The U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division Band and its sub-groups have a long repertoire of popular music from different genres, but the performers understand that their talents and skills also are used to heal, recruit and educate as much as to entertain.
Additionally, the 31 Fort Bliss soldier musicians who make up the “Best Band on the Rio Grande” also strike the delicate balance of being warriors as well as singers and instrumentalists.
The concert band finished its holiday schedule earlier this month, but its members continue to perform around post, whether as a small ensemble for a fancy ball or a lone bugler for a ceremony at the Fort Bliss National Cemetery. As 2023 winds down, the band’s leaders know that the new year will have plenty of activities for this group of Army ambassadors.
While summer is the group’s busiest season, January includes performances at Disneyland, another alongside the Harlem Globetrotters and a stop at the Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, for a simulated overseas deployment. This year, the band and its sub-groups participated in about 450 performances.
“It’s like we’re always drinking from a firehose,” said Sgt. 1st Class Michael Jones, noncommissioned officer in charge of operations.
Members of the 1st Armored Division Sun City Brass Band performed in spring 2023 before an El Paso Chihuahuas game at Southwest University Park. The band or elements of it logged about 450 performances, or “missions,” in 2023. (Courtesy of the 1st Armored Division Band)
Jones and several other band leaders recently met at the group’s post headquarters on Merritt Road to talk about the band’s relevance.
For post functions, the band adds to the level of professionalism at formal ceremonies, but its efforts also are important for soldier morale and community engagement. The different subgroups, such as a funk band, brass quintet and woodwind ensemble, engage audiences of all ages.
“The band is a great public relations tool,” said Jones, who plays the clarinet with the concert and marching bands, and is a vocalist with the 1st AD rock/country band.
In demand
The unit is the only active-duty band in the Southwest, so it gets requests to perform from as far away as California and Colorado and as far east as Dallas. The “Old Ironsides” band, whose motto is “Performance with Pride,” originally formed in 1943. It is considered one of the country’s premier military bands.
Many of the invitations come from Army recruiters who believe the band’s music will arouse interest in the Army as a musician or in one of the branch’s other 190 job specialties. According to a November 2023 USA FACTS report, the Army expects to recruit 55,000 new soldiers this year, but that is about 10,000 short of its goal.
The Army states that it is the world’s largest employer of musicians. Jones said the Army has approximately 870 musicians in special bands in Washington, D.C., and regional bands such as the 1st AD band. Prospective members must show proficiency with their instrument and pass several auditions. Jones said he expects that number of 1st AD band performers to grow to about 40 by September after the annual personnel turnover is complete.
Members of the 1st Armored Division Big Band performed in July 2023 at the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Performers travel around the Southwest to engage with the community. (Courtesy of the 1st Armored Division Band)
The band’s roster includes musicians from throughout the country and from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some join straight out of high school while others were professional musicians or music teachers. Some continue to be freelance performers. Still others are musically inclined but have no professional background. Their ranks range from specialist to first sergeant.
While the band is important on several levels, Jones referenced how its music can connect with soldiers and people in general who have built emotional barriers due to post-traumatic stress disorder, life stress or work-related issues.
“Music does something on such a social, emotional, cognitive level that a lot of other things can’t do,” he said. “We can bring down (those barriers) and provide them with at least one thing they might like.”
Jones grew up in southeastern Ohio and earned his bachelor’s degree in music from the University of the Rio (pronounced RYE-oh) Grande in Ohio. He became a high school teacher but left that job to join the Army in 2004. The soldier musician has played with about eight Army bands and was part of the initial 1st AD band at Fort Bliss in 2011.
Sgt. Derrick Smith, who grew up in El Paso and graduated from Andress High School in 2010, plays the tuba with the concert band, the bass guitar with the rock band and is a vocalist as needed. He also is the unit’s operations clerk and armorer, the person who ensures that all arms and ammunition are accounted for and ready to be issued as needed for training and deployments.
Smith, who attended New Mexico State University and spent almost five years as a member of a Marine Corps band, said the discipline needed to be a good soldier is also one of the main qualities found in a good musician. While the primary task of these soldiers is to be the best musicians possible, they also must apply the same drive and focus to master the warrior skills that could save their lives and the lives of others at a moment’s notice. These skills include everything from proficiency at the firing range and with first aid to understanding regulations and appearance.
The unit’s soldiers keep odd hours because of different obligations that could include overnight, early mornings or late evening events, so the members cannot always conduct early morning physical training as a complete group. Instead, they are expected to maintain the necessary fitness levels on their own. To help with that, their headquarters has a small gym that includes stationary bikes and free weights.
Sgt. Jessica Brust, the band’s noncommissioned officer in charge of public relations, said that when not focused on music of soldier skills, they work on administrative duties such as updates to the performance calendar, as well as to security, technology, public affairs and supplies to make sure the unit has what it needs from copy paper and clarinet reeds.
Brust, a 1st AD band vocalist and violinist, grew up in Philadelphia and Charlottesville, Virginia. She earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies in 2008 from Elon University in North Carolina about 60 miles northwest of Raleigh. Before graduation, a show band hired her, and she continued to find music-related jobs in the wedding, cruise ship and corporate entertainment industries. When COVID limited her ability to make a living, she responded to a friend’s suggestion that she consider an Army enlistment. She left for basic training in 2021 and joined the 1st AD band the same year.
When asked how band members compared to the hardest working soldiers on post, she replied immediately with a wide smile: “Well, that would be us.”
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