North Shore High School Bands Ship Up From Boston Together

DANVERS, MA — At a time when members of the Danvers High marching band could barely see each other in person a plan was developed to bring bandmates from schools across the North Shore together for one ambitious collaboration.

It was October — seven months following the onset of the coronavirus crisis — and the chance to perform together seemed anything but imminent as some schools were in class two days a week, while neighboring districts remained in fully remote learning since March. There were strict gathering guidelines on campus — especially when it came to the performing arts.

Danvers High Marching Band Director Jeff Daniels had an idea to put together a virtual performance if the band members were not allowed to play together in person, but then had the thought that if the video performance was going to be virtual anyway, why not bring the entire North Shore into the show?

"I started reaching out to other schools in the area," Daniels told Patch. "Some of them decided not to do it for one reason or another. But a lot of them did.

"We gave all the kids the same music. They practiced it and recorded it on their own."

Daniels said Ipswich High Band Director Sean Lee was then instrumental in putting together the extensive production that included 10 North Shore schools, as well as aerial drone footage, edited together into a montage of the Dropkick Murphy's New England anthem "Shipping Up To Boston" called "Shipping Up To The North Shore."

"To get all the videos in there was really awesome," Daniels said. "This was our grand idea. None of us were really performing so we thought it would be cool for the students to be able to perform, even as a virtual performance, as a collaboration of all the schools."

The school bands from Beverly (Band Director: Adam Costa), Bishop Fenwick (Tom Cox), Danvers, Gloucester (Daniel Fleury), Ipswich, Manchester-Essex (J0seph Janack), Marblehead (Kevin Goddu), Masconomet (Walter O'Keefe), Salem (Cynthia Napierkowski), and Swampscott (Edi Rovi) took part in the nearly 3-minute performance that includes well over 100 students and represents a show of strength of resilience during what could have been a hopeless time.

"There are a lot of bad things that came from 2020, and the pandemic that shut us down," Daniels said. "But if that would have never happened, we would have never done this. We're always so busy in the fall with football and marching band.

"It was a good chance to take a step back and sort of re-invent the wheel in some things. These types of things are definitely something I want to continue doing in the future."

While Danvers is a renowned program that plays the Topsfield Fair each year — and was set to play during a Red Sox game at Fenway Park last April before the coronavirus-forced shutdown —Daniels said he was impressed by the talent throughout the North Shore.

"There are a ton of programs doing great things," he said. "The more we can collaborate on things together the better."

Things are looking better for each individual band now than they did in October. In Danvers, the marching band played its first football game of the season last weekend as part of the "Fall 2" season postponed from the sport's traditional time of year.

"Since we had to be 10 feet apart from each other we did it in the end zone instead of the stands," he said. "That turned out to be a fun experience getting the chance to play a game for the first time in over a year."

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)