to see if I can get him to say something or do something for the band, and he didn't respond.

SPEAKER_01 59:35

So but that was an unprovoked tweet.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:38

That's amazing. Yeah. That's still I that was what a mess. But I I will have to say, at the uh 2025 K-State KU game, the final the final one with you at the helm in Lawrence.

SPEAKER_00 59:55

Starship Enterprise with the number 17 on it for 17 in a row. Yes, it was. And my record was uh uh what's it 29 and four.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:02

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

God get you in the hall of fame. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:07

Those are those are Hall of Fame batting numbers. You're breaking Ted Wayne's if you're a baseball batter.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

It's gonna be 18 in a row this year, so the streak's gonna vote.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:13

Yes, it will. Yes, it will. And it'll be able to buy a lottery ticket.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:16

I'll be the first one to hold up a sign.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:19

So now speaking of formations for things, so do you guys how do you, you know, just asking the inner workings of a band, how do you how do you move you have 13 different instruments out there, 400 plus kids.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

Yeah. Do you use iPads and things like that to kind of There's a computer program for that, but most of its creativity comes up to mind. I I learned a long time ago. Uh teacher taught me once. Says when you do marching band shows, you gotta you gotta write them for two people in the audience, a blind person and a deaf person. The blind person can't see, so they need to be entertained by what you play and how well you play. And the deaf person can't hear, so they gotta be entertained by what you see.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

Man.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

So that that's my philosophy for drill design, and that's my philosophy for for the whole marching band thing, and it's it's a good one. It's gotta be entertained. That's where I have classic hats. We have color guard and twirlers now, and drumline, and 40 sousaphones, and porn moves, and geometric formations. It's interesting. It's it's sentry overloaded, a good halftime show, and and there's a system that we employ and how we do things and how it works, and they understand it, and we go to it, and it it's it's interesting. There's some pretty good stuff, intricate stuff. There's some stuff that we do and I've done on a field that I wasn't sure how it was gonna look till I actually saw it. They went, Oh, hey, that's cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:33

Yeah, all the step two stuff we do with the drumline feature stuff. You don't really know what that's gonna look like till you see it. Once they start to do the right thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

I had the honor and privilege to come to band camp last summer, whenever you the day you announced your retirement. Yeah. Because I knew that was coming, and but I I was still watching you talk to the kids giving instruction during band camp. How you can see that, how you have the vision for where everybody's at, it's just amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:58

It's it's the job. You do this stuff. I could never even begin to wire this thing up for work for God's sakes. But um, and the staff will tell you that. So yeah, but uh it's just that's what we do.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:09

Well, it goes back to your seventh grade dream of being a band director, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

That's right, and I paid attention. I I paid attention to band directors before. I save stuff. I you know, I still have um I did save these. I still have my drill charts from 1974, my first halftime show at Ohio State. Amazing. With my number circled and directions. So I studied it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:29

That's incredible. Yeah. My first public speaking engagement was in eighth grade.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

It was just something that I just I'll look at you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:36

It flows.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:37

It's just what I wanted to do. It's always something I was gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

There's a bug that bites you, and then you got the disease, man. It's there.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:43

Yeah, and but it's kind of fun how we all are divinely created in our own unique ways. We can never be replaced because there's never gonna be another you that does the things that you do, thinks the things that you do, says the things that you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:55

I guess my wife would say, Thank God for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:58

You broke the mold. You were the you are the mold.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

I am the mold, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

So it's uh you know, we're we're we're coming on the the end of the the very, very, very end. June 30th is your last day as an employee of Kansas State. Yep. And then what, my friend?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:14

I if I already got things going. I'm gonna do nothing for a while. I'm gonna um get caught up on some home things and we're gonna purge our house, go through every room, and we've been uh moving relatives into nursing homes, or they pass away and we have the estates and you know, a 20-foot bin in the front yard, loaded up three or four times, and wondering what the hell did you keep this for? So I'm gonna do that so that when it comes time comes for them to not put me in a nursing home, I'm gonna suddenly put me on my tractor, duct tape me in my tractor in the back and put me over the cliff and I'll be done. Mother Nature, Kunamatada, circle of life.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:47

