(Radio Iowa) – Dozens of community and municipal bands in Iowa have already kicked off the outdoor season — and one of the state’s most famous city bands is performing today (Monday). Dale Schoening is a trombonist with experience. “Currently I play in the Boone Municipal Band. I’ve been in that band since 1998,” he says. “Played in the Pella Municipal Band for a while. I played in the Ballard Community Band for a time. I played one year in the Oskaloosa City Band several years ago. I’ve played in the Perry Municipal Band and later Perry Area Community Band for a while.”

The camaraderie in a band is the draw for Schoening.  “For me at least, it’s simply the joy of making music together with other people who are also enjoying doing that as well,” he says. Schoening is chairman of the committee that organizes the annual Iowa Municipal Band Festival in Boone — and there are at least 100 community bands on his mailing list. “For many communities it’s a source of real pride for them that their community has a band,” Schoening says.

“…Many of these community bands have a history that goes back into even the 1880s in some cases, so it’s a real legacy for Iowa.” In the last century, the Fort Dodge Municipal Band was led by a bandmaster who had worked for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and the Barnum and Bailey Circus. “The most famous march composer, probably second only to John Phillips Sousa, was Karl L. King,” Schoening says, “who composed a lot of marches and was director of the Fort Dodge Municipal Band for many, many years.”

King — who wrote over 200 marches in his lifetime — successfully lobbied the Iowa legislature to pass the Iowa Band Law in 1922. It lets cities levy a tax to support a municipal band. King’s Band — as it’s now called — will perform a concert at 10 a.m. today (Monday) at Veterans Memorial Park in Fort Dodge, but if there’s rain, it will be moved to the auditorium at Fort Dodge St. Edmond High School. This year’s Iowa Municipal Band Festival is set for July 13th in Boone, with nine bands and four small groups on the schedule.

This is the Ames Municipal Band performing the Liberty Bell March at least year’s festival in Boone. Here’s a clip of their performance:

In 1991, the Karl King Municipal Band of Fort Dodge staged a concert to mark the 100th anniversary of King’s birth and it was broadcast on Iowa P-B-S: