Jacksonville State Band Honors LSU & Flood Victims

That's a big band. Nice gesture by them.

Perrilloux's landing spot

Impressive numbers considering their student enrollment is less than 10K. Of course, a marching band isn't nearly as exciting when they play in front of largely empty stands.

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And they are in the Ohio Valley Conference.....What????

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Lots of bands that are in small conference have huge numbers. Some smaller school really value thier band programs.

533 is insane. I have no idea what the instrument breakdown is but still that's stupid big.

Yes....we know.

And to think Joe A wanted to ban them a few months ago.

We wouldn't know what it is like to play in front of largely empty stands, as our band doesn't travel to FCS away games. Our home attendance averaged close to 21,000 last year, and our stadium seats 24,000. The average was pushed down a bit by one or two games.

What hurts our attendance is that FCS fans don't travel well, but most of the 21k are our own fans. If we were FBS we would have to expand the stadium again to accommodate visiting fans and the increase that would come from playing more recognizable names. We don't get as many casual fans coming to see games against Austin Peay as we would if we played Southern Miss type teams - and maybe an occasional 2 for 1 with a P5 school... but we can't seem to get an invite to the FBS. Our attendance now is higher than many if not most Sunbelt / MAC teams. The Sunbelt doesn't want any part of us.

If anyone is interested in watching one of our games from last season, this is a link to our game against SHSU in the playoffs. JSU vs SHSU

Our band will only be marching 450 for the field show. Our band has been invited to perform at the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack in December, so we are doing a patriotic show. I imagine we will be performing the closer in Baton Rouge. Even though it is early in the season, it should be pretty good.

As for the instrumentation, the earlier poster was right that we have a very strong percussion section. The brass section is also quite good, but with our numbers so high we have a lot of woodwinds - 60 saxophones I think. The most interesting section of our band is the tuba line. We march 30 Conn 20J upright recording basses. It is a 50 pound Tuba that has been out of production since the mid 1960's. They are heavily silver plated and produce a tone that is much darker than modern sousaphones... we are kind of famous for marching them.

I am anxious to see this year's show when it is completed. Our 2009 patriotic show was amazing, and last year was just kind of meh. 2014 was pretty good. Here is a link. You guys know how to search youtube so I won't bore you to death with links. Just search Marching Southerners if interested and you will get tons of hits.

Thanks for the hospitality and we look forward to playing in Tiger Stadium.

2014 Marching Southerners

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Impressive numbers considering their student enrollment is less than 10K.

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Can you explain to me how JSU has a band of 550 at a school of less than 10,000 while LSU can only muster a group much less than 300. BTW...I assume JSU had to make cuts in an effort to be at 550 (LSU took EVERYONE who could spell their name). And don't tell me it's because of the flood. One of LSU's band members told me they were projecting a much smaller band along with much increased woodwind numbers weeks before the flood. Embarrassing.