HINESVILLE, Ga. — Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, dropped in on a high school band practice Wednesday as part of a two-day bus tour through southeast Georgia campaigning for the critical battleground state, as the students performed their school fight song for the Democratic ticket.

“We’re so proud of you and we’re counting on you,” Harris told the young crowd at Liberty County High School, some shrieking with excitement at the sight of the vice president. “Your generation … is what is going to propel our country into the next era of what we can do and what we can be.”

Harris told the students that she too played in the band — an aide said the vice president had played French horn, xylophone and kettle drums — and while not every note they play will be perfect and they may miss a step, they should “just keep going at it.”

The visit is part of a two-pronged strategy by the Harris-Walz campaign to make inroads in GOP strongholds and to use smaller, more intimate settings to showcase a softer side of the ticket — which is still relatively unknown by the electorate.

The trip culminates Thursday with a rally in Savannah. Campaign officials believe that in order to win the state over Republican Donald Trump in November they must make inroads in GOP strongholds. They need more than Atlanta and the suburbs that delivered for Joe Biden in 2020.

Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler said bus tours offer an “opportunity to get to places we don’t usually go (and) make sure we’re competing in all communities.”

The campaign wants the events to motivate voters in GOP-leaning areas who don’t traditionally see the candidates, and hopes that the engagements drive viral moments that cut through crowded media coverage to reach voters across the country.

Harris and Walz also stopped at Sandfly, a barbecue restaurant in Savannah, where some of the patrons were teachers. One thanked Walz, a former high school teacher.

The stops are meant as moments where voters can learn “not just what they stand for, but who they are as people,” Tyler said.

Tyler said the campaign’s strategy of using informal engagements to reach voters has been consistent from when President Biden was on the ticket, but the nature of the events has shifted along with the candidates. During a bus tour in Western Pennsylvania, for example, they stopped at a football practice — Walz is a former assistant high school football coach.

Walz met Harris on the tarmac in Savannah and the two greeted students from Savannah State University before setting off in their bright blue bus with red and white accents, “Harris Walz” emblazoned in big letters on the side along with the phrase “A New Way Forward.”

It looks like a regular campaign bus, but this one is an armored U.S. Secret Service vehicle driven by agents that comes with lights and sirens and secure communications. After the first stop, Harris shifted back to her traditional SUV, the bus relegated to the back of the motorcade.

Harris and Walz are also sitting down with CNN anchor Dana Bash for their first joint interview. The interview will air Thursday night.

The Democratic strategy to peel off votes in Republican parts of the state has had some success before. Raphael Warnock, Georgia’s first Black senator, won reelection in 2022 by nearly 3 percentage points — while Biden carried Georgia by only a quarter percentage point about two years earlier — in part by venturing into the deepest red areas, driven in part by operatives who are now on Harris’ campaign team.