 HBC Degest Radio welcome back to a featured interview with luminaries and leaders from historically black colleges and universities today a very special interview it's not often that we get to cover band culture here with the digest but we will do just that today talking with leaders from two bands who collaborated for a pretty historic performance in North Carolina joining us today mr. Michael McGruder he is the director of bands at Winston-Salem State University and Tim Heath the director of athletic bands at Wake Forest University and you guys are in the heels of that historic performance at a Wake Forest football game where Winston and the Wake bands got together and and gave a pretty stellar performance so first congratulations to your boat to your both Michael we will start with you first and then Tim you join in with your perspective on it how did the conversations about this joint performance actually get started well for me Dr. Heath called me and asked if this was something that we could possibly do and I thought about it for a second and say absolutely if this collaboration is something that we could make happen I thought it would be good just not for both universities but for the city of Winston-Salem and Dr. Heath from your perspective so we were looking at ways to collaborate with Winston-Salem State University and I thought of the idea that we could use the the two bands during half-time and it was a great opportunity for us to be able to explore possible collaboration ideas and I called Dr. McGruder and just asking hey would you be interested in this and I had no idea if he was going to say yes or no we don't have time and he's like just like he said he kind of pause for a second I said yes this would be a great idea and it's a great so let me think a little bit more about this and I'll be in touch soon and that's that's kind of how it started on our end so how long did it take to put this kind of performance together because fans kind of see on the back end you know the finished product but what does it take to get two bands together practice time arrangements formations what is that like and how warp speed do you have to move to make that happen? Let Dr. Heath start that conversation. Sure so when we started looking at a possible date we were like let's go for the the opening game we thought this would be a fantastic way to do that the time line to start and go ahead and move forward the thing that was a little tricky for both bands is that we were in band camp and I think Dr. McGridder they were almost wrapping up band camp and we were just getting started with band camp so we were also you know learning everything that we're supposed to be doing for our normal home games and just throughout the season working on our own individual halftime shows and I think we had roughly maybe three weeks total to get this together the tricky part was there was not really an opportunity for both bands to get together to rehearse until the actual game day so just trying to determine how we can make that work and there was several phone calls several text messages several emails kind of looking at the timeline and picking a piece of music we didn't have anything arranged we actually purchased a piece that was already published for me I thought that would probably be a little easier on both of us being able to get that into the timeline and also working that into your rehearsal schedules to prepare and just to follow up on what he mentioned it was pretty tricky because we were wrapping up band camp we didn't have any immediacy we didn't have a football game ahead of us that next week or so so we say okay well this would be a good starter for us and working the music in was easy thanks thanks to you dr. he for writing the music and he also provided the drill positions for both bands so we work those in as we continue to work for our band camp so those things were easy for us and you know then this is another big moment for Winston-Salem State University we're used to big moments so things really worked out really well even the day of practicing it worked out really well so we know that band culture is really really unique and really tight for musicians they take it very very seriously and they take it seriously for life and that's not just exclusive to HBCUs but bands all over the country at all different kinds of schools even down to high schools in some places did you have any hesitation from your musicians or your alumni and this is to both of you did anybody kind of say you know I don't I don't know how I feel about this we have you know we're all marching bands but we have pretty unique cultures I don't know how I feel about melding the two was there any hesitation there from any of your stakeholders and how did you deal with that there was no hesitation on the part of Winston-Salem State University fans, alums, nor the students we did not hesitate to indicate that we wanted to participate in this event we wanted to kind of get an idea as to why this time of year by this particular game but other than that we thought it was perfect for us to start the season and it all worked up really really well so on the way far side I being the new director I didn't really know my students that well when when I brought the idea up I'd been with my leadership camp for one day and I brought it up to my leadership first and I had no idea if they were going to be excited or hesitant and I can say completely they were 100% excited I mean smiles on their faces they're like yes yes please let's do this and on the side of our fan base I have heard nothing but positive feedback and I never heard any any negative hesitation or anything like that prior to the event you mentioned that you're going to seek out opportunities to work together in the future what would that look like would it be for other games would it be home-in-home agreements what are the logistics look like that or what does the timing look like it doesn't have to be something you plan out you know with a lot of time in mind or you know months in advance knowing how it works now how do you create other opportunities to work together yeah that's very important question because I don't know how we'll be able to create another opportunity like this based on our schedules are varying schedules in terms of football seasons if this is something that could possibly happen down the road like he knows that he can reach out to me will be readily available if we can work it out absolutely I feel the same way I think it's a little bit of variables with with scheduling and just you know timing and just kind of seeing how each year falls into place but I think overall I feel like this is the beginning of something that could potentially expand now what that looks like right now I'm not sure Dr. McGreeter and I haven't really had much time to kind of sit back and talk a little bit about that but I hope that conversation continues and I feel like this is you know just the first step to many other collaborations and I also hope that it'll expand past just the marching bands I hope there's I think there's lots of room for other areas