Marching in – Jonas Brothers team up with SU’s marching band for new vid
Southern University’s director of bands Lawrence Jackson gets a lot of calls for musicians who want to feature the college’s famous marching band. But when the pop trio and former Disney heartthrobs Jonas Brothers came calling, Jackson had to do a little research.
“I had to ask my granddaughters about the Jonas Brothers,” Jackson says. “They gave me a quick history. They said, ‘Paw Paw, you don’t know the Jonas Brothers?’ And I would say, ‘No, your Paw Paw doesn’t know the Jonas Brothers.'”
The university marching band appears in the new Jonas Brothers video for the track “Pom Poms,” the band’s first song in nearly four years. The video was filmed at East St. John’s Joe Keller Memorial Stadium.
For 10 hours, the SU band, a.k.a. “The Human Jukebox,” experienced another side of the entertainment industry. It was a cold day, and “the wind was profoundly high,” Jackson says, laughing. However, the students didn’t mind the wait, he says.
“The students saw that it can be very tedious and time-consuming as a professional performer,” Jackson says. “When you see the finished product, it’s a lot of hours put in to just get those minutes of film. They thought that was intriguing. They were humbled at having the opportunity to be a part of that particular project. They were having fun. I could see it in their eyes.”
Rashad Minnick, the section leader for the clarinets, said shooting the video was a wonderful experience.
“It was great to see how they operate when they’re doing a music video,” Minnick says. “We got to see what goes on behind the scenes with the artists and all the people involved with the different levels within the video.”
Minnick says the pop group was professional, but, above all, courteous.
“I did get to talk to them,” Minnick says. “They were really nice, really social with the other participants. They didn’t have this ‘above-them’ attitude. They talked to anybody who was around.”
“Pom Poms” has since “leaked” onto the web, via Perez Hilton’s site and The Huffington Post. While watching, you’ll notice a bonus performance from the Southern marching band tacked to the end of the video—a rearrangement of the tune Jackson wrote for the marching band to perform on the spot.
“The brothers didn’t have a clue that we were going to do the arrangement,” Jackson says. “As soon as they heard about it, they wanted to hear it. They were just excited when they heard it, and said, ‘We’ve got to include this in the video.'”
You can view the video below:
