Fun, loud and in the street! Minor Mishap Marching Band is a 25-piece renegade circus-punk brass band. We are inspired by a love of street music, brass bands, spectacle, and the desire to create community and reinvent public spaces.

Minor Mishap Marching Band’s mission is to foster community through playful, inventive, joyful musical performances, which reinvigorate public spaces, encourage the creative involvement of the audience, and strengthen Austin’s musical, and general, community. We believe building community is a potent force of positive change, with the potential to counteract numerous social and political problems.

We do, but we don't use this word, because it implies going to a lot of protests, and we have chosen to focus on building community more than attending protests.

We can contribute to the discussion and practices of a band focussing on community - building community within our band, and connecting the community within our city. We can also contribute tomfoolery, and crazy trombone players, but you will probably have a lot of those already.

We host a number of free, public-space parades in Austin each year. All are welcome, and the events are hosted in accessible spaces to ensure that people of all ages, abilities, and economic positions can attend. We are also working on a new project this year to provide a musical and social space to make bridges between our local HONK bands - to play music together, make giant parades in collaboration with each other and with other artists here in town. There is the hope that we will eventually add a workshop aspect, where people can learn to play instruments. This year, though, we are starting with the community collaboration to build a foundation for that eventual goal.

We should do better at this, in terms of race, ethnicity and ability. We get new band mates usually through our own social connections- people we already know - or from people who come see our shows. While there is some diversity, we have not yet found ways to to cross cultural boundaries in our city.

We do have a commitment to allow players of many skill levels in our band, and have no audition process. We feel that the process of more advanced players teaching beginning players is one of the beautiful parts of this band.

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