Montrose Community Band

07/06/2026

REMINDER:
No band rehearsal today!
(see you next week!)

07/04/2026

Band Rehearsals start up again in a week! (don't come this Monday... that wouldn't work out). We'll see you all on July 13th!

If you're interested in joining our fantastic musical community, head on over to www.montroseband.com/join-us to learn more!

07/02/2026

Thank you all for joining us for our Celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of our beautiful country! We'll see you all September 27th for our Fall concert!

06/29/2026

OUR CONCERT IS TODAY!:
https://www.facebook.com/share/1by184CnYr/

Key was a one-hit wonder who might have been tone deaf.
Key was much more adept in his legal day job than he was as an amateur poet. Most of the odes he composed were never meant to be seen beyond family and friends, and none came remotely close to realizing the popular fame of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In addition to being a middling poet, Key also had a hard time carrying a tune. “Key’s family said he was not musical,” Leepson says, “which means he likely was tone deaf.”

Source: https://www.history.com/articles/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-star-spangled-banner

06/28/2026

FREE CONCERT: June 28th, 3:00pm
https://www.facebook.com/share/1by184CnYr/

The national anthem has four verses.
The version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” traditionally sung on patriotic occasions and at sporting events is only the song’s first verse. All four verses conclude with the same line: “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” (In 1861, poet Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a fifth verse to support the Union cause in the Civil War and denounce “the traitor that dares to defile the flag of her stars.”)

Source: https://www.history.com/articles/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-star-spangled-banner

06/27/2026

FREE CONCERT: June 28th, 3:00pm
https://www.facebook.com/share/1by184CnYr/

The song was not originally entitled “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
When Key scrawled his lyrics on the back of a letter he pulled from his pocket on the morning of September 14, he did not give them any title. Within a week, Key’s verses were printed on broadsides and in Baltimore newspapers under the title “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” In November, a Baltimore music store printed the patriotic song with sheet music for the first time under the more lyrical title “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Source: https://www.history.com/articles/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-star-spangled-banner

06/27/2026

FREE CONCERT: June 28th, 3:00pm
https://www.facebook.com/share/1by184CnYr/

Key was not imprisoned on a British warship when he penned his verses.
In his capacity as a Washington, D.C., lawyer, Key had been dispatched by President James Madison on a mission to Baltimore to negotiate for the release of Dr. William Beanes, a prominent surgeon captured at the Battle of Bladensburg.

Accompanied by John Stuart Skinner, a fellow lawyer working for the State Department, Key set sail on an American sloop in Baltimore Harbor, and on September 7 the pair boarded the British ship Tonnant, where they dined and secured the prisoner’s release under one condition—they could not go ashore until after the British attacked Baltimore. Accompanied by British guards on September 10, Key returned to the American sloop from which he witnessed the bombardment behind the 50-ship British fleet.

Source: https://www.history.com/articles/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-star-spangled-banner

06/25/2026

FREE CONCERT: June 28th, 3:00pm
https://www.facebook.com/share/1by184CnYr/

Francis Scott Key intended his verses to be song lyrics, not poetry.

“The Star Spangled-Banner” was not a poem set to a melody years later. Although Key was an amateur poet and not a songwriter, when he composed his verses, he intended them to accompany a popular song of the day.
“We know he had the tune in mind because the rhyme and meter exactly fit it,” says Marc Leepson, author of the Key biography What So Proudly We Hailed. The first broadside of the verses, printed just days after the battle, noted that the words should be sung to the melody of “To Anacreon in Heaven.” Key was quite familiar with the tune, having used it to accompany an 1805 poem, which included a reference to a “star-spangled flag,” he had written to honor Barbary War naval heroes Stephen Decatur and Charles Stewart.
Although Key composed the patriotic lyrics amid a burst of anti-British euphoria, “To Anacreon in Heaven” was ironically an English song composed in 1775 that served as the theme song of the upper-crust Anacreontic Society of London and a popular pub staple.

Source: https://www.history.com/articles/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-star-spangled-banner

06/24/2026

Thank you to Montrose Lifestyle for featuring us and what we do here in the Western Slope!

Read the article here:

Get an early start to July 4 celebrations with a free community concert on June 28.

05/20/2026

Our fantastic director Toby King might revoke my Facebook privileges for sharing this, but i came across a historical photo!