DCA 2006:
Reflection in Time.

Twos-Day ... back in LA ... staring at a phone that rang off the hook today, and unsuccessfully trying to keep the ever-expanding pile of contracts and other assorted paperwork on my desk to a manageable level. The Renegades came in 8th place at the DCA World Championships this year, and it is difficult to reconcile the intense emotions I'm feeling right now, after a seemingly inconspicuous achievement.

Allow me to explain. When one has been involved in drum corps for as long as I have, you eventually get a list of accomplishments on your drum corps resume. A DCI World Championship ring sits on my dresser, in front of three consecutive DCI high drum plaques ... Tale of a Drum Line 1.0 ... taking a senior corps from 7 people to DCA Finalist in three years ... and becoming the Percussion Director of the Santa Clara Vanguard after publicly announcing I was going to do it someday -- while I was still in the 7th grade!

But, as I sit here today, if I had to pick one, and only one, accomplishment in my drum corps career that represents my absolute proudest moment of all ... it has to be what the San Francisco Renegades accomplished this year.

As late as May, the situation was beyond hopeless. We had one snare drummer, two tenors, and only two bass drummers who showed up to rehearsal regularly ... and it was raining.

The show was extremely difficult, and we were months behind in learning drill. After a last ditch controversial publicity blitz to somehow try to find snare drummers, we found a few, and then most of them quit soon after they joined.

We eventually put a rag-tag drum line together, and got about half of the show on the field in time for the first California show. A few weeks later, when we realized it was "now or never" in terms of finishing the show, we made the decision to teach the remainder of the drill on the day of the Stockton show. An understandably horrible performance came out of the drill-cram session, which led to the Renegades first-ever loss in California, and the on-the-spot resignation of half of our colorguard staff.

This was the moment of Truth for the 2006 San Francisco Renegades. Storm clouds gathered. People were giving up on the corps right and left, and for all intents and purposes, it looked like we would not make it to the DCA Championships, let alone have any hope of remaining a world-class finalist. Some of our competitors and drum corps fans all over the country were predicting doom for the San Francisco Renegades. The following weekend, the Renegades came to Southern California for Loud Music Symposium and two DCI shows.

That night, something magical happened when the Renegades took the stage ... the corps members did not have the look of defeat in their eyes ... the Renegades were on fire ... it was as if a giant red dragon was suddenly awake, and it came storming out of its cave in a fucking wall of flame. I could not believe what I was seeing. The Renegades had a choice. They could have give up and accept failure. Or, they could believe in the dream and fight to the end, no matter what the odds are against them.

The Renegades chose to believe.

Until I saw the Renegades survive its darkest day, I had no intention of ever picking up a snare drum again. That day in LA, I saw something in their eyes that I saw once before ... with the 1993 Vanguard ... and something I thought I would never see again in my life ... a drum corps that was down and out, beyond hope, and kicked by nearly everyone when it was down ... but a drum corps that simply would not give up, no matter what the odds were.

That very day, I decided to join the corps on the field. I had no idea where I would find the time, and I ended more than a few camps praying that my back would hold out. But, I had to be a part of the magic I saw occurring before my very eyes ... and I soon unexpectedly found myself having more fun than I experienced in drum corps in many years.

Instead of being defeated, we embraced the Chaos ... the Renegades drum line soon grew very close, and developed a personality of its own ... very hard-working, very dedicated -- and extremely, extremely chaotic. By the time we got to the DCA, the corps was great again, and after a season during which I watched exactly one other corps all season (SoCal Dream), I came to the profound realization that the scores or placement we were about to receive at DCA were completely irrelevant -- we had won before the wheels of our plane even touched the ground in New York.

We warmed up for DCA Prelims in the dark, in the middle of Hurricane Ernesto ... and the few words spoken by drummers during the intensely dark, cold and torrential rain of the warm-up, consisted of looking up to the sky and yelling at the Gods of Rain ... something along the lines of ... "Is that all you got? Bring it on motherf*cker! We want a Monsoon! "

Like I said, we did not run from Chaos ... we embraced it. Which, I guess is kinda-sorta the very definition of a "Renegade." In fact, my only complaint about the weather in Prelims is that it didn't rain hard enough while we were on the field, and maybe frogs falling from the sky during the closer would have completed things quite nicely.

The next night, the snare line took the field in competition at DCA Finals with the signatures of each and every member of the 2006 Drum Line on our drum heads written in silver.

You see, the DCA judges could put us in first ... or they could put us in last ... for the first time in our corps history, it simply didn't matter.

We had already won.

When we went out onto retreat, we unfurled the official Chaos flag of the 2006 drum line, which looks remarkably like the flag of the old Soviet Union (they don't use it anymore ... lol).

I looked around at the drummers standing next to me, and the colorguard in front of us, and a few horn players inexplicably dressed like bees (true story) ... I them came to the sudden and profound realization that I had just been a part of something very, very special.

A Drum Corps Miracle.

In closing, I want to thank everyone who encouraged and believed in the 2006 San Francisco Renegades ... not only each and every member of the corps, but a few key off-the-field alumni (Lisa McIntyre, Brandon Wilson, Dennis Mancini, Earl Brown etc.), DCA Officials (Fred, Gil, Glenn, Dick, Red etc.), and even some of our competitors, especially SoCal Dream, Jeff Ream, Cozy Baker (CV) and Brent Turner of Minnsota Brass, who sent email after email encouraging us to continue to believe that we would pull off the miracle of somehow finding a drum line as the beginning of the 2006 season approached like a Tsunami. It would have been easy to quit, and it would have been easy to sit on the sidelines and kick the corps when it was down.

But enough people believed ...

When that happens, anything is possible.


Anything.





Thanks for reading,



Lee