From The Sunday Times
November 30, 2008
To The Fallen Records: band of brothers
A new American record label offers soldiers and veterans a launch pad for musical success
When the US army medic Stephen Covell deploys to a war-torn section of Baghdad later in December to begin his second 12-month tour of duty, along with all his medical gear he will be carrying his own life-saving equipment — a guitar.
“Playing it relieves the stress when I come back from a mission,” says Covell, who helped to save the lives of several American soldiers and Iraqis on his previous tour of duty when his unit was caught in a deadly ambush. “I’d go completely insane if I didn't have my guitar. I play it whenever I can, although there isn’t much privacy to write songs.”
Covell, 26, is an accomplished singer-songwriter who dreams of being the next James Blunt when he leaves the army in 2010. Since signing up 2½ years ago, he has had to concentrate more on his medical skills than his musical chops. Now, however, thanks to a record label set up to release CDs by serving or retired members of the American military, Covell is about to get his first big break.
To the Fallen Records was created in 2007 by a former army captain to give a voice to people fighting for their country who also happened to be talented musicians with the ambition — and ability — to be chart-toppers. The label has released three compilation CDs, with a fourth set for release later next month.
Covell, who is cut from the same cloth as Jack Johnson and John Mayer, is one of 17 serving soldiers on the latest album, Say Goodbye, which features an eclectic mix of hip-hop, country and rock music. “Soldiers are recognised for their courage and dedication, but rarely are they honoured for their creativity,” says the medic, who submitted No One Else, about leaving a girlfriend behind as he heads off to war, for inclusion on Say Goodbye. “To the Fallen showcases those who have more to offer than just their service to their country.”
While Covell is serving his country in Iraq over the next year, he will no doubt wonder, at times, what appearing on the album will do for his musical career.
“I guess I hope for what every musician hopes for: recognition, appreciation and opportunities to perform and share my talent,” he says. “I’ve heard it will be sold at the coffee shops on base over in Iraq, so it will be interesting to see if people put two and two together and figure out that the weird medic is the same guy singing on the CD.”
The records and the label dedicated to releasing them were the idea of Sean Gilfillan, a decorated soldier who was among the first Americans to reach Baghdad in 2003. “While I was in Iraq, I realised that there were tons and tons of really talented musicians serving with me, but that they couldn’t realise both passions,” says Gilfillan, 29, who lost seven close friends to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and sniper fire in the 15 months he was there. He noticed how many soldiers had guitars, or laptops loaded with professional recording and mixing software, and how they used music as a form of therapy to help them cope with the dangerous and stressful situations in which they found themselves. “So many soldiers seemed to be singing, rapping, recording and playing,” he says. “And a lot of them were really great.”
When Gilfillan returned to America and left the army, despite having no musical background, he decided to start a label to publish the soldiers’ songs. He named it in honour of his seven fallen friends.
Yet even as a combat veteran with what he believed to be a patriotic — and economically viable — idea, he found himself fighting a losing battle when he tried to raise the capital needed to get the company off the ground. “It was very, very difficult to start with,” he recalls. “We went to the banks with a business plan, but when we said we wanted to start a record label, they just looked at us like we were crazy. They all said no.”
Undeterred, and determined to succeed, Gilfillan and his wife remortgaged their house and borrowed money from family and friends. “We scraped together everything we could because we believed in the concept so much,” he says. “We believed it would be successful and that people would want to hear the music.”
Gilfillan started soliciting submissions from his military contacts and trawling through Facebook and MySpace pages to find singing soldiers. “A good portion are just starting out, and they don’t have the tools to make it to the level where they could be on a CD,” he says. “But there are some really professional musicians in the military, or who have retired from service, and we found them. The quality of the music is really important to us. If you don’t have ‘it’, you don't get on one of our CDs.”
Gilfillan estimates that 90% of those who contact him want to pursue music as a full-time career, and that 20% of those will make it: “We don’t really deal with those that just view it as a hobby.” He initially selected 14 soldiers from about 100 who had all submitted impressive debuts, and To the Fallen’s Hip-Hop Volume 1 was released in February 2007. “After that came out, we put up our own MySpace page and word just kinda spread ridiculously fast,” he says.
Country and rock compilations quickly followed, and the label now has a database of more than 1,600 artists. It receives more than 150 new songs each week, of which slightly more than a third are rock songs. “The songs seem to reflect the mood of the country,” Gilfillan says. “We’ve had a couple of tracks about Obama, a hip-hop track and a country track, and they both focused on how to move the country forward out of Iraq and into a new realm of diplomacy. They are both pretty good tracks, so they might make the next CD. But not that many tracks are that politically charged. A lot have to do with actual missions or storytelling rather than ‘Why are we here?’-type stuff.”
Whatever the subject matter, soldiers themselves seem to appreciate their comrades’ work. “The CDs sold out in less than a week at every forward operating base in Iraq and Afghanistan,” says Gilfillan, who also reveals that global sales are strong enough to allow the label to sustain itself and donate a percentage of the profits to military charities. The company’s plan is to release a new compilation CD every two or three months, as well as occasional solo albums by some of the featured artists.
Several contributors to the first CDs are already seeing the benefits of inclusion, among them Keni Thomas, a retired ranger who was involved in the infamous Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia in 1993. He had a song on To the Fallen’s first country-music compilation and is a rising star in that genre, having released a successful solo album and performed at the Grand Ole Opry, in Nashville, no less.
Thomas and Joel Port, a former marine who was featured on the label’s first rock CD, have both been asked to take part in tours for the troops in Europe and the Middle East. Several others from the first three CDs are also touring and performing in America.
Sergeant John Freeman, an army instructor who records under the name Merq (a soubriquet given to him by British soldiers he helped in a firefight in Iraq), has recently been offered a record deal, as well as being asked to write songs for a number of other artists. “It has helped me,” he says of being featured on the first rock compilation. “I’ve been interviewed by Rolling Stone, doors have opened and I’ve attracted new fans.”
Freeman, 37, served two tours in Iraq and was wounded on his first when shrapnel from an IED tore into his legs. When his injuries healed, he went back to Iraq and wrote several songs about his experiences. Now preparing troops in America for deployment to the Middle East, he says that the support a label such as To the Fallen offers to all soldiers is invaluable.
“A lot of record labels don’t want to deal with you because you are a soldier,” he claims. “When you say to someone at a record company that you’re in the army, their mood changes. I’ve yet to have any A&R person that I’ve ever sat with stick their hand out and say, ‘Thanks for serving our country, tell me more.’ But they need to know that there is a lot of musical talent in the military.”
Say Goodbye, released by To the Fallen Records, will be available for digital download from December 16 through Amazon and iTunes. For more information, visit www.tothefallenrecords.com
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