MORGANTOWN — The Funk Doctor, it can be said, is one musically exacting dude.
Evidenced by all those haikus of Almost, Not Quite.
“Too heavy after the solo. We’re dragging.”
“Lemme hear those last four measures again — we got weird with the tempo.”
It was a sunny Thursday afternoon at Camp Muffly, and Lorne Hyskell, the director of the Red and Blue Marching Band of Morgantown High School, was working 167 horn players and drummers through “Attitude Dance.”
For the record, the genial native of Punxsutawney, Pa., isn’t officially known as the “Funk Doctor.”
It’s just that he was one for awhile on this day.
The 1991 tune by Tower of Power he was teaching is a 6-minute slice of brassy funk and swagger, and the MHS assemblage was nailing it — save for some tightening up here and there.
Hyskell, again: “We need to be more out front with the articulation.”
“Don’t splat.”
“You’re still talking louder than you’re playing.”
Because the hot sun was grooving down in its own right, and because there were a couple of bee stings already — not to mention a saxophone player with a slight nosebleed — the Funk Doctor also knew what else to prescribe, and when.
“Break time. Find yourself some shade. Relax. Drink that water.”
He grinned as he watched the tightly rehearsed musicians become teenagers again, as they flopped down and sprawled out, this way and that.
The first day of school in Monongalia County is Aug. 24, and if the Delta variant doesn’t change the key, that means the Friday night lights of football and marching band field shows won’t be far behind.
Hyskell, who has been at MHS since 2016, was singing a cautiously hopeful song at the “Not So Away” summer band camp finishing up at the wooded enclave off Goshen Road.
The Punxy kid who grew up in the shadow of a famous weather-forecasting groundhog named Phil said he hopes the klieg lights of Pony Lewis Field will be able cut through the gloom of the coronavirus.
“We’re working under the mandate of the health department,” he said. “We do what they tell us to do. I know our kids are ready to get out there.”
Kassie Regulus, who is going into her senior year as drum major, said her emotions were trickier than those “Attitude Dance” percussion patterns.
“Everybody’s excited,” she said.
“Some of us might be a little scared. We’ve got freshmen who have never gone at it at this level of intensity before.”
And when you’re in front of the band, and they’re taking your cues and you’re setting the tempo and marshaling all this (joyful) martial noise … well, “intensity,” she said, smiling, is as good as it gets.
“Nothing better.”
Hyskell picked up the beat.
“The pandemic took a lot of those experiences away,” he said.
Experiences are a signature tune for the band from the school on Wilson Avenue.
The Red and Blue has marched in the Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving and the Rose Bowl Parade on New Year’s Day.
It has sonically honored the Greatest Generation at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
“Our kids are ready to get that back. When you’re on that field at halftime, you aren’t just playing for your mom or dad or your peers, you’re playing for the community. Especially in this town.”
Right on cue, the drumline began counting cadence. The Funk Doctor didn’t have to decree that break time was over. Eyes forward, instruments at the ready.
There was work to do.
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