Welcome to The Back of the Music Store!

My name is Reagan Brumley and it is my pleasure to welcome you to “The Back of the Music Store!” For those I don’t personally know, I have been a public school band director in Texas for 19 years. I have been fortunate to serve in several school districts, all very different from one another in terms of culture and socioeconomic profile. Through those rich experiences, I have learned volumes via trial and error (much more of the latter than the former) and from having studied at the feet of truly wonderful mentors. I love thinking, learning, talking, and sharing about this wonderful artform we teach, be it discussing instrument pedagogy, rehearsal strategies, program building, or the grittier, too often avoided subjects like burnout, (teacher and student) and the factors that contribute to this growing problem. All of those subjects will be tackled here. I also enjoy writing and am eager to merge my interest in it with my passion for wind band education in this venue.

As for my reason for choosing the title of the blog, “The Back of the Music Store”- I am an avid student of band history, from learning about the conductors and educators who have blazed the trail for all of us, to the history of wind band literature and its composers, to the source of the world’s lamest party trick; I can name every large high school Texas Honor Band and their directors from the contest’s inception in 1958 to current day. That, my friends, is how you get the ladies. All of that is to say that in my gathering of info about the days of yore of Texas bands, I have been told by many that it was commonplace for years, it seems from the 1950s well into the 1970s, for local band directors to gather on Saturday mornings in the back room of the area music store to talk about (ok, gossip about) the week’s events, trade rehearsal stories and strategies, discuss what is wrong with the bands of the day and how to fix them, and on and on. This, of course, sounds like heaven to me. My hope is for this blog to be a small, 21st century incarnation of those rooms. This is a place to talk band and cure the ills of the day for bands and directors all across the land. 

More to come….

rb