Demopolis City Schools superintendent Dr. Wayne Vickers announced the hiring Matthew Fields as the school system’s band director.

Fields takes over for Phil Bonds, who served the school system as band director for 10 years before retiring earlier this year.

“What we were looking for was someone with some experience as a band director,” Vickers said. “What we found was a young man with experience as a band director who will bring that experience to Demopolis.”

Fields comes to Demopolis from Holt High School in Tuscaloosa, where he also served as the band director at Davis-Emerson Middle School. Prior to that, he was the band director at Parrish High School.

“He comes to us with three years’ experience,” Vickers said. “He provided us with a CD and music from his marching competitions, his halftime shows and his spring concerts. We were very impressed with that.

“He has been in a rebuilding mode at Holt. He has done a lot of great work there. He had a lot of outstanding recommendations from the individuals he worked with there. I feel like we are very fortunate to get him here at Demopolis.”

“We had a parent meeting with the band parents (earlier this month),” Vickers said. “They gave us some input. It was very early on (in the search process), and we had 70 to 80 parents. We felt very good about that. The dance line was represented, the band was represented. It was a very positive meeting. There was a lot of good input as far as the quality of the program.

“I have to brag on the band parents. During the interview process, we knew that the first thing the band directors would want to see would be the band room. Our band parents worked hard to clean up the band room, making it clean and neat and making it a facility that a band director would come in and see that they had worked hard.”

Vickers said Fields would be at the school system’s central office on Friday.