Speaker 1: Everyone, It's me Steve alas Fruri, host the software at Radio.
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Speaker 1: you very much, because it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You missing to Soffer that Radio Special Operations,
Speaker 1: Military and straight talk with the guys in the community. Hello,
Speaker 1: Gonna everyone, Welcome back to Soffer Radio. Soffer Bradio on
Speaker 1: time on Target. I'm youna host this afternoon, Steve Alstoria.
Speaker 1: We have a very special guest with us. I know
Speaker 1: I say that all the time, but today it really
Speaker 1: is kind of cool because we're gonna be talking with
Speaker 1: and Brad Thomas. And he Brad was a former Ranger
Speaker 1: and the third Ranger bad He served in Mogadi shoot
Speaker 1: during the battle there. He was also a member of
Speaker 1: the Delta Force for about twelve years I believe it was,
Speaker 1: and before retiring. And now he's a musician. He has
Speaker 1: a band called Silence and Light. Um it's a band
Speaker 1: full of veterans. And we're gonna talk to him about
Speaker 1: all that stuff. But before we go any further, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to welcome him too the podcast. Bred Thanks
Speaker 1: for taking the time this afternoon and talking with this.
Speaker 1: I know it was a little hectic for you this afternoon. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me and uh, super happy to be
Speaker 1: on talking with you. And we we chatted for a
Speaker 1: few minutes about you know, our backgrounds and kind of
Speaker 1: some common people that we know. And it's a small community,
Speaker 1: so glad to be on talking with you. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a small community. We were almost neighbors, I
Speaker 1: guess we were talking at one point outside of four Brags,
Speaker 1: so you know that seems to be the area where
Speaker 1: all the special Obs guys lived anyway, but yeah, we
Speaker 1: were probably we were probably within a half a mile
Speaker 1: of one another, but but being in different units like
Speaker 1: never cross paths probably feel off in the I was
Speaker 1: probably the guy driving like an asshole. That would be hilarious.
Speaker 1: You know, I've had that thought about U, you know,
Speaker 1: writing a film that has to do with a person
Speaker 1: that crosses paths with all these people, but then how
Speaker 1: he interacts with them later in life, not knowing that
Speaker 1: he'd already crossed paths with them. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: would be a blockbuster because it's like, you know, because
Speaker 1: you talk to people and like, like we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, I mean, you know, we lived within a
Speaker 1: very close proximity to each other. We've never met, and
Speaker 1: but you know we've probably been in that same grocery
Speaker 1: store as we talked about, in the neighborhood where we
Speaker 1: used to live right there, you know, fasten each other
Speaker 1: in the aisle. Yeah, you probably smelled my grill. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And likewise, I like, is that a Ariaki marinade? Amazing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting when you know, we talked about the
Speaker 1: community and just it's such a small, you know, tight
Speaker 1: knit community, special operations community, and you run into people
Speaker 1: and and it's interesting when people are like, hey, you
Speaker 1: know so and so, you know so and so, and
Speaker 1: you don't know somebody. You know, generally speaking, you can
Speaker 1: adjust to date on something and you can figure out
Speaker 1: you know, oh yeah, we crossed paths here. I went
Speaker 1: to ranger school with that guy, or you know. But
Speaker 1: when when a name comes from out of nowhere and
Speaker 1: nobody has heard of this person, it's pretty easy to
Speaker 1: determine very quickly. And uh so stolen valor stuff seems
Speaker 1: to be like I don't know, uh, very very easy
Speaker 1: to root out. Well, it was funny because, uh, in
Speaker 1: the early eighties, we went to the Rolling Thunder thing
Speaker 1: up in d C. And one of the old SF
Speaker 1: guys that was there, we were sitting there talking to
Speaker 1: him at a bar and then he was like, hold
Speaker 1: on a second, and there was this guy telling a
Speaker 1: story and we're like, what's up. You know that guy?
Speaker 1: And he's like no, but he's talking about me like
Speaker 1: it's him. So I gotta go over there and listen
Speaker 1: to this. So we went over there and this guy's
Speaker 1: telling the story and this real SF guy that we
Speaker 1: had been talking to him this bar and he was like,
Speaker 1: that's a fascinating story. I don't remember you because I
Speaker 1: was on that team, and he goes and I knew
Speaker 1: everybody on that team. Of course, there was only ten
Speaker 1: of us, and I don't remember you, and the guy
Speaker 1: played a beer down and walked out the door. Better
Speaker 1: better to get out before anything else. I get. I
Speaker 1: get that a lot with rangers that served in Mogadishu,
Speaker 1: and it seemed like anybody that was in the army
Speaker 1: at that time or maybe even after, you know, served
Speaker 1: in Mogadisho. Most recently, somebody sent me a picture of
Speaker 1: a guy and they were like, his first name is
Speaker 1: such and such and here's his picture. And I asked
Speaker 1: how current the picture was, and it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: his wife just sent it to me or something like that.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, are you stupid that, Like, there's no
Speaker 1: way he could have been there based on his age,
Speaker 1: based on the picture. Like it's not even a question
Speaker 1: of knowing the guy or not, it's he would have
Speaker 1: He would have been like four when when that happened,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, so anyway, yeah, that was and
Speaker 1: again talking about that was such a sad day for
Speaker 1: us because we knew a lot of the people that
Speaker 1: were there obviously, I mean we, like you said, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of crossover between SF and the guys
Speaker 1: over and Delta and you know, my partner and Dave
Speaker 1: and I. We were working in Bolivia at the time,
Speaker 1: but which is two of us. We heard about it
Speaker 1: on the news and then we got to a television
Speaker 1: and we were watching only what they were showing at
Speaker 1: the time. That was a sad day when we heard
Speaker 1: about that. Interestingly, because I told this story on something
Speaker 1: else that I did, and I'm not going to get
Speaker 1: into the super details of the story, but after the
Speaker 1: battle the next day, you know, the battle still raged
Speaker 1: through that morning and at about nine thirty or ten
Speaker 1: in the morning, we ended up in a stadium and
Speaker 1: that was kind of a safe spot and we reconsolidated
Speaker 1: and reorganized and got the wounded guys met it backed out,
Speaker 1: bringing helicopters in and things like that, and getting getting
Speaker 1: the guys that have been killed out of there as well.
Speaker 1: And I had the ended up on the vehicle package.
Speaker 1: We ended up having to drive vehicles back to the hangar,
Speaker 1: and you know, it wasn't like this is all secure
Speaker 1: outside of the hangar or outside of the the stadium,
Speaker 1: so you know, that was that was kind of you know,
Speaker 1: keep your fingers crossed and hope that everybody does the
Speaker 1: right thing when we get back to the hangar and
Speaker 1: in the back corner, there was a TV and it
Speaker 1: was hooked up to you know, at the only time,
Speaker 1: the only news channel at the time was CNN. And
Speaker 1: we got back to the hangar and we offloaded our
Speaker 1: gear and everybody kind of hugged each other and we're
Speaker 1: looking around, you know, who who was still around and
Speaker 1: who wasn't and all of that, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: everybody in the hangar started running into the back corner
Speaker 1: and you know, we get I get back there and
Speaker 1: I look at the TV and it was the video
Speaker 1: of of some of the crew members being dragged through
Speaker 1: the streets that had been killed. And we had no
Speaker 1: idea that that was even a thing. We didn't know
Speaker 1: that there were people missing. We didn't know that there
Speaker 1: were people that still hadn't been recovered. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a different era of military, It was a different time.
