And the band played on …

Seventy years after it first began, the Ohio County Marching Invitational, the oldest marching band festival in Kentucky, is still going strong.

Director Lincoln Rowe said he discovered how important the home show was to the community.

In 2011, there wasn’t a home show in Ohio County. It was canceled due to a large regional contest being scheduled on the same date where most of the area bands went to compete, Rowe said. When he was hired the next year, he knew he had to pick the home show back up.

“I realized very early on how important it was (to the community) as most of them still call it ‘our band festival,’” said Rowe who actually attended the 50th show as a performer in 2004. “They take a lot of pride in it and I knew if the community took pride in it then I needed to take pride in it.”

Twelve bands will compete in preliminaries and finals at this year’s show on Saturday with the first band taking the field in prelims at 12:45 p.m. Finals are set to start at 6 p.m.

Rowe also takes pride in the quality of judges who are at the invitational every year. This year’s judges come from Indianapolis, Ind., Columbus, Ohio, Knoxville, Tenn. and Memphis, Tenn.

“Our goal is to give the bands that attend and their students a world-class experience that is close to home,” Rowe said. “That is why we do our best to hire such a great judging panel.”

The Ohio County Marching Eagles will perform in exhibition at approximately 9 p.m.

“Energetic, fun and engaging,” are the three words Rowe said best describe the show the Marching Eagles will be performing this year.

This year’s show is titled, “Upslide Down,” which is a play on the term upside down.

Along with the band’s 70 members, there will

be props on the field that include a staircase on one side and a slide on the other so that members can “go up and slide down.”

“We hope that with the ‘Upslide Down’ show title that people will be able to hear that and see that in what we are doing,” Rowe said. “There’s no way to describe it in terms and lingo that people who are not in my world get but it is really just six minutes of fun and enjoyment and that’s what we are going for.”