Transcript: Hi, this is David Brower with a special two part podcast that every veteran, and everybody who knows a veteran, should listen to. It's about a program that is absolutely free to vets, and it will change their lives. I know, because it changed mine forever.
David Brower: Trevor Dann from the BBC takes you inside one of the retreats for songwriting with soldiers. This retreat was September 15th through 17th of last year, at the Carey Institute in Renslerville, New York.
Trevor Dann: Upstate New York in the fall has a claim to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. The trees around me are every shade of gold and purple and brown. There are deer running around and squirrels and wild turkey. There's a pungent aroma of pine and wild thyme.
Trevor Dann: But the most important sense today is hearing because this the venue for the latest retreat organized by Songwriting with Soldiers.
Speaker 3: (Singing) Something ain't right when a kid's nineteen, they can't sleep at night cause of things he's seen that day. When chaos is your comfort zone, when you're in a crowd, but you're all alone. You always need an exit sign insight. Something ain't right, Something ain't right.
Trevor Dann: In this program you'll hear professional songwriters working with military veterans, men and women. Some have physical disabilities. Others are suffering from the less visible effects of Combat Trauma in the Killing Fields of Iraq, Afghanistan, even Vietnam. Country singer/songwriter Doug Smith.
Doug Smith: Well, I met some soldiers. I met a guy in Germany. It was the first time I'd ever spoken to a soldier and I thought I had nothing in common with him and the people he's around. I'd been looking for a way to write a song about this experience of meeting soldiers and having something in common with them where I thought I didn't. I heard the word angelflight and it's a great song title. I said, "What's an angelflight?" They said, "Angelflight's when a soldier dies, they fly his body home." I was like, "Okay, there's our song." The National Guard commissioned me to write Angelflight.
Speaker 3: (singing) Fly that plane called the Angelflight. Come on brother, you're with me tonight. Between Heaven and earth you're never alone. Only Angelflight, come on brother, taking you home.
Doug Smith: I was in Nashville trying to finish the song staying at Randy Foster's house and Randy walked into the studio just to pick something up and I said, "Please sit down and help me finish this song." Randy put it on his record and made a video that went viral and got a couple million hits on it within a pretty short period of time. Through that we started getting letters and emails from around the world from people, largely in the military community about the song and what it meant to them.
Speaker 3: (Singing) Some gave a little, but he gave all. Fly that plane called the Angeflight. Come on brother, you're with me tonight.
Doug Smith: And that was where I saw this opportunity to write songs with soldiers. Take what I do and write them. In that experience of working with the soldiers, taking their stories and put them into songs is the genesis of Songwriting with Soldiers.
Speaker 3: (Singing) home, come on home, come on brother, I'm taking you home.
Doug Smith: I mean, my goal is for the soldier sitting across from me to see my seeing them and then listening to them enough to take their words, synthesize them into a song and sing it back to them.
Darden Smith: Hey everybody. I'm Darden Smith, I'm creative director of...