Speaker 1: There wasn't you know, everybody had a radio and everybody
Speaker 1: knew what was going on. It was complete chaos, and
Speaker 1: there really wasn't a chance or a place for you know,
Speaker 1: the typical military dissemination of information to happen. You can't
Speaker 1: do that in the middle of the street when bullets
Speaker 1: are flying, so we didn't even know. I guess the
Speaker 1: bigger point was, we didn't even know really kind of
Speaker 1: the magnitude of everything that had happened until we got
Speaker 1: to the hangar and recognized that we still had people missing,
Speaker 1: and and and then obviously surprised even further one day
Speaker 1: or two later when Mike Durant showed up on CNN
Speaker 1: also and we realized that we had a guy that
Speaker 1: was a prisoner of war or detainee or whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call him hostage. But yeah, interesting times, they say,
Speaker 1: the least absolutely so as Phil our listeners in. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you grew up musically inclined, but I know
Speaker 1: you were in bands and stuff, But tell tell our
Speaker 1: listeners your story of how you ended up in the
Speaker 1: army and how you ended up where you were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of interesting. Um. You know, I grew
Speaker 1: up in as early as I can remember, was making
Speaker 1: up songs and singing songs. And you know, my father
Speaker 1: would be in the car driving me somewhere we'd be
Speaker 1: on vacation, and he'd be screaming at a guy in
Speaker 1: the buick, and I would start singing a song about
Speaker 1: a guy in a buick. You know, stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know, crack my family up and
Speaker 1: was always, you know, a pretty happy and positive kid.
Speaker 1: I had a great childhood and upbringing and one of
Speaker 1: the one of the best things that my parents did
Speaker 1: for me. Uh And I don't think that they had
Speaker 1: any inclination other than the singing of songs and things
Speaker 1: like that, but they took me to see a lot
Speaker 1: of live music. So at a very early age, I
Speaker 1: got to see, you know, some of the bigger, bigger
Speaker 1: known acts at the time, like Barry Manilow and Chicago
Speaker 1: and the Beat Boys and things like that. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's right when all of his stuff, I
Speaker 1: mean from seventy four to like seventy seven, he was
Speaker 1: all over the radio and uh, you know, we kind
Speaker 1: of laugh about him now. That guy was incredibly talented.
Speaker 1: And most people don't know this, but he wrote, you know,
Speaker 1: like the Dr Pepper jingle he wrote. He worked the
Speaker 1: building and I forget the name of the building, but
Speaker 1: it's a famous building where they you know, basically wrote
Speaker 1: all the music for commercials and jingles and things like that,
Speaker 1: for advertisements, and um, there are so many things like
Speaker 1: a good neighbor, state Farmers there that song he wrote that. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: he and a live performance would do a medley of
Speaker 1: all of his different jingles that he written he had written,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of interesting. But anyway, Um, as
Speaker 1: soon as I saw, you know, the first concert and
Speaker 1: experience that I was, I was kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I want to do. That's you know, that's
Speaker 1: all I want. And my parents agreed to buy a
Speaker 1: piano if I agreed to take lessons, and that ended
Speaker 1: up lasting you know, four or five years. And at
Speaker 1: the same time, maybe after a few years of piano,
Speaker 1: was when uh school music in school, uh school of
Speaker 1: music in school. UH band in school became a thing,
Speaker 1: and I think in fourth grade, you know, that was
Speaker 1: something that was almost mandatory. You were either in the
Speaker 1: chorus or you were in the band, you know, and
Speaker 1: learned an instrument and things like that. So I picked
Speaker 1: up the saxophone and played that for a number of
Speaker 1: years in the school band, the school pep band, my
Speaker 1: church orchestra and things like that. So um, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of at the end of that, maybe after four
Speaker 1: or five years now early eighties, and you know, I'm
Speaker 1: listening to Van Halen and Arrowsmith and a CBC and
Speaker 1: all the stuff that was, you know, just kind of
Speaker 1: coming out at the time and and pretty big. And
Speaker 1: you can't play that on the saxophone. You can't play
Speaker 1: that on the clarinet or the piano. And we had
Speaker 1: an acoustic guitar in my house and at some point
Speaker 1: I picked up the acoustic guitar and just started figuring
Speaker 1: it out. And uh so that's that's kind of how
Speaker 1: how I got into music, at least all the way
Speaker 1: up to the point of guitar. That's cool. And you know,
Speaker 1: so you were in a band and something happened to
Speaker 1: where you decided to go to it. It's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, my bandmate Jason Neverman, he's the cat that
Speaker 1: was in Nirvana and Sound Garden prior to prior to
Speaker 1: join in the Army and being a ranger and then
Speaker 1: an SF guy. Um, we had a very similar trajectory
Speaker 1: in terms of kind of trying the music thing and
Speaker 1: then you know, it being a very unfulfilling type of
Speaker 1: uh you know, whether it was the right people or
Speaker 1: we were with the wrong people or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: He just happened to be in a band that was,
Speaker 1: you know, huge two bands that were huge as soon
Speaker 1: as he left. And you know, it takes It's like
Speaker 1: building a team. You know, you can get you can
Speaker 1: get new guys all day long, and it takes a
Speaker 1: long time to figure out if the guy is the
Speaker 1: right guy or not. And then you're dealing with egos,
Speaker 1: and you're dealing with people that are passive aggressive and
Speaker 1: can't directly communicate that you know, hey, I don't like this,
Speaker 1: or you know, I want to change something. You know,
Speaker 1: so you get people that stand around and you know,
Speaker 1: don't put their all into something, and it takes a
Speaker 1: long time to build that. Um. You know. So I
Speaker 1: I put a band together and and and put multiple
Speaker 1: bands together, probably from the time that I was twelve
Speaker 1: until the time I joined the army, and it kind
Speaker 1: of all unraveled at the very end, and I was
Speaker 1: left pretty much heartbroken, and you know, at a loss
Speaker 1: of what to do. Do I do? I spend another
Speaker 1: two years trying to find the right people, um, you know,
Speaker 1: practicing and doing nothing more than practicing. Do I do
Speaker 1: something else? And so there was kind of a trifecta
Speaker 1: of things that happened. One the band fell apart and
Speaker 1: and it was a good group of tudes and we
Speaker 1: all got along and everything was track, and one guy
Speaker 1: created issues that kind of funneled the whole thing. Um,
Speaker 1: the invasion of Panama happened, and that was so December
Speaker 1: of eighty nine. And then a buddy of mine that
Speaker 1: had joined the Air Force and had just finished basic
Speaker 1: training and a I t for E. O D School
Speaker 1: came home from you know, on block leave more or less.
Speaker 1: So those three things kind of happened all about the
Speaker 1: same within the same couple of weeks. And my Air
Speaker 1: Force buddy I was talking to him or having some
Speaker 1: drinks and having fun and you know, catching up and everything,
Speaker 1: and he tells me about at the end of basic
Speaker 1: training there was a group of guys that came around
Speaker 1: to recruit for a special un it in the Air Force.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, what do the what's the special unit?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, they jump in behind enemy lines
Speaker 1: and they rescued down pilots and you know, do that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And I was like, wow, that sounds cool,
Speaker 1: and you know it kind of it intrigued me. So
Speaker 1: within a few weeks I went and talked with the
Speaker 1: Air Force recruiter and was kind of on track. To
Speaker 1: join the Air Force actually signed UM all the paperwork
Speaker 1: with the Air Force to join, and I was leaving
Speaker 1: one day kind of upset because the recruiter had told
Speaker 1: me that he would give me some sort of contract
Speaker 1: that guaranteed me the right to try, which was all
Speaker 1: I was asking for. You know, I know I can't
Speaker 1: necessarily be guaranteed that I'll make it into this unit,
Speaker 1: but at least the opportunity to try. And I'm leaving
Speaker 1: one day and the Army guy says, hey, what do
Speaker 1: you What are you doing? And I said, this Air
Speaker 1: Force guys give me the run around. And he said,
Speaker 1: what do you want to do? And I said, I
Speaker 1: want to do something like Delta Force. And I don't
Speaker 1: know why that came out of my mouth. I hadn't
Speaker 1: necessarily other than the movie that came out in UM.
Speaker 1: It's not like I had any interaction. It's not like
Speaker 1: there was an Internet where you could read about, you know,
Speaker 1: what Delta Force was or anything like that. So I
Speaker 1: told the recruiter I want to be a Delta Force
Speaker 1: and he said, well, you can't do that. You gotta
Speaker 1: do something first, like Special Forces. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll do that. He said, well, you can't do that either.
Speaker 1: You've got to do something before that, like a ranger.
Speaker 1: And that's that's where it all started. So that was
Speaker 1: about May and and that's where the start of my
Speaker 1: military career happened. Yeah, and then you went to the
Speaker 1: third range of bad afterwards and um, well now that
Speaker 1: was when they were still pretty uh, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: in their infancy of being reactivated, wasn't it. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because at the time, you know, when you're when
Speaker 1: you're a twenty year old or when you're a when
Speaker 1: you're a five year old, a year is the fifth
Speaker 1: of your life, right, And the older you get you
Speaker 1: realize that, like a year isn't that much, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: But at the time, I think Third Battalion stood up
Speaker 1: in four and so you know, I got there at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of ninety one, so it wasn't that
Speaker 1: that much longer. Uh, you know, after the whole thing
Speaker 1: it stood up. When I look back at that now
Speaker 1: and I think, oh, wow, is there. You know, only
Speaker 1: a few years later that it seems like such a
Speaker 1: short period of time. But at the time then it's
Speaker 1: sounds you know, it seemed like forever. They were different uniforms.
Speaker 1: Back then they had O G one oh seven's and
Speaker 1: none of our guys had that by the time we
Speaker 1: got there and things like that. But yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: where that's where I spent the first four years in
Speaker 1: the military. What was that like in the range of that,
Speaker 1: I know, when you're young, Uh, when you're first there,
Speaker 1: you're kind of guy. Yeah, it's it's uh til you
Speaker 1: get that trust factor in after you've been there a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there's a lot of hazing and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of uh, you know, it was it was a
Speaker 1: tough time. It was a really you know, staying there
Speaker 1: for the number of years that I did. I guess
Speaker 1: I was there for just about five years. Um. That
Speaker 1: was actually you know, they say it when you get
Speaker 1: to Delta Force, and the saying is selection is an
Speaker 1: ongoing process, Like you don't get somewhere and then just
Speaker 1: rest on your laurels because you made it. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to perform every day, and very much the
Speaker 1: same thing in the Rangers. And I think that kind
Speaker 1: of it didn't necessarily take me by surprise, but I
Speaker 1: think it was a little disillusioned in books that I
Speaker 1: had read, and you know, maybe movies that I had
Speaker 1: seen that depicted things, and I was expecting it to
Speaker 1: be smaller teams, you know, going in, sneaking in, blowing
Speaker 1: up a bridge, disrupting stuff, you know, things like that,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, it was a great time and
Speaker 1: I would say it was a great place to start
Speaker 1: a military career because it kind of gets you all
Speaker 1: the basics that you need. Being on Fort Penning. We
Speaker 1: were in the field if we if we weren't doing
Speaker 1: like an airfield seizure or something that was at that
Speaker 1: time like really secret and special. Um, you know, we
Speaker 1: were in the in the swamps of Fort Penning and
Speaker 1: it sucked and there was nothing fun about it. You know,
Speaker 1: go out to the field for four days, jump in
Speaker 1: road march somewhere, spend you know, spend every night pulling
Speaker 1: security on pine trees, no bad guys, you know nothing
Speaker 1: and uh and you know, sticking it out in the
Speaker 1: swamps and then road march eighteen miles back to the
Speaker 1: barracks Friday morning, clean your weapons and then have a
Speaker 1: weekend off. You know. It was it was an ask
Speaker 1: kicker physically, and uh, yeah, that was that was definitely
Speaker 1: a challenging time. So when you're a private you know,
Speaker 1: on top of just being able to hang, you're getting
Speaker 1: harassed every you know, every couple of minutes about something.
Speaker 1: You know, what are the five colors of the map? Thomas,
Speaker 1: what's this? What's that? You know? Too slow? Do push ups?
Speaker 1: You know, you're just constantly so um. You know, once
Speaker 1: you're a part of the part of the crew and
Speaker 1: you're a part of the team, it's a little different
Speaker 1: and it and it lightens up to some degree, but
Speaker 1: you still have to perform, you know. Oh yeah. We
Speaker 1: used to tell guys that because I worked at the
Speaker 1: selection course for s up and selection doesn't stop when
Speaker 1: you passed the queboard. You're you're you're being you know,
Speaker 1: basically assessed every day for the rest of your career.
Speaker 1: And the higher up you get, the harder people look
Speaker 1: at you. Really, yeah, I mean, I'm sure it was
Speaker 1: the same in Delta. I mean, you know, the higher
Speaker 1: up you get, I mean, the more people expect that, yeah,
Speaker 1: that you you can't just show up at the range
Speaker 1: and not shoot, you know, and not be you know,
Speaker 1: when you get to a team at Delta, your goal
Speaker 1: is to be the best shooter on the team, and
Speaker 1: you know, you're competing against dudes that have had multiple
Speaker 1: professional instruction and or shooting time, and you could ever
Speaker 1: imagine and you know it just again like you don't
Speaker 1: want to be the bottom guy, So now I gotta
Speaker 1: outperform this, and oh now we're gonna do something physical,
Speaker 1: and like I don't want to be the last guy
Speaker 1: to finish the run. You know, It's it's constant, so
Speaker 1: you know, there there's a lot of pressure to that.
Speaker 1: And you know most people, Um, I get hit up
Speaker 1: on social media a lot by kids that are talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, I want to go to Delta. What
Speaker 1: should I do? Should like a Rangers? Should I go
Speaker 1: eighteen X ray? And it doesn't really matter, Like you
Speaker 1: have to you have to make it through that before
Speaker 1: you can even think about attending a selection course for
Speaker 1: a special mission unit. So how about just make your
Speaker 1: goal being a good ranger or being a good SF
Speaker 1: guy for four years and then and then see where
Speaker 1: you are and see if you think you want to
Speaker 1: still do that. You know, that's that's really kind of
Speaker 1: what it's all about. I was the same way. I
Speaker 1: was ready to get there, you know. So the other
Speaker 1: thing they'll ask me is, you know, it must have
Speaker 1: been like such an accomplishment when you've made it through
Speaker 1: selection or you made it through O T C or
Speaker 1: and it's not. I I finished selection for Delta, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it hit me like a ton
Speaker 1: of bricks, like, oh, ship, now it's for real, Like
Speaker 1: now I'm going to the training course that's almost a
Speaker 1: year long and I'm gonna make it through that. And
Speaker 1: then when I finished that, it's like, oh man, now
Speaker 1: I'm going to a team and I'm excited about that.
