Drumming it in

In 2012, Woodrow band director Chris Evetts inherited 20 kids who could barely play. He’s already doubled the number of players, but can he turn them into college-scholarship material?

Story by Brittany Nunn | Photos by Kim Leeson

In 2011, the first time Chris Evetts heard Woodrow Wilson High School’s marching band play at a football game, the band had reached an all-time low. There were only seven kids in the group — barely enough to make a garage band, much less a marching band.

“It was embarrassing. Even if you have seven phenomenal musicians, you can’t be a high school band,” Evetts says. “I remember thinking they looked like they were just wandering around and honking noises.”

But Evetts, who at the time was assistant band director at Highland Park High School, was inspired by the ragtag ensemble.

“I just thought, ‘They need something. They need someone,’ “ he says.

He turned to his co-workers and said, “I’m going to work there next year. That’s going to be my next job.” And, of course, they laughed at him. It became something of a running joke between Evetts and his co-workers, he says. But the joke was on them, because he was serious.

Sure enough, in June 2012, the band director position opened at Woodrow, and Evetts jumped at the opportunity to snap it up.

“It’s a fascinating challenge to go to a program and build it from the ground up,” Evetts says.

The big di erence between Evetts’ approach and that of previous directors is that he intends to stay for the long haul, he says. That was how things got so bad in the first place.

About 15 years ago, Woodrow had a great band, but then longtime band director Richard Hayden left. After that, Woodrow had a “revolving door” of directors, Evetts says. Each would stay a year or two and then move on.

“Even if they were good directors, they stayed such a brief time,” he says. “And when you keep restarting and keep restarting, you lose loyalty. The band just went down the tubes because it had a series of band directors that didn’t stay.”

By the time Evetts’ predecessor Chris Walls took over, there were only a handful of students in the band. Walls did what he could, eventually recruiting players from the high school.

“What people don’t understand is, you can’t do that,” Evetts says. “You can’t just hand a kid a horn and they can suddenly play. They have to go through the process of starting in sixth grade, being taught over a course of years the proper techniques.”

And that’s what Evetts inherited when he landed the job in 2012: Twenty kids, most of whom had been playing for about six months.

For a year and a half, Evetts has been working with students on basics like posture and muscle-building, and his e orts already have paid o .

“The year previous to when I came here, Woodrow made the worst ratings in