About

Fred Meyer retired as an educator in 2022 after 29 years as a band director in the state of Texas. His last position was as the director of bands at Columbia High School in West Columbia, Texas. He had been the director for the West Brazos Band for seven years. He has worked in all of the positions in the Columbia-Brazoria Independent School District for seventeen years for West Brazos or Columbia High School which is a AAAA size school about 45 miles south of Houston. In his previous 28 years, he has taught at all levels, sizes of schools, and in virtually every type of situation. Previous districts include Crandall, Newton, Pasadena, Danbury, and Van Vleck.

Understanding

Fred is very understanding of what a band needs in order to be successful with the belief that the sound of the band should come first. His bands have consistently received first divisions and sweepstakes trophies both on the football field and on the concert stage.  In 2009, his Van Vleck High School band finished 5th in the march category and 6th in the concert category in the ATSSB Outstanding Performance Series.  In 2020, his West Brazos Junior High band finished 4th in the march category and 8th in the concert category.  He is currently a member of the Texas Music Educator’s Association, the Association of Texas Small School Bands, the Texas Bandmasters Association, and has been a judge for the Texas Music Adjudicators Association.

Work

Fred is a proud graduate of Plano East Senior High School in Plano, Texas, in 1989 and the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, in 1993. Throughout those years, he was a member of the Plano East “Marching Panthers” and the UNT “Green Brigade”. He has taken drill writing coursework from UNT and has gone to seminars in Dallas and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Fred went to Woodland Park, Colorado, in January, 2015, for a one on one session with Craig Harms who is a major Pyware consultant. Fred has been a drill adapter for Marching Show Concepts and Center X Productions since 2006 and continues to do so to this day. He has adapted over 80 different shows for MSC and has done over 465 adaptations in total. He has also edited many of the older MSC for current sales. He wrote his first concept drill for MSC in 2011 and has done custom work every year since then including eight different high schools from all across the United States in 2022. He has been a featured writer for David Herring and works closely with Luke McMillan and Jair Klarfeld, three composers who write for marching bands throughout the state of Texas and the nation.  In 2018, Fred started to work with Creative Solutions to write featured drill and adaptations.

Family

Fred currently resides in Iowa Colony, Texas, which is 20 miles south Houston. When he has free time, he enjoys relaxing, playing his trumpet, watching football on TV, playing on the computer, cooking, and going out to eat. He is an avid Strat O Matic “fanatic”. Most of all, he enjoys spending time with his wife Anne who he married in 1996 and his daughter Emily who was born in 2006.