Speaker 1: But I got to prove myself to everybody again. And
Speaker 1: it's just it never stops. So there's never really a
Speaker 1: sense of accomplishment. Yeah, it's it's always that, um, there's
Speaker 1: that error, not error, but there's that error I guess
Speaker 1: of you know, we're not good enough. You always have
Speaker 1: it in the back of your mind because always striving
Speaker 1: for that next levels thing. Yeah, okay, I made it
Speaker 1: to this point, but this is not where I want
Speaker 1: to be. I want to be here. And you know,
Speaker 1: it does wear on you after a while because you're
Speaker 1: constantly pushing yourself beyond your limit. Yeah, perceived limits, I
Speaker 1: should say. Interesting. Yeah, and then and then the second
Speaker 1: part of that and you mentioned I'm glad you mentioned it,
Speaker 1: but that is challenging yourself. And so when I when
Speaker 1: I got to Delta, I I saw these guys that
Speaker 1: had been there, you know, twelve years, sixteen years, and
Speaker 1: they were legends. I mean, these these are guys that
Speaker 1: were just absolute physical specimens and you know, had done
Speaker 1: all these different operations and oh this guy was you know,
Speaker 1: we would see the dude in the they call it
Speaker 1: the spine. You'd be walking down the spine, you see
Speaker 1: a guy and then I'd be like, that was guided,
Speaker 1: you know, did this and it was like legends. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I was there for probably three or
Speaker 1: four years and I realized that, you know, this is
Speaker 1: a training cycle. Everything is a training cycle or a
Speaker 1: deployment cycle, and it's very repetitive. And you know, once
Speaker 1: I had kind of proven myself and deployed a few
Speaker 1: times because when I got there pre war by about
Speaker 1: three years. Um, you know, once once you do that
Speaker 1: a few times, it's like what else can I do?
Speaker 1: What else? How can I challenge myself? And that was
Speaker 1: really kind of the second half of my time in
Speaker 1: the military. Um, you know, it was really spent kind
Speaker 1: of asking those types of questions like what am I
Speaker 1: doing next? How can I you know, how can I
Speaker 1: better myself? What what can I do? And you've got
Speaker 1: a family, and you've got other stuff happening and things
Speaker 1: that are eating up all your time. But yeah, interesting
Speaker 1: interesting times. Now did you did you stay past your
Speaker 1: twenty or did you get out at now? I did
Speaker 1: twenty years and eighteen days, literally as soon as I
Speaker 1: could get out the door. And it was for no
Speaker 1: other reason for me other than exactly that I wanted to, like,
Speaker 1: what's the next challenge? What can I do next? And
Speaker 1: what can I get into and how can I improve
Speaker 1: and and do something more? And I elected because I
Speaker 1: came in at twenty one, so I wanted to if
Speaker 1: I if I had spent more time in, then I'm
Speaker 1: like getting a later start on whatever. The second half
Speaker 1: of my life is outside of the military. And I
Speaker 1: viewed that as I would rather start that at forty one,
Speaker 1: then start that at fifty one, or start that at
Speaker 1: forty six, or whatever it might be. So I was
Speaker 1: kind of ready to get on with it and and
Speaker 1: ready to try something different and not have to answer
Speaker 1: to the man every morning. And you show up exactly
Speaker 1: where I'm told, when I'm told to be there in
Speaker 1: wearing a certain type of shoe or doing whatever else
Speaker 1: I was, I was ready to kind of move on.
Speaker 1: I think, I don't know what it was like for you,
Speaker 1: but I know when I was making that last trip
Speaker 1: out of Fort Bragg and I couldn't wait to get
Speaker 1: the hell out of there. I'll be honest. But as
Speaker 1: I was making that trip, as I'm driving, I was
Speaker 1: going down Yadkin Road, So I'm sure you know that
Speaker 1: quite well. I'm going down to the Yadkin five hundred
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, and I'm thinking to myself, this is
Speaker 1: the last time I'm gonna be making this trip in
Speaker 1: the beautiful and it was a really strange feeling. It's like,
Speaker 1: holy sh it, not what am I? I mean, I
Speaker 1: knew what I wanted to do, but it's like it's
Speaker 1: a strange feeling, isn't it. Yeah? Yeah, when you're you know,
Speaker 1: finishing up all those years in the military. I was
Speaker 1: driving down All American to go to a retirement party
Speaker 1: at one of the bars uh downtown, and I remember
Speaker 1: kind of being emotional about it, and I remember thinking
Speaker 1: to myself, like, what's this all? About you know, you're
Speaker 1: ready to move on. And I started to think about it,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I don't think that I expected myself
Speaker 1: to be intact or alive at that point. You know.
Speaker 1: It was kind of it was kind of like, wow,
Speaker 1: I got I got both my legs and both my
Speaker 1: arms and all my pieces and parts except maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit my brain. You know, but you know that's
Speaker 1: it's something that I didn't necessarily expect it. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you're there and you're like, wow, man,
Speaker 1: it's over, Like that thing is over, and uh, it was.
Speaker 1: It was an emotional blink of an eye. You know.
Speaker 1: All those years go by really really fast. Yeah, yea.
Speaker 1: When I think back on the entirety of my career,
Speaker 1: you know, it always comes back to I've had this
Speaker 1: conversation multiple times recently. And I'm curious because I think
Speaker 1: when guys joined the army, and they say a man's
Speaker 1: brain doesn't fully develop until he's like twenty. Even so
Speaker 1: when you join the army that first, if you're in
Speaker 1: for a certain length of time, or you joined the
Speaker 1: police department or you're a fireman or whatever, it might
Speaker 1: be like your brain is still developing. And so what
Speaker 1: you're doing almost becomes a part of like really who
Speaker 1: you are, not not a job, not you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's an interesting thought, and that was the conversation I
Speaker 1: had with with a handful of folks recently. But when
Speaker 1: I think back on my early time in the military,
Speaker 1: it feels like the longest portion was, say that first
Speaker 1: thirty six to forty eight months in the range of battalion,
Speaker 1: feels like that was fifteen years long. The bond that
Speaker 1: we had, you know, the tough times that we were
Speaker 1: living in, everything else, it feels like it was fifteen
Speaker 1: years long. And then I realized I spent more time
Speaker 1: on one team with a handful of guys then I
Speaker 1: spent in the range of Italian you know, when I
Speaker 1: was at the unit, they're like, oh ship, Like, no,
Speaker 1: the time isn't that. It's almost like the time is reversed.