There was a dude last year in Arkansas that was a farmer that was riding his tractor and he got killed by a black bear. Yeah. I mean, that's a hell of a way to go. I wouldn't hate it. He was in the seven, he was like 74.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

As I say, it's a good death, you know. That's the way it should be getting.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:59

Imagine being in Arkansas riding a tractor in 74 and getting mauled to death by a black bear.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:03

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:04

There's some awesome things like that, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:05

That's a cool way to go. So we're gonna we're gonna we'll do some consulting and got some early job things lined up and stuff to do some stuff. But I'm not I'm not gonna do what I'm doing now. I'm not gonna work the 90-hour weeks in the fall.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:17

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:18

That that got to be too much, and uh I'll spend more time with family, see my grandson's baseball games, and do that sort of stuff, and and then do what I want to do when I want to do it, for how long I want to do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:29

Absolutely. Something you've never probably ever done.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

Never, ever, ever emphasize ever going to another damn faculty meeting.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

The look on your face. I wish I wish this was recorded so people could see the look on your face. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:48

Because what's the old story? You want to kill a good idea and a cure for cancer, send it to a committee.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:53

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. That's true. Throwing a good idea at a bad situation.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:00

It's true.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:01

Man, yeah, but I used to my old one of my old jobs, we used to have a meeting for a meeting for a meeting for a meeting, and then nothing would get done.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:08

My staff would tell you we have meetings, but they are they're intense and they're quick. And that's here's what you need to do, here's what you need to do, here's the lineup, here's what needs you need to do this, this, this, and then it's gotta be done by Wednesday at five o'clock. It's gotta be done by Saturday morning and so on and so forth. Go. And they do it. Figure out your own way of doing it. We have a system here, we have the way it wants to be done, it needs to be done. You you get it done. We had some of you on here.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:30

So many people these days can't just make a damn decision. It comes down to just making a damn decision.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:34

I looked at the band one time and and they didn't understand this, and this is a little off color, but they weren't pushing really hard and they weren't working really hard, and I stopped and said, you know, we're gonna go home. I'm gonna dismiss you here in a little bit. And I said, So sometimes we just have to grunt and groan and push hard. I said, for instance, I said, uh some of you are gonna be constipated for the rest of your life. And they didn't understand it. I said sometimes you just have to grunt and you have to push and you have to force the issue. And they looked at some got it like that was gross. I said, No, this is reality. And so I said, Go home, figure this out, come back tomorrow. Better.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:17

You're natural at what you do, because every time I'm around you, I always learn something new, some type of new ism. I think that's the Frank isms we're gonna call the.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:24

Have you seen the movie Animal House?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:26

I'm gonna think of that for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:27

Have you seen the Animal House movie?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

Which one?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:29

Animal House.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:29

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:30

It's been a while. You know the movie, the line in there where John Belusi's trying to get his fraternity brothers fired up and he gives them that speech about did the Americans quit? Did the Germans bomb Pearl Harbor? Let's go, and he runs out. I said that line to the band one day. And nobody laughed. And one kid came up and he says, Dr. You do know that it wasn't the Germans that bombed Pearl Harbor. I said, Seriously? Who did that? He said it was the Japanese. I said, No. I said, Have you ever seen the movie Animal Houses? No. I said, Google it and look and find John Belushi's fraternity speech. He came back next day. He said, That's the funniest thing I've seen. I said, Now you get it, just yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:11

Yeah.

unknown 1:07:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:12

It's kind of fun how things get lost on generations like that. The other day I said the to a younger cat, college cat, it's like, you know, you can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking your head up a bull's ass. But wouldn't you rather take the butcher's word for it? He thought that was the greatest line of all time. Yeah. You know, our day's like, oh, that's from the movie Tommy Boy. Yeah. From this kid, it's like, man, Tyler Jackson is profound. That's the greatest thing I've ever heard.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:33

Tommy Boy, what a great movie.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:35

Right? Yeah. Dude, Tommy, Tommy went wingy, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:38

