Two months, 44 shows in 14 states, countless hours on busses and a different high school gymnasium to call home every night. That’s what four Kansas University band musicians have bargained for this summer as rookie members of the Lexington, Ky.-based Southwind Drum Corps.

Judging from percussionist Tristan Moody’s demeaner, they can hardly wait. Along with snare drummer and fellow Lawrence native Jose Espinosa, assistant conductor Kim Blumenthal from Tulsa, Okla., and Australian Vanessa Veitch on cymbals, the 2001 Free State High School graduate auditioned in Lexington this past winter.

Kansas University band members, from left; Jose Esposito, Vanessa Veitch, Kim Blumenthal and Tristan Moody, await their return flight from a spring rehearsal camp in Lexington, KY where the four are members of the Southwind drum corps.

Following a spring filled with long trips to Kentucky for rehearsal camps, the quartet soon will return for the intensive two-week rehearsal period that precedes the grueling tour, which begins with a show June 15 in Toledo, Ohio, and ends Aug. 10 in Madison, Wis., at the Drum Corps International finals.

Drum corps differs from traditional marching band in several ways. Gone are the woodwinds, but in addition to the traditional color guard and a synchronized flag squad are squads performing maneuvers with rifles and swords, offering a hint of drum and bugle corps’ roots in martial music.

Moody will be performing as a member of the “pit” or frontline percussion section, a nonmarching part of the corps, playing instruments such as bells, marimba, xylophone and vibes.

Moody’s father recalls his son’s fascination with marching band since he was a toddler. His interest in “corps” is more recent and was fueled by seeing a video performance. The young musician downloaded the application materials from Southwind’s Web site and was accepted for an audition.

A snare drummer in the KU band, Moody auditioned for every position in the corps he might have been suitable for, taking advantage of every skill he had that might gain him inclusion.

According to Moody, there is life after corps. While Southwind competes in Division I of the junior classification, he points out that the junior circuit is much more competitive than the senior circuit, which is more for those individuals who have “aged-out” of junior but still wish to perform.

Moody also points to the existence of “Blast,” a long-running Broadway show staged by former drum corps competitors currently on tour, as exemplary of the growing affinity audiences have for this kind of music.

Moody describes “Blast” as “drum corps on crack” since the troop takes the style of performance into realms of music that the marching field has never known. A smaller offshoot, “Blast II,” will be coming to Lawrence’s Lied Center in the spring of 2003.

Ironically, only one other person hailing from Kansas, the land of the south wind, has ever made in into the Southwind corps. And though the annual competition held at Haskell Indian Nations University is part of the Drum Corps Midwest circuit on which Southwind tours, these KU students will have to do this again next year to have the pleasure of performing in front of friends and family at home. The Haskell event is on Southwind’s schedule every other year.