Gary Smith
Olson, left, has served as Leckrone’s right-hand man for the past five years.
Editor's note: Mike Leckrone, longtime director of the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, has announced that he would retire at the end of the 2018-19 academic year. We talked to Leckrone in November and asked about possible successors. He said that Darin Olson, the assistant band director, "has a lot of the abilities you'd want in a director." Here is our interview with Olson.
When you think about the University of Wisconsin Marching Band, you think of Mike Leckrone.
He has been band director since 1969, shaping many of the traditions Badgers fans know and love — the Fifth Quarter performance, the signature “high-stepping” marching style, and “You’ve Said It All.” After more than five decades, Leckrone maintains his perch on the sidelines conducting halftime shows rain or shine. And on Dec. 1, he will board a bus with his staff and 330 members of the band to head to the Big 10 championship in Indianapolis.
Leckrone has no plans to retire anytime soon, even given his recent struggles: a bypass surgery last spring and the loss of his wife. He says the students are his saving grace. “I certainly have a lot of fun with the students and I enjoy them. But I keep getting older and they don’t!”
But Leckrone acknowledges that nobody goes on forever, not even a Badgers legend. He says when the time comes to put down the baton, the university has talent in assistant director Darin Olson. “Darin has a lot of the abilities you’d want in a director. He knows the band,” says Leckrone. It’s no sure thing, since there would need to be an open candidate search per state law. And, he admits following a UW legend is tough. “The plus is that I’ve been around a long time. But the minus is exactly the same thing.”
Is Olson the heir apparent? As assistant director of bands at UW-Madison, Olson is Leckrone’s right-hand man. He has been a drummer since childhood, and holds a doctorate of musical arts from Ohio State, where he specialized in percussion performance. At UW, he is in charge of the Badger Band’s beloved drumline.
We recently caught up with Olson, who is in his fifth year at UW-Madison, to talk about the band, his boss, and his future.
Mike spoke very highly of you. Would you take the role of band director if offered?
Well, I think that’s a tricky question. The thing is that Mike’s still here and doing well, so I don’t like to speculate. But there are so many great traditions in this band and many of those came about during his tenure as director. So going forward, whenever that time is, his handprint will be on everything that happens with the band. I’m not sure where I’ll be when that happens. Anybody who is offered this position is going to have a wonderful situation. There are such great students here at Wisconsin, and there’s such a history behind the band.
What’s it like working with Mike Leckrone? How closely do you work together?
Mike runs the entire marching band rehearsal. He always has the plan for what he wants to accomplish. And then I’m there seeing things that I think need to be improved on and letting him know. Mike and I are up on the tower, looking at the overall picture and hearing the sound of the band from a different vantage point — elevated, more like the audience would see. I’m up there with him, and as he’s running through things. If I see something that didn’t go so well, or something that we can do better, it’s mainly letting him know. I help out with getting the band to reach the level we want them to be performing.
What does a typical day with the marching band look like for you?
There’s really not a typical day. We have rehearsal four days a week. And I do a lot with the administrative side of the program. The marching band is very, very active. We play at football, but then we also play at women’s volleyball, men’s hockey, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, and then we do occasional women’s hockey games as well, in addition to all the different performances that we have going around [the state]. So there’s a lot of administrative aspects that go with making sure that when we do have all these groups out performing, everything is meeting the same standard as when we have the whole band there. I also write the music for the drumline, and I direct the varsity band.
That’s a big job! And a lot of rehearsal time for the students.
Yeah, the students – they love what they do, and they’re very dedicated to the band. It’s a great group of students to be working with.
How did you first get interested in music performance?
When I was growing up in South Dakota, my dad was a drum set player in a country-western band. That’s how I got interested in percussion. He played weekends, so some of my earliest memories of music are going and helping him set up his drum set before his performances. He was an accountant during the day, then Friday and Saturday night he’d play in his band. It was something that he enjoyed doing, because to be an accountant is quite a bit different than being a musician, behind the computer punching numbers. As a little kid, I remember thinking it was so cool to set up his drum set, then he’d kinda let me bang on it, hit around. I wasn’t big enough to hit any of the foot pedals, but I could hit the cymbals.
You have been with the band for about five years now. Is there a memory about your time here that sticks out in your mind?
The one for me, honestly, is how they responded last year when Mike was having his heart procedure. Mike has been here for so long, and he has done so much for the program, and then all of a sudden for him to be not there unexpectedly, it was tough. When I heard, I remember going into the rehearsal and I just gave them the news. But they already an idea that something wasn’t right. Because if you know Mike, he doesn’t miss rehearsals or anything like that. Our first varsity band concert was about 10 days after that. And I remember how the students took ownership and just kept moving forward with the same high expectations of them.