Break shoes.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:39

Well, I I actually wrote a lifestyle letter back in in uh back, so we had the best wings of Manhattan last October, and it was it was talking about life's like a basket of chicken wings. Sometimes they're perfect, sometimes they're overdone, sometimes they're too saucy, sometimes there's not enough sauce. Like you don't always know what you're gonna get. That's right. But no matter what, there's always a meat lover's pizza in the trunk. That's right. Because I watched Tommy Boy, and it just popped up on that scene, and it was just so profound, it was like, oh my god, even if I didn't get the chicken wings, it's always a meat lover's pizza in the trunk.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

That's what's missing today the common sense. It's the blue-collar common sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:14

Well, I think it's them damn phones like our parents say, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:19

I bet, man, I bet those kids and those damn phones. Did you see a big a big difference between kids and when the cell phone came out? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:27

It's it's it's captured them, it's taken them away. We we don't allow cell phones in any rehearsal or performance. We don't allow them anywhere here.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:32

Oh, good.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:33

And I tell them if I catch them, they'll take it away from me. You have to make an appointment with me to get it back. And I'm not available until next August. And you can't live 30 minutes without this, let alone six months. Yeah. But they'll their parents will buy them a new one the next day. So we don't allow cell phones at at all. And I said just you know, especially for football games. You're gonna like not being connected to the world for about six hours.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:56

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:56

Because then as soon as you get connected, you're gonna realize what a cluster fuck we're living in right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:02

It truly is.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:03

Yeah. And nobody's gonna tell you you did really well today. You gotta figure it out yourself. And if you did well, you'll be happy.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:08

And you don't have to do well, you need to figure out that you don't need to do anything for everybody else anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:12

I don't need anybody to tell me the band did well that day. I know that. It's good because I passed it to them and make them feel good about themselves, because that's education now. Um my dad would say if I blew any more sunshine up your ass, you'd be farting rainbows for a week and a half. Just get the goddamn thing done. Yeah. There's another thing that's gonna be cut out, right? But uh so yeah, we're probably gonna keep that. We don't love it. We don't allow 'em. And I they're they seem to be brighter, bouncier, happier.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:44

You're more present.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:45

It's just a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:46

The best book I've ever read was by Eckhart Tolle, called The Power of Now. Yeah. It was the best book I've ever read, and it changed my life in a lot of ways. I read that in the fall of 2024, and it makes me uh the the future's not here, right? The past is just a set of memories. I mean, you're living a multitude like constantly, like now, now like your life is just a series of now moments. And everything that we always worry about takes us away from the now moments. And if we're not present with where we're at, and those damn phones take us away. I mean, I have such a I have such a just a I have such a desire to go back to having a landline and an answering machine.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:26

That's what I tell my wife, we get a box with a cord on it and put your finger in a hole and make sparks. Absolutely. We used to have one. I actually have my grandma's old one. Growing up with four sisters, my dad used to have that box and he put purposely put a really short cord on it that didn't expand, so they couldn't go hide in a closet and talk to their boyfriends. And we used to have a thing called the party line. Okay. Which means we were on the same line as the neighbors. Oh, so when you pick up a phone, if they were talking, you gotta wait till they're done. Use the phone. Ah it was cheaper. And so you had to wait, and so you keep picking it up. You learn how to put the phone up here and put the thing down and up, and then they were off, and all of a sudden you you dialed.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:03

Oh, absolutely. You're hopping on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:05

My mom was my or my grandma was born in the 1920s. She passed away in 2001. Late 90s, we get our first computer, and she would call my mom, only landline only for sure. Well, we got dial up internet.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:18

And we would it would be a busy signal all night long, and she would get so mad about that.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:24

And you know, she would be b beside herself if she'd come back today and see cell phones. But I have a half a desire to and I like it's a true desire. I'm gonna get to it at some point. I could see you doing the same thing. Going back to a landline answer machine, yeah, give me a digital camera and a TomTom. Yeah, not a TomTom like you carried back in the 70s at Ohio State, but a Garmin GPS. Yeah. That's really all I like.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:46

If like I used to have the Garmin on my dashboard, I took it off like last year. Yeah. My wife would get mad at me, showing that your phone does that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:53