Speaker 1: It's weird. But the only thing I can equate it
Speaker 1: to is that maybe it's because the brain is still
Speaker 1: in development when you know, when you're young, and it
Speaker 1: becomes a part of you in a way that's different
Speaker 1: than when you're older. By the time I got to Delta,
Speaker 1: I'm my own person. You know. I'm a twenty nine
Speaker 1: year old. I've got a son, I'm married, I've got
Speaker 1: a house and drive nice cars. I'm not like multiple
Speaker 1: piece of clay. I am who I am. I'm either
Speaker 1: I do the right thing when I'm told to do it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, etcetera, etcetera. It's not like a nineteen year
Speaker 1: old kid who's just showing up at the Rangers and
Speaker 1: he's young and impressionable and you can kind of mold
Speaker 1: him into being a good leader or a good soldier.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, that's a that's a great point. So
Speaker 1: and now you're you're out of the military, you reach
Speaker 1: out of Delta and tell us all about how you
Speaker 1: got back into the music business, because I uh, I
Speaker 1: think our listeners will love this. Yeah. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I think I think there are a couple of things.
Speaker 1: And I've talked a lot about on other podcasts that
Speaker 1: I've done in other media and articles I've written and
Speaker 1: interviews and things like that. I I've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about people transitioning and kind of this loss of identity,
Speaker 1: and that's something that whether you're a doctor for twenty
Speaker 1: years or whether you're a fireman for twenty years, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're done doing that, there is kind of this
Speaker 1: refiguring out who am I now? You know? What am
Speaker 1: I now? How do I challenge myself? How do I
Speaker 1: find purpose in meaning in the things that I'm doing now?
Speaker 1: How Because in a lot of ways, it's never going
Speaker 1: to be as important as the thing that you may
Speaker 1: have done while you were serving, or while you were
Speaker 1: a doctor, whatever it is that you were doing. And
Speaker 1: for me, I think one of the things I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't really have a tough time transitioning out of
Speaker 1: the military. I think number one, I was ready. I
Speaker 1: see a lot of people that struggled that that had
Speaker 1: that taken away from them because maybe they got injured,
Speaker 1: maybe they lost a limb, and they're not able to
Speaker 1: continue to serve, and so something got taken away from them.
Speaker 1: It's a lot different than voluntarily leaving UM. But I
Speaker 1: didn't really have a tough time. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I can equate it to is that I always
Speaker 1: identified as things other than being a Delta Force operator.
Speaker 1: You know, being a Delta Delta operator was a part
Speaker 1: of who I was, but it's not who I am.
Speaker 1: I'm a musician, I'm a father, I'm a husband, I'm
Speaker 1: you know, all different types of things, creative, you know,
Speaker 1: you name it, and so I always identified with those
Speaker 1: things as well during my time of service. So the
Speaker 1: music thing never really stopped. I always is always played,
Speaker 1: and you know, always was playing stuff, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: doing things like that. And it wasn't seven. I think
Speaker 1: when I had young kids, it was a little bit
Speaker 1: tougher because you know, my family, I put my family first, um,
Speaker 1: you know, but it was a very easy kind of
Speaker 1: you know, slide back into it because it never really
Speaker 1: went away. It was always a part of me. So
Speaker 1: you still kept your guitars with you. Well, I kept
Speaker 1: when I joined initially, I got rid of all my stuff,
Speaker 1: so I had to re acquire and rebuild and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I've gone through tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: worth of equipment since then, and uh, I have finally
Speaker 1: kind of settled on some stuff. But anyway, for me,
Speaker 1: I guess to take it to the next level and
Speaker 1: not just be a guitar player, but to say, form
Speaker 1: a band, release an album, you know, go about it
Speaker 1: the right way, and do all the right things like
Speaker 1: a real band would do. That's that's kind of the
Speaker 1: next level for me, and so to get into that,
Speaker 1: it was it really took a while for me to
Speaker 1: figure out exactly what I wanted to do in that way. UM.
Speaker 1: I knew that I wanted to give back to the community,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to, you know, start a foundation
Speaker 1: or you know, start something charitable organization. I felt like
Speaker 1: there were already enough really great things out there. UM,
Speaker 1: I would rather contribute money to those organizations. I would
Speaker 1: rather bring awareness to those organizations than for me to
Speaker 1: start my own. I didn't. I didn't want to do that.
Speaker 1: So I came up with the idea of writing and
Speaker 1: releasing an album and taking the music royalties and the
Speaker 1: profits they're they're from and contributing those two special you know,
Speaker 1: special operations, charitable organizations or first responded charitable organizations, whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. So that was kind of where the
Speaker 1: idea started. That's great, and you know, you got in
Speaker 1: touch and you met Jason Everham, who was in as
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, was in both Nirvana and Sound Garden,
Speaker 1: and then later on went to the range of Bad
Speaker 1: as you did, and became an SF guy and funning.
Speaker 1: Um Afghanistan, I think he went to Iraq as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did a couple of trips. Yeah, so you guys
Speaker 1: meet and talk to us about that. Yeah, I knew
Speaker 1: I knew Jason for a number of years and we
Speaker 1: were pretty close friends. And he was coming into town
Speaker 1: into New York to to see a concert with me,
Speaker 1: and we were going to see Mastodon at Hammerstein Ballroom
Speaker 1: in Manhattan. And I think he knew one of the
Speaker 1: one of the guitar players and they have been roommates
Speaker 1: at some point or something along those line. So we
Speaker 1: were going to hang out with those acts and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, meet up with them and see the show.
Speaker 1: And the idea came to me kind of right before
Speaker 1: that concert, the day before, and so it was very
Speaker 1: easy for me to approach Jason and say, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got this idea. I don't know exactly what it
Speaker 1: looks like just yet, but you know, I want to
Speaker 1: make music and I want to take the proceeds of
Speaker 1: the music royalties and give those two, you know, some
Speaker 1: special operations charities or give it back to the Ranger Regiment,
Speaker 1: you know, their foundation or whatever it might be. And
Speaker 1: he was like, yeah, man, that sounds great, let's do it.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of where it started from there, I
Speaker 1: stood up. I had a social media page at the time, Um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't anything significant, but I kind of started to
Speaker 1: put out the word on social media what I was doing,
Speaker 1: and it just grew and it grew and it grew
Speaker 1: and it grew, and pretty soon, you know, other guys
Speaker 1: hit me up and said, you know, hey, I played,
Speaker 1: how can I be involved? And you know, now we've
Speaker 1: got a bass player, and you know, it just it
Speaker 1: grew organically. So it was it was really interesting to see.
Speaker 1: And I think if you put it out there and
Speaker 1: you're and you're true and you're altruistic, I think people
Speaker 1: can see that. If this was like a fake thing,
Speaker 1: I don't think it would have come off the same way.
Speaker 1: But even our producer came about the same way. He
Speaker 1: hit me up on social media and said, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm a Grammy Award winning producer and I would love
Speaker 1: to produce your first album, and let's let's make it happen.
Speaker 1: So it did, and uh, you know, it just kind
Speaker 1: of continues to grow. It's amazing to get a Grammy
Speaker 1: Award winning producer to hit you up instead of the
Speaker 1: other way around. Yeah, it turned it was interesting. It
Speaker 1: turns out he was a veteran also, so he he
Speaker 1: did four years in the Marine Corps and was in
Speaker 1: the process of trying to go to a force recon
Speaker 1: when that was still a thing and got hurt and
Speaker 1: so he elected to just get out of the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps and he did so. Anyway, you know, when I
Speaker 1: first saw him and I saw the direct message, I
Speaker 1: had to google him just to see if he was
Speaker 1: a legit person or not. And I was like, let's
Speaker 1: let's see who who does he produce? Oh? Justin Bieber,
Speaker 1: oh Ship, who else? You know? And it was just
Speaker 1: like one after the other. And the guy is literally
Speaker 1: probably the one of the hottest you know, pop producers,
Speaker 1: uh in the music industry. But he grew up listening
Speaker 1: to all the same stuff that that I liked, Alison
Speaker 1: Chains and Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots and you know,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So it was it was a good fit.
