By: Kellie Finch
Before Tommy Keenum was inducted into the WGI Hall of Fame, he began his relationship with music similarly to many others in the marching arts: in his fifth-grade band class.
“I didn’t necessarily fit in, as a younger kid,” Keenum said. “Band was really where I found my home.”
With the help of his music instructors, Keenum found an outlet for his creativity and began involving himself in music more and more. He started with saxophone, learned how to spin rifle and flag, and eventually became his marching band’s drum major.
“There weren’t really males in color guard very often, but I would teach camps,” Keenum said. “I really wanted to be involved in a winter guard or in a drum corps, but it seemed so impossible.”
One of Keenum’s former band directors told him about a scholarship for drum majors at the University of Texas at Arlington. He applied, won the scholarship, and found himself in Texas, home to Odyssey winterguard, directed by Karl Lowe.
Through his involvement in the UTA marching band, Keenum made connections to the Sky Ryders Drum and Bugle Corps, where he spent a year spinning on the rifle line. Despite only performing for a year with both groups, Keenum said the feeling of performing was unlike anything else.
“I will never forget how I felt performing that year at WGI,” Keenum said. “It was just a dream come true.”
Keenum’s experiences performing with Odyssey and Sky Ryders set him on his next journey: teaching.
“I think that’s what kept me wanting to form my own winter guards and to be involved with drum corps and put together shows, produce shows after that,” Keenum said. “I just wanted to keep recreating that feeling for other people and for myself.”
In 1986, Keenum moved back home to Mississippi after college and decided to restart Final Analysis, a winterguard formed by several of his friends. He gathered help, recruited members, and took off with the season—all the way to winning Independent A class that year in Dayton.
“I really put everything I had into it,” Keenum said. “It was a really special group.”
Two years later, Final Analysis came back with its show, “The Color Purple,” in Independent Open class. With this show, Keenum said he was determined to test the limitations of his creativity, which proved useful with the group’s unconventional rehearsal schedule.
“Because we didn’t really have a ton of money or a lot of facilities or infrastructure, we wanted to figure out how we could do the show and do something innovative enough that we could only rehearse a short amount of time and only go to a couple of shows and still have the WGI experience,” Keenum said.
Final Analysis rehearsed only six Saturdays that season, Keenum said. Each member of the winterguard had a private rehearsal during the week and the entire group rehearsed together on the weekends.
“We wound up making world-class finals, which was also very unexpected,” Keenum said. “But, it was a very emotional show that people seem to have been very touched by.”
Along with his involvement in marching arts design, Keenum has spent parts of his professional career as a singer and songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, producing nine albums. Although this required him to step back from pageantry, he said he still helps out where he can.
“Periodically, friends or a group would ask me to come in and be on the team or to be an artist myself,” Keenum said. “I was involved in that way, although I was not out there teaching and hands-on, putting shows together.”
Keenum has had opportunities to sing for several WGI shows throughout his career. Combining his two passions was a unique but fun experience, Keenum said.
“I really love bringing those two worlds together,” Keenum said. “I intend to do more of that as time goes on.”
Despite spending less time involved with the marching arts, Keenum said he feels more connected to the activity. He does not think he will go back to the amount of time he spent previously, but said he intends to support the marching arts in any way he can.
As for the future, Keenum said he is excited to see what it holds for the marching arts, but he hopes more groups go back to pushing the boundaries a bit more.
“I do feel like the emphasis is more on displaying skills and packing as much as you can into a performance,” Keenum said. “Sometimes, I feel like the connection to the audience is lost.”
Keenum said he worries that young designers feel pressured to check too many boxes in their shows and that the creativity may fall short.
“I do feel like there’s room to encourage people that do enjoy that kind of creativity and that do enjoy pushing the boundaries,” Keenum said.
Keenum compared the marching arts to the current state of the music industry, where the way music sounds is often prioritized over what a song says. Artist’s voices are produced similarly, so you lose the unique voices that make artists special, he said.
“All artistic endeavors go through phases,” Keenum said. “I have a feeling that pageantry is swinging back into an era with uniqueness of voice.”
He hopes that groups will strive for uniqueness again and believes the activity can return to the boundary-pushing performances he recalls watching growing up.
“I think that we’ll probably move into a period where that happens more,” Keenum said. “We can keep all the skill level and all of this amazing talent, but have a more unique voice guard to guard, and I think that’s on the horizon.”