I said, I know, but yeah, this damn thing's hardwired for this, though. I know. You know, my my car has navigation. My car's a 2015 and it still has the old school navigation that I'll use on.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:02

I kept it up there because there were kids that graduated from the band as engineers that worked for Garmin, and they would send me them, and they would put in the face of it, they would have like pictures of the marching band and change. And I thought that was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:13

Hey, Garmin, the best Kansas company ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:16

Like you said, if if I had a company uh that was big like that, the first person I'm gonna hire is a Kansas State Marching Band student for sure. I'm telling you. Because it goes back to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:25

I'm telling you. I'd hire them in a heartbeat.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:27

They're the best there is.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:28

They're great kids.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:30

So, well, I'm glad you're gonna be doing some consulting. I'm glad you're staying around Manhattan. Alex Wimmer, Dr. Alex Wimmer, is gonna be He's gonna do fine. He's already been named as the next director.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:38

He's been named, and we've hired uh they hired an associate director, and there's um they're in the process of hiring an assistant director now. So there'll be three people doing what two of us have been doing for the last couple of years, which is gonna be better, more humane, for God's sakes. Yeah, if you wanna if you want to get a good idea of what the band does, follow the band director around from on Saturday or from Friday night after rehearsal through pub crawls, through volleyball games, through Saturday morning, six o'clock rehearsal, three thirty in the morning and meet in the band hall, uh, and then go through the day and then Well I saw you last fall at Dillon's on a Friday night, and you were getting milk or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:14

No, you're getting donuts for the band in the morning. Yeah. I said, What time do you have to be there? You said 3 30.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:19

Yeah, I was like, oh it was it was 11 o'clock kick. So we're in a stadium at six, and we we uh start rehearsal at six, we're in there at four thirty setting up, so we go to three thirty, meet in the band hall, look at the weather, look at the changes, see who's sick, what's going on, and make plans and go from there.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:35

Was that your favorite kickoff time?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:36

Oh, I hated it.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:37

I bet.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:38

I hated it. I'd rather do the afternoon game. I think a one o'clock game is just college football.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:44

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:44

But evening games I like. Because you just you got some sleep the night before. Because football games was 11 o'clock kickoff. Last time you slept was Thursday night.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:53

Yeah. Because you guys you because on Fridays you're still doing dress rehearsals, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:59

Pub crawls.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:59

Oh yeah, yeah, pub crawls.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:00

Sometimes there's basketball games or volleyball games. So by the time you get home, it's midnight to one o'clock, and get some make some coffee, take a shower, change clothes, watch sports center, and then come up to the office.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:13

Man.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:13

It's it's a lot, nobody knows. We all have our axes to grind and crosses to bear, but it's it's a tough one.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:22

Well, my friend, um I think you've I think you did your job because I think our job in life is to always leave everything better than you found it. You betcha. Or make it better than what you found it. And when it comes to the Kansas State Marching Band, I don't even know where to even begin to think about where it would be if you wouldn't have looked on a damn map and had to point out Kansas, figure out it was just right north of Kentucky on the on the state's alphabetical list to come out here and take a chance on tornado night and and make something happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:53

Yeah, it's the right place, the right time with the right people and the right purpose, the right support, everything, the moons and the stars were aligned, and I was smart enough to realize that and stuck it out.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:04

So it was divine. All of it was divine.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:08

It it it worked out. Worked out for me, worked out for my family, worked out for a lot of people and band kids. It certainly helped the university, her certainly helped the school of music for God's sakes, and um it was the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:20

Well, you know, in the very beginning we mentioned, you know, I I don't know if that was on the air or off. We've been talking for an hour and five minutes now, which is awesome. I mean, they were just we're just BSing is what we're doing. Yeah, um I I had mentioned you can never connect dots looking forward, you can only connect dots looking backwards. Yeah. And when you turn around and you look backwards from your life from the time that you were born in Cleveland, Ohio, you know, but unfortunately lost your mother at eight years old. Yep. But the killer baseball, or what was it the the killer catch. Killer catch, yeah. Yeah. To go into Brooklyn High School, to go into Ohio State for the 1978 oil embargo, not giving you a teaching job where you could have settled somewhere. Yeah. Instead, you got that TA job at Wisconsin where you met your wife, then you moved to Cleveland, and you get the I learned how to drink beer in Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:04

