There’ll be even more drums at Drums Along the Sandias in Rio Rancho at 7 p.m. on June 23, and for anyone who attended last year’s event at Rio Rancho High School, more drums is a good thing.

Six of the top drum and bugle corps in the country will compete: the Blue Knights from Denver, the Blue Coats from Canton, Ohio; The Academy from Phoenix; the Troopers from Casper, Wyo.; and the Incognito, from Orange, and the Santa Clara Vanguard, both from California.

Those bands are spending the summer traveling in huge convoys, their members spending countless nights sleeping on gymnasium floors, rehearsing for many hours on days when they’re not performing, and alternating between elation and misery.

Observer '€” Gary Herron photo Pictured above is the Academy Drum and Bugle Corps, from Tempe, Ariz., show at last year'€™s Drums Along the Sandias event, in Rio Rancho.

Just ask Rio Rancho High School assistant band director Matt Casarez, who spent the summer of 1998 playing trumpet for the Phantom Regiment, which finished eighth in the national finals that summer.

He spent $1,500 to become a member of the Regiment, spent money on airfare from his home in Austin, Texas, to auditions in Rockford, Ill., the Regiment’s hometown, and put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears 11 years ago to be a part of it.

“I would do it again in a heartbeat,” Casarez said recently, when talking about his experiences that summer.

Casarez began playing the trumpet when he was in fifth grade and remembers music always being played in his home; it was usually of the classical bent.

His trumpet hero was Adolph Herseth, who played in the Chicago Symphony. Herseth, now 87, is recognized as one of the world’s greatest symphonic trumpeters.

Flash forward a few years and Casarez is a junior in what was then Southwest Texas State (now Texas State University), deciding with two friends that it would be a hoot (or toot, since he’s a trumpeter) to try out for a drum and bugle corps, and that a trip to Rockford, Ill., was in order.

“Their style was what stuck out for us,” he said. “Every corps has its own identity.”

There, over the Thanksgiving holiday of 1997, they auditioned — and all three were invited back for follow-up auditions, and all three made the “team.”

There had been 26 trumpet slots available, he recalled, and “about 120 showed up. It was very intimidating.”

Casarez and his buddies had to return to Rockford for monthly three-day camps, as the Regiment worked hard on its 1998 show.

“You worked from the time you woke up till 2 or 3 in the morning,” he said, admitting he’d occasionally ask himself, “Oh, my God — what am I doing?”

In May that year, the Texas trio moved into dormitories in Rockford, and soon the fun — the travel portion — began. Casarez remembers having an assigned seat on one of the four buses for the corps; there were also two semis, one containing the band’s uniforms and instruments, the other containing food — “a kitchen on wheels.”

“It’s a true circus,” he said, remembering performances in Madison, Wis.; DeKalb, Ill.; Allenton, Pa.; plus stops in Indiana, Alabama, North and South Carolina, and a home show in Rockford, where the corps was founded in 1956.

The season ended about 40 shows later with the finals in Orlando, Fla.

Casarez said during the entire summer, he had “two free days.”

Such a deal, eh? He paid $1,500 to join the Phantom Regiment, busted his butt practicing, not to mention loading and unloading the semi, and says, “I lost 30 pounds that summer — I was in the best physical shape of my life.”

He had mixed emotions when his summer as a Phantom ended. The following summer he’d be too old to re-up.

“There was a little bit of relief,” he said. “It was the hardest thing I’d ever done physically, mentally.

“I was ready to go back and teach what I learned,” Casarez said. “I missed my family, my girlfriend.”

The girlfriend is now his wife of almost eight years, Vanessa, a nurse practitioner and former trumpet player he’d met in middle school.

Casarez, who came to New Mexico to obtain his master’s degree in trumpet performance, taught at Cibola High School and LBJ Middle School in Albuquerque before succeeding former RRHS assistant director Brad Dubbs two years ago, after Dubbs became the band director at Manzano High School.

Casarez knew of the RRHS marching band’s gleaming reputation before he accepted the position, and having RRHS play host to Drums Along the Sandias for a second year is a real bonus.

Watching and hearing the six top-notch corps perform on June 23 will no doubt be a real treat for Casarez, no doubt rekindling memories of the summer of ’98.

The Rio Rancho High School band boosters and the Blue Knights sponsor the event. Tickets are available at Baum’s Music Stores in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho.

For more information, visit drumsalongthesandias.com or call 1-888-306 DRUM.

“It’s amazing what these guys and girls can do,” says Casarez, encouraging Rio Ranchoans to check out the performances.

“If they’ve seen drums corps before, they’ll be back,” he said. If not, “I don’t think there’s anything live that’ll have this impact on your kids.”