Speaker 1: And it was, you know, an amazing experience working with
Speaker 1: him and just kind of seeing his work ethic and
Speaker 1: you know, we did it for real. It wasn't it
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, we didn't take a half past approach,
Speaker 1: just like everything that I do. I'm I'm all in.
Speaker 1: You know, if I'm gonna do something, I'm going all
Speaker 1: in with it. I'm not gonna half acid. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. And those fans you mentioned, I remember loving
Speaker 1: all that music we say, you know, cover bands used
Speaker 1: to play that stuff down with the Flaming Munk and yeah,
Speaker 1: all the time. That was like that was the hangout,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the day. But so what was
Speaker 1: it like? I love hearing about the creative process. Now
Speaker 1: you got your music, you have a producer, you have bandmates.
Speaker 1: What was it like going into the studio and put
Speaker 1: it all together? Yeah? Even even then, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I started writing songs and I would send him to
Speaker 1: you know, one of one of my other bandmates is
Speaker 1: kind of like my first line supervisor in terms of
Speaker 1: approving or disapproving an idea, and so I would send
Speaker 1: him something and if it passed, if it passed the
Speaker 1: Mustard test and you know, hey, I like this, then
Speaker 1: I would kind of continue to work on it until
Speaker 1: it got to the point where okay, now it's pretty
Speaker 1: much a full song. I would send that out. You know,
Speaker 1: you can do that right on your iPhone. It doesn't
Speaker 1: take anything special. I would send that to all the guys.
Speaker 1: So by the time we would get together in person
Speaker 1: to rehearse, you know, we'd already know the material. It's
Speaker 1: not like you had to you know, we had to
Speaker 1: stand there and learn it together. We had to learn
Speaker 1: how to play it together, and learn how to transition
Speaker 1: from one part to the next, et cetera. So it
Speaker 1: took us, you know, basically from the time we met
Speaker 1: until the time we went into the studio. That whole
Speaker 1: time was just trying to get enough material together to
Speaker 1: go record, and we had to figure out what kind
Speaker 1: of band are we? Are we hard rock band? Are
Speaker 1: we ah? You know? Are we a modern sounding band?
Speaker 1: Are we what are our songs like? You know, what's
Speaker 1: our sound? All of that. We had to kind of
Speaker 1: like figure all that stuff out on the fly. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't something where you know, we were playing little
Speaker 1: clubs and oh hey, people like that song and you know,
Speaker 1: explored it that way. So we really had to kind
Speaker 1: of kind of just go by if we all like
Speaker 1: what what we're playing, and there's five of us, if
Speaker 1: we all like it, then then it can't be it
Speaker 1: can't be that bad. Um, it's all together different when
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, now you're in front of you know,
Speaker 1: multi Grammy award winning guy and it's like a dick
Speaker 1: measuring contest, you know, and it'd be like literally like
Speaker 1: you're exposing a part of yourself, you know, lay it
Speaker 1: out there on the table, Let's see what you've got,
Speaker 1: and you either got the goods or you don't. And
Speaker 1: it really was kind of it was eye opening in
Speaker 1: that regard because he was just trying to take something
Speaker 1: and make it even better. And so we would go in,
Speaker 1: you know, when we went into the studio, we have
Speaker 1: like kind of an eighty five or solution, and he's
Speaker 1: the guy that's taken it to you know, that's gotta
Speaker 1: be I mean there's an art to that and those people,
Speaker 1: you know, the creative people that do that stuff in
Speaker 1: the producers. I mean I've seen, you know, films of
Speaker 1: how they put stuff like that together. I always go
Speaker 1: back to when I was a kid, George Martin with
Speaker 1: the Beatles. I mean, you know a lot of that
Speaker 1: Beatles sound was because of him. I just think it's
Speaker 1: fascinating and uh, I think that's really really cool. I
Speaker 1: I know, like one of the other Delta guys, I
Speaker 1: don't know him personally, but I love his videos. Pat
Speaker 1: McNamara's yeah, that loves his He loves his hard, hard
Speaker 1: metal stuff, so you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, well I'm
Speaker 1: a friend of his, you know, so we really yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, well we'll communicate every now and again kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And we were in the same squadron for
Speaker 1: for a short period of time before he ended up leaving.
Speaker 1: But um, I was a very creative guy. And that's
Speaker 1: I think one of the things when people ask me,
Speaker 1: you know, what's something that you would say people would
Speaker 1: be surprised about, you know, Delta guys, or surprise about
Speaker 1: special operations people, and I always say the same thing,
Speaker 1: and that's creativity. And it doesn't have to be art.
Speaker 1: But special operations are kind of the only place in
Speaker 1: the military where you can adjust on the fly and
Speaker 1: if something doesn't work, or hey, we need to change
Speaker 1: a tactic, how can we be more creative than the enemy?
Speaker 1: How can we outsmart you know, the bad guys that
Speaker 1: are now caught onto what we're doing or how we're
Speaker 1: doing something. You've got to be one step ahead of that.
Speaker 1: And the only way to do that is to be creative.
Speaker 1: And you know, It's one of the one of the
Speaker 1: traits that I think a lot of guys within special
Speaker 1: operations have, you know, whether it's a dude that plays guitar,
Speaker 1: or whether it's to do the draws or you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. There's there's a lot of that
Speaker 1: out there, and that was a surprise to me. That's
Speaker 1: an artist, isn't he. Yeah, Yeah, he's He's an amazing artist.
Speaker 1: And a bunch of the going away plaques and things
Speaker 1: like that, there there are prints that were on prior
Speaker 1: to you know, Jim Deed's being an amazing artist and
Speaker 1: doing a lot of that stuff. There are a bunch
Speaker 1: of them that Pat had done and for years that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that would give you when you left,
Speaker 1: there was like a print that Pat had done. But yeah, amazing,
Speaker 1: amazing artist, you know. And yeah, yeah, and then videos,
Speaker 1: Yeah it's basic dude stuff. Yeah, basic dude stuff. There's
Speaker 1: another guy that I've recently caught on Instagram and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's be a Man and it's this guy from Boston,
Speaker 1: and they're all very short, they're like five or six
Speaker 1: second long videos. But he'll say things like if you're hurt,
Speaker 1: don't go to the hospital. Just die. Be amazing. And
Speaker 1: he's doing it in this Boston accent. It's fucking hilarious.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you're if you're on Instagram, check the
Speaker 1: guy out. Be a man. Yeah, I'll check that out.
Speaker 1: It's like being a man in Boston or something like that.
