Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith Performs With Marching Bands

Whether it’s a college marching band or Bad Bunny, it’s not exactly rare for a football game to have a musical component at halftime. It’s a little more surprising to see longtime Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith taking to the field at Minneapolis’s Huntington Bank Stadium to perform alongside the University of Minnesota’s marching band on October 11. Was this part of some sort of percussive exchange program between California and the Land of 10,000 Lakes? Not exactly.

Last weekend, Smith was at it again, this time playing with the University of Michigan’s marching band at Band-O-Rama, an annual concert featuring several musical ensembles associated with the University. According to the announcement, he joined them for a version of the RHCP song “Can’t Stop” and the university’s fight song; given the full program, that likely means that Smith did not play alongside the marching band as they covered the theme from The NeverEnding Story or “Mamma Mia,” either of which may have broken the space-time continuum.

As Smith told The Current in October, his Midwestern roots are deep. “I lived in Richfield for about three years,” he said. “Our family, of course, is based out of Minnesota, and so I have a connection there that’s been for a long, long time.” His parents are also University of Minnesota alumni — and it’s in their honor that his nonprofit group, the Chad Smith Foundation, recently established a scholarship.

Smith spent most of his youth in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan — hence the University of Michigan being the other university that his foundation is working with. The Curtis & Joan Smith Scholarships, which will be offered to students at both Midwestern universities, will support a student studying music, and will provide both financial support and what the foundation’s website describes as “mentorship opportunities that help them grow as artists and professionals.”

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It’s worth pointing out here that Smith is an avid musical collaborator who has worked with everyone from Sammy Hagar to Andrew Watt; presumably working with the dozens of musicians in both schools’ marching bands isn’t the most unexpected collaboration he’s ever had. And in this case, it’s good to know that it was for an eminently worthy cause.