At the beginning of each performance, Drum Corps International drum majors are asked “Is your corps ready?” But the bigger question is, “Are YOU?” With the summer season about to get underway, here are 50 fast facts you should know to make sure you’re ready for the 2016 DCI Tour.
1. 2016 marks the 44th anniversary of the Drum Corps International Summer Tour.
2. This year's tour is made up of 112 competitive events staged on football fields across the country.
3. Nearly 60 drum corps in World, Open and All-Age divisions will make up the lineups at those shows.
4. Two new groups will compete for the first time this year as Open Class corps; Shadow of Oregon, Wisconsin and The Battalion of Salt Lake City, Utah.
5. Participating drum corps will make stops in more than 100 cities in 39 states this summer.
6. On average, a World Class corps will log 10,000 miles on its journey across the U.S.
7. Drum corps fans can find the most number of shows hosted in the state of California (12) followed by Indiana (10) and Pennsylvania (9).
8. The 2016 DCI Tour will span 52 days, kicking off Thursday, June 23 in Indianapolis.
9. From start to finish, just two days will be absent of drum corps competitions this summer—Independence Day and July 24, which is the day following the DCI Southwestern Championship in San Antonio.
10. 2016 will mark the third consecutive year the DCI Tour will both begin and end in Indianapolis.
11. Just prior to the start of the season-opening event at Lucas Oil Stadium, students can Kick Start their fall marching band season, with the return of popular educational leadership workshops hosted at select DCI Premier Events.
12. Those who can’t make it to Indy can catch the action live in select movie theaters nationwide.
13. Competition out west gets underway this summer on Friday, June 24 in Fresno, California.
14. The Madison Scouts will be part of that Fresno lineup, as they start their season in the Pacific region for the first time in more than a decade.
15. One of the biggest California competitions of the summer will take place on Sunday, June 26 at Stanford University.
16. That event will be the first of 2016 to be webcast via DCI Live!, DCI’s official streaming video subscription service.
17. DCI Live! subscribers will be able to watch a total of 17 events on the 2016 DCI Tour including the DCI World Championship Finals.
18. Phantom Regiment will celebrate its 60th anniversary this summer, with a number of celebrations including the corps’ “home show” on July 9 in Rockford, Illinois.
19. Other World Class corps celebrating milestone anniversaries this summer include the Seattle Cascades (50 years) and Spirit of Atlanta (40 years).
20. July 9 also marks the start of the Florida swing of the summer schedule, which will be the first time the DCI Tour has been back to the Sunshine State since 2012.
21. That July 9 competition in Lakeland will also feature the first of five SoundSport events set to take place in conjunction with the 2016 DCI Tour.
22. Since their debut in 2013, Drum Corps International’s SoundSport and DrumLine Battle programs have hosted events in 20 locations in 15 countries on five continents.
23. Other DCI Tour events in Florida will take place in Jupiter (July 11) and Daytona Beach (July 12).
24. The DCI Jupiter event will be the farthest south the DCI Tour has come since 1990, when Star of Indiana, Spirit of Atlanta, Magic of Orlando and Florida Wave competed at an event in Miami.
25. The farthest north the 2016 DCI Tour will venture is Auburn, Washington on July 1, a whopping 3,218 miles away from Jupiter.
26. Blue Devils and Carolina Crown, last year’s gold and silver medalists, won’t compete against each other until the Tour of Champions series event on July 17 in DeKalb, Illinois.
27. The DeKalb show marks the first of eight Tour of Champions events, which gives audience members the opportunity to get close to DCI performers as small ensembles perform before the show and during intermission in and around the stadium.
28. DCI’s “Texas Tour” gets underway on July 21 with events in Belton and Denton.
29. It’ll be a homecoming for many, with more drum corps members hailing from the state of Texas than any other except for California.
30. Last summer more than 12,200 were in the audience at the Alamodome for the annual Southwestern Championship in San Antonio. This year’s event will take place on Saturday, July 23.
31. In 2015, The Cadets became the first corps other than the Blue Devils or The Cavaliers to take first place at the Alamodome.
32. One of the highlights of the annual showdown in San Antonio in recent years has been a special DrumLine Battle between corps to close out the night.
33. The video of the 2013 San Antonio DrumLine Battle between the Crossmen and Jersey Surf is on pace to surpass three million views on YouTube this summer.
34. Last visited in 2014, Nashville’s Vanderbilt Stadium will host the annual Masters of the Summer Music Games on Friday, July 29.
35. A day later in Atlanta will be the very first time this summer that all 22 of DCI’s World Class corps face each other in a single day of competition.
36. 2016 may be the last year drum corps march under the roof of the 23-year-old Georgia Dome, with the brand new $1.4 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium expected to open the summer of 2017.
37. One of the new additions to the July 30 event at the Georgia Dome will be a performance by the BANDtastic! Honor Band, made up of middle school musicians from throughout the state of Georgia.
38. The last weekend of the regular season will showcase World Class corps at venerable J. Birney Crum Stadium in Allentown, Pennsylvania, split over two days of competition on Friday, August 5 and Saturday, August 6.
39. This year will mark the historic 40th anniversary of “DCI East” events.
40. Open Class corps will once again kick off World Championships Week festivities in Michigan City, Indiana, starting Monday, August 8.
41. Shadow, Guardians and the Louisiana Stars will compete at the DCI World Championships for the very first time this year while working to advance to a spot in the Open Class Finals on Tuesday, August 9.
42. The action moves south to Indianapolis on Wednesday, August 10, when the DCI Performers Showcase presented by System Blue features individuals and ensembles from select World and Open Class corps and DrumLine Battle and SoundSport teams.
43. 2016 is the eighth straight year that the DCI World Championships will be held at Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium.
44. When the first corps marches onto the field for the Prelims competition on Thursday, August 11, Lucas Oil Stadium will officially become the most-visited venue in the 45-year history of the DCI World Championships, ahead of Madison, Wisconsin’s Camp Randall stadium.
45. The DCI World Championships are set to be held in Indianapolis through 2028.
46. If you can’t make it to Indianapolis this August, Drum Corps International will present its 13th annual “Big, Loud & Live” broadcast of the DCI World Championship Prelims in select movie theaters across the country. Other Championship events will be viewable online via DCI Live! subscription.
47. The streets of downtown Indy will be rocking the morning and afternoon of Saturday, August 13, when the brand new SoundSport International Music and Food Festival gets underway.
48. Admission is free to the SoundSport Festival, which will feature a number of groups from the United States (including the legendary Bridgemen Alumni) and international ensembles from Canada, Colombia and Hong Kong.
49. Competition will no doubt be heated when the top-12 corps face off during the DCI World Championship Finals the evening of Saturday, August 13. And many eyes will surely be on the Blue Devils, Carolina Crown and the Cadets who are the only three corps to have won in seven years at Lucas Oil Stadium.
50. This summer is one you can’t afford to miss! Great tickets for every event on the 2016 Drum Corps International Tour are available.