The music of military service

The music of military service

A veteran isn’t someone who sits on a street corner with a sign, or someone with PTSD and a drinking problem. A veteran is a family member and friend. And many also happen to be talented musicians with stories to tell.

Such beliefs led to the creation of Operation Encore, a veterans music project that brought singers and songwriters together to translate their military experiences into song and verse. The result is a compilation CD that was released in November, featuring songs written and performed by active-duty servicemembers, veterans and a military spouse. The project’s founders say their goal was to not only provide a therapeutic outlet for performers, but to also help bridge the civilian-military divide.

“We call it Operation Encore because it is another chance at a different part of your life,” says Erik Brine, the project’s co-founder and a member of American Legion Post 272 in Norwood, N.J. “We want to give people who have this kind of talent a chance to use it. And we want to show other people that these aren’t just soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines; they are sisters, brothers, fathers and mothers.”

The CD is currently available through iTunes and CD Baby (www.cdbaby.com/cd/operationencore). Proceeds first go toward unpaid production costs, and any profits are donated to various veterans charities and organizations.

A Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign drew $15,000 in donations, providing the initial capital. Early last year, Operation Encore put out an open call for veteran and military musicians to submit songs for consideration. Thanks to a Facebook fan page and solicitation through VSOs such as the Legion, entries poured in.

“Our only real criteria ... was that it was a genuine song they were inspired to write while in the military,” says Rob Raymond, a project co-founder, performer and member of American Legion Post 61 in Avondale, Ariz. “Some are more overtly military related. They are personal stories or personal feelings about (life) in the military. And some are just songs you might hear anyone play, like a love song.”

Air Force veteran Chris Kurek, another co-founder and performer, used one of his two songs – “Never Be the Same” – to tell a story about life with PTSD. “It’s a sad truth that life is easier when people are shooting at you,” Kurek says. “People might say, ‘I don’t understand that.’ In battle, there’s no mundane, there’s no slogging through the day. There are no decisions to be made. It’s just quick reactions. That’s it.”

Kurek says he has never dealt with PTSD, but was inspired to write about it from talking with fellow veterans and conversations with his mother, a VA psychologist.
“I wanted to be truthful without pandering,” he says. “I wanted to capture images of people who are uncomfortable in crowds and have these outbursts of anger that they know is not them ... The whole ‘never be the same again’ is about how one of the worst things with PTSD is that people say they want to go back to the way it was, when the reality is that it will never be the way it was, ever .... It’s about accepting that (and) that that doesn’t have to be the end of the story.”

Stephen Covell, an Army veteran from San Mateo, Calif., sent in a few demos of songs he’d written. Two were selected: “On That River” and “Sand Hills to Sandals.” He says he was inspired to write the latter song as he was flying home from Iraq and looking out his window at the North Carolina countryside. “Seeing all the green grass, lawns and fields and everything – it had just been so long since we’d seen anything like that,” Covell says. “It was that surreal feeling of being back to familiar territory after being somewhere so weird. And the kind of back and forth where it feels good to be home, but it also feels sort of alien to be back in my old environment.”

Covell was joined on the Operation Encore record by 10 other musicians, some of whom sent their submissions as iPhone recordings or even written lyrics. Rachel Harvey Hill, a military spouse, was one of them. A friend urged her to submit “Another Trip Around the Sun,” a song she wrote for her husband on the couple’s 10th anniversary about their shared experiences as a military family.

“When I wrote it, I started thinking about what a journey our marriage had been so far,” Hill says. “I was thinking about all the good, the bad and the mundane that we had been through.”

She says she’s proud to have been included on the CD and to have written a song to which so many veterans connect. “It’s just been an awesome surprise, and already I have had so many people come up and say, ‘I really relate to your song’ – especially military spouses, who say they understand what the song is about.”

According to Brine, Operation Encore’s mission is to tell stories like Hill’s, highly personal and with an accurate depiction of military life. “At a time less than 1 percent of the population serves, there are a lot of folks out there who have never even met a veteran, don’t know anybody in uniform and don’t know what it means,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of challenges and stereotypes to overcome.”

Andy Romey is an assistant editor for The American Legion’s Media & Communications Division.

Learn more about Operation Encore and watch a video here.