Speaker 1: Is a riot. If you don't know how to if
Speaker 1: you don't know how to fix something, just throw a
Speaker 1: fucking wrench across the room. Be a man. Yeah. Some
Speaker 1: of those people might be my relatives and that thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't fake that accent. You know. It's funny now
Speaker 1: because I talked to people and they were like, oh man,
Speaker 1: you have But when I go home, my relatives sell me,
Speaker 1: oh man, you sound like you've been living in the
Speaker 1: South your whole life, isn't it weird? Yeah, well you
Speaker 1: don't have an accent though, No, you know, well, you're
Speaker 1: the person with the thick Boston accent. You're saying I
Speaker 1: don't have an accent. But my my wife thinks because
Speaker 1: she's from Long Island, so she's got a really strong
Speaker 1: Long Island accent, and she'll imitate me and she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm bred, I'm brad, I'm from the South and and
Speaker 1: I'm like, don't hear it at all. I feel like
Speaker 1: I have a very neutral accent, and there might be
Speaker 1: a word here there that comes out that's a little
Speaker 1: twiny or something, but yeah, I think I'm pretty neutral
Speaker 1: in terms of accent. Yeah, that's funny. But you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things you mentioned was the the influence
Speaker 1: your parents had on your music, and you know, grow
Speaker 1: it struck your core with me because growing up, you know,
Speaker 1: my parents were into Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, and
Speaker 1: to this day, I still love that music because I
Speaker 1: used to hear it every weekend when my mother would
Speaker 1: be cooking Sunday dinner. You know, Sunday dinner is a
Speaker 1: big thing with the Italians in Boston. So yeah, my
Speaker 1: mother would be listener in Sinatra and Dean Martin records,
Speaker 1: and to this day, I still love that music. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a hoomie feeling, you know. We had Similarly,
Speaker 1: my my parents had either classical or you know, my
Speaker 1: dad was a little bit wild with bands like Chicago
Speaker 1: or Boston. Boston. Boston was probably is as heavy as
Speaker 1: he could go. And uh, you know, so I heard
Speaker 1: that stuff from a very young age, and I just
Speaker 1: was and I had an older sister, and you know,
Speaker 1: when she was a teenager, she starts listening to stuff
Speaker 1: and now I'm hearing that, and you know, car rides
Speaker 1: and things before cars had real stereos, um. You know,
Speaker 1: she would bring her like tape recorder in the car
Speaker 1: and play tapes and stuff. And I miss the days.
Speaker 1: You know. I love that on my phone that I'm
Speaker 1: talking to you on right now, I can like jump
Speaker 1: on and find any music I want. I think that
Speaker 1: that's an incredible, you know, gift to be able to
Speaker 1: do that. But what I miss is and at what
Speaker 1: I wish that kids today could And now I sound old, right,
Speaker 1: you kids don't know, Um, I wish that kids could
Speaker 1: understand the social aspect of discovering music like I did.
Speaker 1: So you know, before I was able to drive a
Speaker 1: car and had older friends that were driving, you know,
Speaker 1: we would jump in a car, go to the record store,
Speaker 1: spend a couple of hours, you know, perusing all the
Speaker 1: records and tapes and everything else before compact discs even,
Speaker 1: and you know, everybody would leave there was something and
Speaker 1: you could buy an album in those days for like
Speaker 1: four and maybe a double album might be like or
Speaker 1: something like that, but we'd we'd leave, we go to
Speaker 1: one of the dude's houses, cracks some beers and guys
Speaker 1: got to kind of take turns throwing stuff on the
Speaker 1: record player, and it was really kind of this social
Speaker 1: aspect of discovering music, you know, like I remember the
Speaker 1: dude that turned me on the Judas Priest. I remember
Speaker 1: the dude that turned me onto Van Halen, and you
Speaker 1: know how that all came to be, and it was
Speaker 1: it was a group thing. And then as a group
Speaker 1: you would go see live music together and it was like,
Speaker 1: man like, it was just it's amazing time. And I
Speaker 1: wish that there was something like that now. And that's
Speaker 1: that's the only thing that I don't enjoy about music
Speaker 1: being as accessible as it is now. Yeah, especially with
Speaker 1: you know, COVID, because I used to when I was young.
Speaker 1: I love going to concerts, you know. Yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: in in Boston, you know, the Eagles and Leonard skinnerd
Speaker 1: when they were first started out ten years after was opening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I'm really dating myself. Jethro Tull then, you know,
Speaker 1: a friend of my wife's and I he was a
Speaker 1: roadie from Metallica a few years ago, and so they
Speaker 1: were playing they where the New England Patriots played football.
Speaker 1: They were playing that big football stadium and this guy
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, you want to come down and meet
Speaker 1: us and come in the back of meet the band
Speaker 1: hang out. So we were just like, yeah, that's the awesome.
Speaker 1: So then, uh, you know, we hung out with Metallica
Speaker 1: backstage with Kid Rock was there, and then when the
Speaker 1: show started we were they were like where you going.
Speaker 1: We're like, We're gonna go to our seat. They're like,
Speaker 1: come standing on the side of the stage. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And the perspective is so different. And I'm just staying
Speaker 1: that I got goose bumps again because I remember that feeling,
Speaker 1: and it's got to be amazing as a musician when
Speaker 1: you're in front of people like that and you can
Speaker 1: see that you're you know, resonating with that audience, it's
Speaker 1: gotta be really cool. Yeah you you said that, and
Speaker 1: I got goose bumps. That's how much you know it
Speaker 1: means to me. And the power and the energy behind
Speaker 1: stuff when you're playing it and when you see somebody
Speaker 1: like singing your lyrics back to you, it's an amazing feeling.
Speaker 1: It's like it's to some degree validation, you know, I
Speaker 1: get that because of COVID, we haven't really paid to
Speaker 1: do a whole lot, so nobody's been able to do anything.
Speaker 1: But that's one of the things that we're looking forward to.
Speaker 1: I think we're doing some stuff here at the end
Speaker 1: of April, but it's a it's a special benefit show
Speaker 1: with Old Dominion Band and I'm a super familiar with them,
Speaker 1: but they're they're a pretty large act, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: do some stuff with them, and uh, and then hopefully
Speaker 1: last spring we were lining up some USO stuff and
Speaker 1: that all fell out due to COVID. I think we
Speaker 1: were going to be, you know, seven countries or seven
Speaker 1: bases in ten days kind of thing, and uh, seven
Speaker 1: shows kind of thing. So I'm hoping to get back
Speaker 1: onto some of that. But we're in the meantime. We've
Speaker 1: written a new album and got it all ready to
Speaker 1: go and done all the pre production rehearsals and kind
Speaker 1: of know and charted it out. It's it kind of
Speaker 1: becomes an Excel document, like, uh, this song called X
Speaker 1: you know, has four guitar tracks and there are two
Speaker 1: bass tracks, and we need to throw this extra vocal
Speaker 1: track on it. You start to kind of chart it
Speaker 1: out so that when you get in there and you're
Speaker 1: paying dollars a day just to be in the studio,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not fucking around trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what to do. So it's uh, I think we dropped
Speaker 1: about thirty five gs recording our last album, and that's
Speaker 1: just just the mechanical recording of everything. That's not including
Speaker 1: all the travel and all the flights and all of
Speaker 1: the hotels and everything else that goes into all that.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's one of the things that a
Speaker 1: part of our messages like we're not doing this to
Speaker 1: get rich. We're taking the music royalties that we get
Speaker 1: from selling music on iTunes or Apple Music or Spotify
Speaker 1: if you stream stuff. Um, it's all going to you know,
Speaker 1: two different special operations, sharitable organizations and first respond to
Speaker 1: organizations too. So if you want to help support us
Speaker 1: and help us offset costs, like buy a T shirt
Speaker 1: on our website or you know, buy a hat or
Speaker 1: something along those lines, but that's that's how you can
Speaker 1: help support us. But we'd rather you buy the music
Speaker 1: and have the music, and that's kind of our contribution
Speaker 1: to the veteran community, and we're trying to say, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole reason that I started this saying was to say,
Speaker 1: I've lived through some really tough times and lived through
Speaker 1: some really fierce battles, and you know, struggle with my
Speaker 1: share of you know, aftermath and everything else. And I'm
Speaker 1: taking those negative experiences and I'm doing something healthy and
Speaker 1: positive and creative with it, and I'm giving back to
Speaker 1: the community, which has given me a tremendous sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: So every now and again, I'll post some pictures of
Speaker 1: myself from from my time in the military. And the
Speaker 1: only reason I do that it's not to say like,
Speaker 1: look at me and and things like that. It's to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm a real person. I've been there, and if I
Speaker 1: can do it, you can do it too. It's kind
Speaker 1: of that old Ranger you know, motto of rangers lead
Speaker 1: the way, lead by example, and I'm just trying to say,
Speaker 1: I represent the community. I'm doing this and it's given
Speaker 1: me a tremendous sense of purpose and I feel great
Speaker 1: about it, and I love my bandmates and love what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. So you know, find out what what you
Speaker 1: can do, how you can get back and and do it.