Yeah, yeah. You met your wife and your spotted cow beer is you're just out of the yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:10

Do you like Moonman or Spotted Cow better? Spotted cow. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:13

We just were up there last week. I bought three cases back.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:15

I bet you did. Smuggling some new Galaris brewing company.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:18

I'm guilty.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:18

Man, if you know, you know. If you don't know anything about spotted cow in Wisconsin, it's a Wisconsin treat. That's right. People talk about Wisconsin cheese.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:26

That's good stuff too, but it's only it's it's brewed in Wisconsin, it's only sold in Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:31

That's so cool. But but but you met Gerlin uh in Madison, and then you guys took that job, leap of faith, and you went to Cleveland where you taught for a few years at the largest school in c in Ohio.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:43

Second largest high school in Ohio.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:45

And then you went to Ohio State to get your doctorate, then you went to Syracuse, then you went to Moorhead State, then you went to Kansas State. Yep. Stay here for 33 years, then you retire. You just never know. It's like I've written a story about you in a magazine or something. You just never know.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:57

I know. You just never know. You did your homework, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:00

Yeah. But but looking back and connecting all those dots, everything that you've done, my friend, has been divine to get you to this point. It's pretty cool that that all those roads that you've you've taken in your whole entire life, and mine too, actually, if you look at it, have put us at this table right here to talk about this on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:16

That's some days have been better than others, but it's by growing up in Cleveland, yeah, it'd be tough to live in Cleveland, and and um you just can't kill a Clevelander.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:25

No. Would you ever move back to Cleveland?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:27

No, it's a different lifestyle. Yeah. It's fast-paced, it's uh it's blue collar. You know, traffic jam there is ours. Traffic jam here is your fourth card.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:38

It's moving weekend in August, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:40

Yeah, that's so that's based by construction because the yeah, they decide to do here. The big argument at stop signs is a four-way stop, is people doing this. Nobody will go because they want you to go first. In Cleveland, they just go, you know, and then wave a finger at you.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:56

You know what's more effective? You know what's more effective than giving somebody a finger? Down thumb. If you give somebody a down thumb, like it makes you evaluate your entire existence. Yeah. If you get flipped off, it's gonna make you mad. If somebody gives you a down thumb, yeah, oh my gosh. Or gives you a thumbs down.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:10

See, and if you do that in Cleveland, it's a good way to get shot.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:13

Yeah, any of that. Yeah, that's where we'll see you at the crossroads.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:16

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:17

For sure. That's right. Well, Dr. Frank Trace, my friends, thank you for being the man. Thank you for for who you are. Thank you for coming on. And you know, this is the Aggiva Lifestyle Podcast. I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention the tie-in and you being the great time in Argyville, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So thank you on behalf of the Aggie Villus Association for all the pub girls. Thank you for being our marshal for the St. Patrick's Day Parade this year.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:39

Dennis Cook, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:40

Oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you just for all that you've done for Manhattan. You you are one of the guys that have made this a truly better place.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:48

So, what you do? I'd do it anywhere. I would do it anywhere I went. So this was just a great place to do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:53

So you can do it anywhere. Good people. We could all do it anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:57

Good people, good people here.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:58

But Manhattan's just a little bit better. It's different.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:01

I drank the Kool-Aid, drank the purple Kool-Aid.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:03

I think we both did. Still doing it. But you know it makes purple, right? Yeah. Crimson and blue. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:08

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:08

Every time.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:09

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:10

And are you sure that was a Starship Enterprise? Definitely sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:13

Are you sure? I'm very sure. I'm very sure. Like I said, I'll draw you pictures.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:19

Ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only, the impeccable, the legendary.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:25

Dr. Frank Trace. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:26

Happy trails to you. Here we go. All right, my friend.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:32

Make your world alive. Make your world alive. Make your world alive. It's the place to do. It's all the jobs, we like to say I gave the lights out of the