Joining forces in the Huntley Project gym, pep band members from Huntley Project and Red Lodge play together during the divisional volleyball tournament final match between Huntley and Red Lodge on Saturday. (Jonathan McNiven photo.)
by Judy Killen-Originall published in Yellowstone County News 11-13-15 issue
WORDEN — While Huntley Project battled Red Lodge Saturday in the championship game at the Southern B Divisional volleyball tournament, pep band members from the two schools were playing as one team.
Both schools brought bands to the tournament at Huntley Project High School, and they also played together for Friday’s semi-final game between the Red Devils and the Rams.
HP band director Elliott Cross and Red Lodge director Jennifer Coutts both said they enjoy teaming their bands with other bands as much as they enjoy working together.
“It’s great to do that,” Coutts said. “It’s just fun.”
Both teachers said band members like playing together, and it helps when numbers are low. On Saturday, Huntley Project football was playing at Malta and some band members from both Red Lodge and Huntley were absent because of a speech and drama competition.
“I was missing quite a few and so was Elliott,” Coutts said. Red Lodge didn’t have a drummer, but luckily Huntley did.
Coutts said the bands do have some music that’s from the same publisher, and each plays its own school song. But each school band also has music that the other does not have.
In that case, Coutts said, “I just tell them, go find someone who plays your instrument and sightread with them.”
“There are no rivals in music,” Coutts said. “We’re all there for the same thing. It’s just, it’s what we do. It’s a lot of fun to get together.”
In fact, “We do so much together that it’s not like Huntley Project music and Red Lodge music and Shepherd music,” Cross said. “It’s like the ‘tri-county music program.'”
Starting in seventh and eighth grades, local students run into each other a lot, Cross said, at games and music events like the annual Tri-County Junior High band day.
Area music teachers enjoy a camaraderie, which many of them formed while students at Montana State University-Billings, Cross said. He and Coutts attended MSU-B together for three years, and the Billings Central and Shepherd teacher Kari Drange also attended there.
“It’s a really good network,” Cross said. “That’s one of the neat things about this area” compared to sparsely populated northeast Montana.
“Northeast Montana is really spread out and thin between the towns,” which makes it harder to get together, but they manage.
“Montana music teachers really try to be involved and try to get to know each other,” Cross said. He’s met teachers from the state’s larger cities, and they also “want the whole state to succeed.”
Coutts feels the teamwork, too.
“It’s just, the music teachers’ network is so strong in our state,” she said.
The teamwork extends to parents like Tim Ley, a Huntley Project school board member whose three daughters play in the band — one on trombone, just like him.
“Tim had asked if he could play with us,” Cross said. “It’s a thing that I’ve always done with my bands, when I was in Wolf Point and when I came here, an open invitation to parents or community members” to play with the band — as long as it’s fun for them.
And Cross jumps in too, like most band directors do when needed.
“I’ll play whatever instrument we have little or none of,” Cross aid, usually trumpet, trombone or saxophone.
He likes the teamwork of Montana music teachers. He’s combined his HP band with the other schools in the district, or those bands have joined each other, including Shepherd, Colstrip, Roundup, Red Lodge, Joliet.
Coutts is looking forward to a band rematch in the stands next time Red Lodge and Huntley meet up on the basketball floor.
