Why

Money is part of the problem. There are entire law firms devoted to finding and suing entities for performing, copying, and even arranging music of artists without a ton of fees for each action. From what I understand SOTS has already been taken to court once. Every song = $$$. Better not to play the same song a dozen times.

I'm far more concerned about the wokeness, abandonment of tradition, and lame field shows. Pulling top 40 songs out of a hat isn't a show.

The combined performance of the two bands at halftime of the USA game was an inspiring show! cornhole could revel in John Phillip Sousa music every halftime!

Hope his heirs don't sue us. 

I don't see every show. That's another problem. Other university bands - like Southern - have their own videographers and constantly post to social media. You can see Southern's entire performance in Troy from marching into the stadium, to halftime, to post game, to marching out. Troy's social media is non-existent.

For every game, we get a "schedule" of sorts of all the ad reads and events that the athletics department is going to do. One of the drum majors will wear a headset that's linked in with athletics and there's a producer who runs the whole event. He'll cue for things like sponsored ad reads, games like the Publix higher or lower and Half Shell Oyster Shuffle, and so forth.

We are usually put on the back end of that stuff, so after all the reads are done, then we're able to come in. Generally the media timeouts are 2.5/3 minutes, so after all is said and done and we can play, the band is left with an average of 1:00 to play something. A lot of our stand tunes run longer than that, but we still try to play where we can.

When there are no more media timeouts in a quarter, it becomes even more difficult to play as the game doesn't stop without a sideline timeout.

It's not necessarily anyone's fault that we're not able to play as much as we'd like, it's just the way that things go. Kyle George in particular is a huge supporter of the band and he tries to get us in when he can. 

In regards to our size, The Sound of the South recruits by traveling to high school competitions and performing. Since we were not able to do that last year due to COVID, we did go down in size this year. That, combined with us having an additional section in The Vet that we didn't have in the past, makes us look a lot smaller than in years past, when in reality, we're not significantly smaller.

There is a lot of truth that has been put out on this board that has been posted.


1.  Lets start with the shows. They are horrible and regurgitateds show from the past. I understand that the crowd should enjoy them but OMG enough with 70s! Last descent show that the band did in recent time was the American show even the drill sets were awful and no dynamics to the show. Yeah you are the "SOUND OF THE SOUTH", but show there is more than just blowing your brains out.

2. Do something about that guard. They are horrible! You have someone their who has a background from a high profile Drum Corps/Winter Guard utilize her. OMG the only way that part of the program is going to grow is to make it more interesting for the the high school kids.

3.  Retire that horrible fanfare, it is not like by anyone.  If the band isnt going to use the original then do away with it. 

3 - The size is down because of covid but also I heard from a couple of alumni, that the Dr. Hawkins want to cap the band off.

4. Get a new director with a new vision or just get a director for the marching band. It is so stagnate and needs to updated and refreshed.

I agree about the Fanfare.  If they would fix it I could be ok with it, as well as other alumni and fans.  Southerners done play Dixie anymore.  They did away with it before Troy.

I agree with with everything else you said.  The band sounds like a high school band.  Nothing inspiring about it.  

Yeah I agree is it lame. Everything about the marching band is lame. Nothing like it use to be.

I can't speak for HS bands in AL but I can speak for N. Cent FL area (Lake City South To Just N of Orlando) My daughter did HS band here from 2009-12 and SOTS from 2013-14 (had to drop band because she was on Millenium Scholarship and had to graduate in 4 years). The HS bands down here are awful. The largest one we saw had 65 members and it was a 8A school with a music magnet program). We had a 7A team we played that had 18 band members and a 5A with 12. Nobody wants to do band. Then I have a HS friend who's son went to Lowdnes Co HS in GA and they had over 300 and another friend from Troy who's son is in band in metro ATL and they are at least 200 strong. It has to be getting hard to recruit SOTS

However they have plenty of time for being on their phones 50 hours a week.
Yes I just typed this on my phone.

Unfortunately, while Robert Smith was brilliant musically and generally creatively, he also - so I've heard - had some certain character issues. I think I might be willing to overlook them at this point though.

I wouldn't march either if vaccination were required. I've seen what vaccines with no liability have done to some relatives and I'll have none of it.