Chris Evetts directs the Woodrow Wilson band: 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 difference 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 efforts already have paid off.
“The year previous to when I came here, Woodrow made the worst ratings in contests in all of Dallas ISD,” he says, “We were the bottom.”
Last year, Woodrow received an “excellent” rating for stage performance and a “superior” rating for sight-reading.
“See the red plaque hanging on the wall?” Evetts says, gesturing behind him to a plaque hanging outside his office door. “We didn’t get the big trophy, but that plaque is the best thing we could’ve possibly brought back. That’s a symbol of how far they went.”
Kim Leeson
Not only did the band increase its scores, but Evetts also grew the band to 51 players.
“This year we want the big trophy,” he says.
Evetts credits the students, saying the progress is a “testament to the kids accepting a new person,” but the students turn the praise right back around.
Band member Julia Aves, who started playing clarinet in the sixth grade, came to Woodrow from J. L. Long Middle School during Evetts’ first year.
“When he came here, he told us this was his dream job, and he made that clear,” Aves says. “He’s very passionate about it, and you can tell.”
His outlook has made an impact on her and the other students. Aves looks at her bandmates as extended family members, she says.
“Some of these kids don’t have a good home life,” Aves says. “They don’t have people who love them, so they can come here and have people to talk to and have friends. This is like their second home.”
Those kids are exactly the ones Evetts hopes to reach — kids who need band to help them make it through high school as well as to get into college.
“Band is a gateway to college. I went to college on a band award. I went to TCU. I never could’ve afforded that school,” Evetts explains. “That’s what these kids can do, too.”
But most of Evetts’ students still have some polishing up to do before they’ll be college scholarship material, and in order to get there, they need private lessons.
“The kids have to have one-on-one instruction,” Evetts says. “When you have a whole room full of students, it’s like teaching five different languages.”
There are professional musicians who visit Dallas high schools to give students one-on-one instruction, but it’s freelance, so the kids pay the teachers directly.
“These kids can’t afford that,” Evetts says. “So they’re out of luck to begin with. I need a scholarship program that pays for these kids to have lessons.”
“That’s where I come in,” says neighbor Henda Salmeron, a broker associate with Dave Perry-Miller and Associates whose ninth-grade son is a tuba player in the Woodrow band.
Salmeron recently joined the booster club for the Woodrow band and, after hearing Evetts’ story and about the current needs, delved headlong into fundraising efforts to help all the players afford private lessons.
For starters, she managed to turn the booster club into a 501(c)(3) organization in just a few short weeks, and she built a website for the Woodrow band. (After all, if you don’t have a website, you practically don’t exist.)
With the combination of the kids who can and cannot pay, it will cost about $2,200 a month between now and the end of the year for all students to receive private lessons, Salmeron figures.
“We need to raise money,” she says.
To kickoff the fundraising, Salmeron is hosting a blues and rock concert featuring Gary Porterfield and, of course, the Woodrow Wilson band in March. She has already secured the venue — the Granada Theater — and made fliers.
Also in March, she’s hosting a poker tournament at Times Ten Cellars. Details for that are available on the new Woodrow Wilson Wildcats Band website.
“So many good things are happening,” Evetts says. “The private lessons, we’ve already got those going. I’ve got teachers in here every day. We’re taking the band to San Antonio over spring break to perform at the Alamo. And what other high school band is playing at the Granada Theater? Nobody. This is super cool.”
Aside from lessons, Evetts says Woodrow also needs new instruments because “a lot of what we’re playing on is junk,” he says.
“How can I lure kids from other schools, convince them to come here instead of going to Booker T. or Townview, which is where we lose all of our good musicians to, if I don’t have instruments for them to play on?”
“You need momentum,” Salmeron says.
Well, and money.
To learn more about the band, visit woodrowwildcatsband.org
