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"It's a tough job," said Erick Alden, trombonist and group organizer. "We really suffer."

About 70 members of the all-volunteer organization are taking Holland America's Amsterdam cruise ship to town Wednesday, June 14, for a free 6 p.m. Concert in the Park at Marine Park.

The Juneau Volunteer Marching Band will join the alumni for a grand finale performance of the "National Emblem March" and John Philip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever." Juneau is just one stop on the alumni's West Coast tour. They're also playing June 11 at the Rose Festival Parade in Portland, Ore., and June 12 at Fort Lewis, Wash., for service personnel and their families.

"This is just for fun," Alden said. "We don't charge when we're on tour."

The Ohio State University Marching Band, supported by the school's athletic department, is considered one of the largest all-brass and percussion bands in the world. The alumni band had its first reunion in the late 1960s and now draws 400 to 500 band members for the first football game of the year. The band rehearses on a Friday night, then at 6 a.m. the following Saturday before the game. As is tradition, the marchers spell out "OHIO" in script.

The group organized its first tour, a trip to play in the Misosugi Parade in Osaka, Japan, in the mid-1980s.

Since then, it has toured to the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin, Ireland; the King Kamehameha Parade in Honolulu; and concerts in Dresden, Germany, and Pearl Harbor.

The band still plays most of its concerts in Ohio. There, the band charges as much as $3,000 or $4,000 for a bus, food, refreshments and donations to Ohio State's school of music. Last year, the alumni raised $20-$25,000.

"We started off, obviously, because people wanted to go out on the field and (march) again," said Alden, an attorney in Westerville, Ohio, and a band member from 1958 to 1965. "The football players can't go back and play a football game. That's the nice thing about it. Not everybody is a pro-caliber player, but we all play well and have a good time."

The band has no woodwinds, and thus reworks certain passages of its songs for brass. The instrumentation includes E-flat trumpets, B-flat trumpets, flugelhorns, trombones, tubas and more.

The Juneau set list will include: "The Ohio Special March," by King; "Sweet Child of Mine," by Guns N' Roses; "Satin Doll," by Ellington; "Send in the Clowns," by Sondheim; "Neutron Man," an Ohio State tradition; "Lassus Trombone," by Fillmore; and "I Can't Stop Loving You," by Gibson.

• Korry Keeker can be reached at korry.keeker@juneauempire.com.