After their last season was minimized due to COVID-19 mitigation protocol, the Olathe North Marching Band is back with their first full marching show since 2019.

The show, titled Paint It Black, will be performed at marching band competitions across Kansas and Missouri throughout the fall season. It features the songs Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones and Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell, and was composed by the head band director, Patrick McCarty.

“On a personal level,” McCarty said, “I’ve always wanted to incorporate [those songs] into a show.”

The Rolling Stones song was originally released in 1966 and has garnered large amounts of covers online, according to Second Hand Songs.

“When I started looking at that song, and going down the Youtube rabbit hole of cover versions of it, there were a lot of really cool different versions. What’s great is when you come across a tune you like or works well for a marching band, but there’s also a lot of other versions that you can weave in and out of,” McCarty said, “it makes a really cool musical concept.”

Last year, the band had to remove or limit almost all of their performances, including half time shows and competitions.

“It’s been refreshing,” McCarty said when asked about being able to have a full marching season again, “We took things for granted, and it got taken away, and now it’s back.”

“There’s a lot of exterior motivations for what we do, as far as competition stuff, but it [COVID season] kind of, for me, led to this year being more like: Let’s not get all stressed out about the competitions and this and that,” McCarty said, “Let’s just put our eggs in the basket of creating a product that we’re all proud of, together.”

“I think I see more fun being had [this year],” assistant band director Josh Maddux said, “instead of the ‘we are going to do the competition, and we are going to try to win the trophy, and we are going to do the thing.’ Those are all fine, but the plastic will deteriorate, the wood will rot on those trophies, but the time those people spent together, that’s the life long memory.”

The band has received various awards over the course of the years, including the Concert Band Gold Award and Outstanding Concert Solo award at Festival Disney in 2019.

“I know I can speak personally as a director,” Maddux said, “I think part of our job is so focused in error detection and making things better, that I know it [COVID] made me step back and go, you know we can have fun and be silly here and there, and it’s okay, it’s not about being perfect all the time, like we wanna strive for our best, but band should be fun.”

The band has been working since May 2020 for this year’s program and it can be seen at Olathe North Football home games and local competitions, including the Olathe Marching Invitational being hosted at College Boulevard Activity Center on October 9th.

“We can all get really excited about the product, but at the end of the day it’s people doing things together at a high level and achieving success,” McCarty said about putting Paint It Black together, “That’s my absolute win, on a personal level, is just watching young people really go after it and take some music and a visual product and making it their own.”