"Thank you so much for participating in our rededication ceremony at Gettysburg. Your music added so much as we attempted to honor the men of the 4th Ohio. We have received many great comments about the ceremony and couldn't have put on such a wonderful event without your help. Thanks for coming through for us at the last minute. One military veteran attending said that was the best rendition of Taps he'd ever heard!"  ---Banning Camp, Sons of Union Veterans

"My wife, Marsha, and I greatly enjoyed your presentation yesterday at the Carroll Community College! We were very moved by your music and playing... it was far and away the highlight of our day! My great-great-grandpa was a Union Cavalryman and I imagined myself as him, in camp, hearing the music and bugle calls. I could have sat and listened to whatever you wanted to play for another couple of hours. I was Stirred deep down inside." --Dennis Barnes

By playing original and reproduction drums, fifes and bugles, Whitney and four other band members entertained the group of Civil War buffs and demonstrated the importance of music during wartime at the 10th annual Maryland and the Civil War: A Regional Perspective conference. Field musicians, Whitney said, were enlisted members of the army. "While today’s military relies on radios and other technologies to communicate, a general during the Civil War had only two choices if he wanted thousands of soldiers to do the same thing at once." “[Music was] the way the army communicated,” said drummer Eric Davis. “It’s the way a general would relay commands to regiments … all the way down to individual troops.”“He could try shouting orders at the top of his lungs, or he could try field music,” Joseph Whitney, a member of the Maryland Line Field Music, told a crowd of 100 at Carroll Community College Saturday. The band members were among many Civil War re-enactors and enthusiasts presenting lectures and exhibits Saturday at the conference, which was sponsored by the college and the Historical Society of Carroll County. --Carroll County Times