(trumpet blares) - Now that I'm all warmed up, it's time to tell you about Northern Lights Drum and Bugle Corps.

(drum beat rattles) - We've always been a very musical family.

We've wanted to have ourselves, and our children, involved in the musical community.

And up here, in western Michigan, there just wasn't an opportunity.

The nearest drum corps was actually in Cincinnati, Ohio.

So just by recognizing the need, we started a 501(c)(3), and got it started and it's really exploded.

(laughs) My family involvement is actually very significant.

Obviously, I started this with my husband, Doug.

My two children, Alex and Devland are a part of the drum corps as well.

Our parents are very heavily involved in making sure our members are fed.

They'll set up a peanut butter and jelly table just to make sure that no one goes without, and we keep that blood sugar up.

So we have only brass for our winds instruments, trumpets, trombones, baritones, tubas, mellophones.

And then we will have our percussion instruments, so the battery will be snare drums, bass drums, tenor, and cymbals.

And then we have our front ensemble, which would be things like auxiliary percussion, marimbas, any kind of mallet.

And then just, we've got someone even playing the anvil.

(Misty laughs) We'll have an audience available at every competition that we go to, every performance that we have.

So this year we will have a performance at the Midwest opener, in Rockford, Michigan, here at the high school.

We will be competing for a score this year for our first time ever, it'll be very exciting.

And then we also participate, this year, in the SoundSport Food and Music Festival.

And those finals are, it is to an audience, it is for a competition, but it's a little more lax than the traditional drum corps model.

Whereas SoundSport is very much encompassing all kinds of performance opportunities, all kinds of groups that can come and create something spectacular for the audience.

It's more audience participation than it is for the competition model.

We are very proud to be an all-age organization.

We have some members as young as 12, and our oldest member, I believe this year, is in their mid-60s.

(drums rattle) - We really don't discriminate based on skill level, we look for effort and anyone who's willing to push themselves to that next level musically, and athletically.

But in that spirit of inclusivity, you know, we don't want to cut anyone, we don't want to exclude anyone so we find the best spot where someone can get the highest level of achievement out of their personal playing throughout a summer.

- We call it a community band style drum corps, where we come together, we're ready to rehearse, and then you go home and you practice your music and you prepare your drill.

And then you come to a place where you're ready to come back and put it all together with the ensemble.

And it does take that personal preparation, which has a layer of responsibility and ownership of your preparation, to be able to come, put it all out on the field and come together as an ensemble.

(drums rattle and thump) - We very much treat it like a sport.

It's a lot of communication, we break everything down into its tiniest parts.

We start off with the marching with just one step, and then we'll add on another step.

Even in between, the legs crossing have to be in time.

And we do the same thing with playing in the brass world, we'll break it down with breathing.

So we start there, and then we move into what I like to call hum, sing, buzz.

You gotta hear it first, and we listen to a drone, hum it, sing it, and then buzz it on your mouthpiece and then play it through the horn.

So we really break it down into the smallest micro parts to get everybody sounding like they're all playing exactly together.

We have our staff to do the teaching of the drill and all of that stuff.

And then I'll come in on ensemble and make sure that the show presentation is where we want it to be.

And I start to kind of nitpick that portion.

You know, trumpets, you're really far up, here, in the drill, so you don't need to be quite as loud so we can blend all that together.

(drums rattle) - We have a model, a financial model for our members, where we only charge them how much it costs for their participation.

None of our staff are paid, we're all volunteers.

We are running off of sponsorships, we're running off of donations, we're running off of the support of our friends, family, fans, and community.

And so we have a number of ways that you can support us through sponsorships, through general donations.

- We've been very blessed with our local partners.

Everything we own practically, has been donated.

And we have local music repairmen on staff who can do all those repairs and maintenance for us, and we're very fortunate to have that.

- It really takes a drive and a passion to want to perform and to want to do your best.

They put a lot of their selves into the show, they put a lot of themselves into Northern Lights.

They own being a member of Northern Lights.

And aside from that, it is an enriching opportunity for them.

They're coming in, they're gonna be meeting new people that they wouldn't have met before, learning new ways of playing, new ways of performing that they may not have before.

And it's just a musical opportunity, a way for them to enrich themselves in the arts.

- I like to mentally prepare by just focusing inward.

Focus on what you can do, and your job.

Prepare your portion of it and trust that your teammates have done the work behind the scenes to prepare their portion of it, and you'll have a successful show.

One of the coolest things about Northern Lights is that we're seeing, especially with it being all-age, we're seeing parents getting to march with their children.

We've got probably, upwards of 10 to 15 families, moms and dads and their children marching together, brothers and sisters in the drum corps, and it's a really special thing.

We'd like to get into DCI's all-age class, it's a little bit higher level of competition, and show people that, you know, this activity can be done in an affordable and efficient way.

(drums boom) (upbeat music) - Celebrating vibrant people, captivating places, and remarkable things.

This is "Living West Michigan."

(upbeat music continues)