On Friday, May 9, Malone is taking the Big Ass Stadium Tour to Arlington at AT&T Stadium, with support from Jelly Roll and Sierra Ferrell. His Travelin’ Tailgate, open to the public from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., is being advertised with live music by Arena Rockerz, Tayler Holder, Angel White and Mitchell Ferguson. There will be food, exclusive tailgate merch, tattoos by Posty’s tattoo artists, carnival games, beer and more. It’s the pre-game before the show begins at 6:30 p.m.
Posty fans, you’ll want to get there early to see the Grapevine High School Mustang Band, who will be playing at around 6 p.m. Last week, a video posted by the Instagram account The Grapevine Edit went viral. It captured members of the Grapevine High School marching band’s surprise and excitement upon hearing they would be covering some of Posty’s biggest hits outside of the stadium to welcome fans. Their genuine shock captured everyone’s hearts. James Rees, director of bands at Grapevine High School, is in his seventeenth year of teaching and sixth year at Grapevine. We spoke to him on Monday during Posty’s homecoming week, where he recalled the day he read the email he received from Mix 102.9’s program director, Zann Fredlund, to his students.
Rees says there were conversations a week before, discussing plans to arrange Malone’s music for the marching band. Malone, who graduated from Grapevine High School in 2013, is a high-profile celebrity alumnus the students admire. “We had talked about [covering his songs]. What if we had that done internally?” Rees says. “We’re not giving a public performance of it, but like ‘Hey, we recognize Post Malone went here, to Grapevine, we think that’s real cool. We learned some of your music, and we worked it up.’ What we were kind of hoping for is that it could be a unique stand-tune. When we go to a football game, [we’ll be] playing ‘Sunflower,’ but nobody else can.”
Rees says the important thing was to set the students up for success and ensure the logistics were in order, like avoiding any copyright issues and getting the green light from Post Malone’s team to play his music. Ress then called an “emergency meeting” to tell the students.
“We had been sitting on that behind the scenes for several days before we let the kids know,” Rees says. “The message I sent to the kids was, ‘Hey, we need to do a team meeting after school. I have good news for you. You’re gonna want to come and check it out.’ So, they had no idea what they were walking into.”
Rees explains the marching band’s relationship with Grapevine Edit, who uploaded the clip that has over 530,000 views and 30,000 likes. The Grapevine Edit does a video on them every competitive marching season, Rees says, mentioning their recent trip to Dublin, Ireland, for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, where the account interviewed students for another feature.
“We had a band parent take a video of the kids’ reaction because we thought it would be cool to share it with parents internally and that sort of stuff,” Rees says. “But we went back and watched it and it was like, ‘Oh no, this is really cool.’ This turned out way better than what we could’ve hoped. Then we sent them that video and they posted it. It just went crazy.”
“I think there could be something really cool in store for the kids,” he continues. “Even if nothing else changes, we get to learn this music, we have the okay to play it, we get to go to this Post Malone concert, and we get to play outside before they open the doors, that’s really awesome. Anything else that happens now is just icing on the cake.”
The Grapevine Mustang Band got permission to play their versions of “Circles,” “Sunflowers,” “I Had Some Help,” “Rockstar” and “Congratulations." Rees says they'll bring color guards to perform a routine, treating the pre-show like a pep rally. They’ll also have custom T-shirts, designed by a student, that Mix 102.9 has paid for in the same theme as the promotional materials for the tour.
Malone inspires the students of Grapevine High because he is part of the Grapevine community. The program often talks about good character and being a good human being, things that Malone often demonstrates. Rees praises Malone’s generosity, commitment to giving back to Grapevine and his accessibility to his fans. “He purchased a pair of these custom-made Crocs for every student and every teacher, this was every maybe four or five years ago,” Rees remembers. “We’re super cool with Post Malone. We can point to that and say, ‘That’s Grapevine.'”
On Wednesday evening, The Grapevine Edit shared that the band is going to the show, too. Mix 102.9 dropped off 120 tickets for students and made a $4,000 donation to the band booster club. There has to be a chance they get to meet Posty, right?
Rees wants his students to seize the opportunity to deliver one of their best shows on Friday. He has prepped them for this moment to be shining examples of what Grapevine has to offer, representing the city at the highest level.
“It’s not that far out of the scope of what we usually do,” Rees says. “It’s a different setting, a really cool situation, environment and story that goes along with it. But working up tunes in order to play them on a Friday thing, we’re gonna play really well and the kids are gonna handle it really well. We just feel confident.”