Speaker 1: You know, you're doing something great. You're doing software up
Speaker 1: radio right, and you're having people on and you're allowing
Speaker 1: them to tell their stories and talk about what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's a great that's a great thing
Speaker 1: in itself because you're giving people a platform to talk
Speaker 1: about what they're doing and make a difference. You know,
Speaker 1: so all good stuff. Well, it's it's great to get
Speaker 1: to talk to different people, especially right now with the COVID.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we get to talk to people
Speaker 1: every week with different walks of life and and so
Speaker 1: I'm a music lover, so this was really exciting for
Speaker 1: me today. But hold that dot because I want to
Speaker 1: get back to where people can find your music. But
Speaker 1: first have to read a quick ad for one of
Speaker 1: our sponsors. So hello again everyone, it's me Steve Alstreia.
Speaker 1: Once again, I wanted to let you know about this
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Speaker 1: are going through a hard time. And as we all know,
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Speaker 1: that's R E A c H dot gov to learn
Speaker 1: the steps everyone can take to prevent suicide. Check it
Speaker 1: out how we reach coaching tool today. And please to
Speaker 1: do is that folks check out on on your friends
Speaker 1: and your relatives, reach out to them. If somebody struggling,
Speaker 1: be there for him. So with that said, we're back.
Speaker 1: We're talking with Brad Thomas. Uh, former ranger, Delta guy
Speaker 1: and musician. You've pretty much covered the whole much of
Speaker 1: you know, different things to do in your life. But
Speaker 1: tell our listeners where they can find your music, where
Speaker 1: they can buy it from, and what what's coming up? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so anywhere you know, First of all, Google is an
Speaker 1: amazing thing and I have people that still comments or
Speaker 1: make comments on social media about you know, Hey, where
Speaker 1: can I find your thing? Uh, It's on every music
Speaker 1: platform that you would normally get music. So wherever you
Speaker 1: normally get music, type in silence and light and you'll
Speaker 1: find it whether that's iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Um, there
Speaker 1: are fifty five other fifty seven other digital streaming platforms
Speaker 1: where you can find it YouTube. If you want a
Speaker 1: physical CD, they're available on Amazon, so you know, anywhere
Speaker 1: that you would normally get music, it's available there. Um.
Speaker 1: So what we've got going on is we just finished
Speaker 1: all the pre production kind of rehearsals and got all
Speaker 1: the tunes ironed out for album too, and we'll go
Speaker 1: into the studio mid June through mid July roughly and
Speaker 1: get all that recorded. That'll go to mixing and mastering
Speaker 1: and get get tweaked a little bit from there and
Speaker 1: hopefully be able to launch it, you know, end of August,
Speaker 1: beginning of September. That's probably being generous and very optimistic,
Speaker 1: but that's our goal. So we've got a publicist on
Speaker 1: board who is uh happens to be Assi's publicists too,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of cool, uh, kind of a cool thing.
Speaker 1: But she'll once we get into the studio and start recording,
Speaker 1: she'll get on board and help starting to promote things
Speaker 1: outside of uh, you know, veteran and soft related media
Speaker 1: and things like that. So we're looking forward to kind
Speaker 1: of being able to tell our story to a community
Speaker 1: that's never heard of us and and never heard of that.
Speaker 1: So that's going to be a good time. But yeah,
Speaker 1: by there's stuff available now. Our first albums out came
Speaker 1: out in December, and uh yeah, the second second album
Speaker 1: should be out hopefully by this September, and I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna do some vinyl and things like that. But um,
Speaker 1: just to mention again, you know, we're taking a percent
Speaker 1: of the the royalties music royalties that we're getting from
Speaker 1: selling music and streaming music. Uh, we're taking a percent
Speaker 1: of that and given it to two different charitable organizations.
Speaker 1: And the two charitable organizations that we're giving to one
Speaker 1: is Warrior's Heart and that's a physical place in Texas
Speaker 1: that was stood up by a former unit member buddy
Speaker 1: of mine named Tom Spooner. And they get guys who
Speaker 1: are struggling, they get them cleaned up because generally ptsd
Speaker 1: s and just something that you know, it's not a
Speaker 1: thing that just by itself that's usually wrapped up in
Speaker 1: a bunch of other things like substance abuse or uh
Speaker 1: you know, behavior that's not appropriate, whatever it might be. Um,
Speaker 1: they get guys cleaned up and they get them into
Speaker 1: treatment and they get them counseling, but they use art
Speaker 1: as a form of therapy. And I love that. I
Speaker 1: love that. It could be sculpting, it could be welding,
Speaker 1: it could be music, it could be drawing, painting, art,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be, but they use that as a
Speaker 1: form of therapy. And that's something that you know, is
Speaker 1: near and dear to me. The other organization is the
Speaker 1: Marine Raider Foundation, and they are a great group that
Speaker 1: directly helps families that are in need in the Marsac
Speaker 1: and Marine raider community. So if if a young Marine
Speaker 1: raider is killed in combat, you know, they're taking care
Speaker 1: of the family. They're getting the family travel arrangements if
Speaker 1: they need that. They're taking care of hotel rooms for
Speaker 1: family members. Uh, somebody's yard needs to be cut, whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. They're they're able to take funds and directly,
Speaker 1: you know, get those two, the families of fallen mars
Speaker 1: Ock raiders. So those are the two that we're supporting
Speaker 1: right now. And that may change, uh you know, maybe
Speaker 1: next year for tax purposes or something like that, but
Speaker 1: for right now, that's who we're contributing to. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: And then I haven't heard of the Marine Raider group,
Speaker 1: but I'll definitely check those guys out. You know, there's
Speaker 1: so many great as you mentioned earlier in the podcast,
Speaker 1: so many great foundations that are out there. They're doing
Speaker 1: great work for our special operators and ours who needed
Speaker 1: so I you know, personally, I I give to a
Speaker 1: couple and we encourage all of our readers and listeners
Speaker 1: to do the same. But make sure you check out
Speaker 1: Silence and Light with Brad Thomas before we go. I
Speaker 1: just need to let our listeners know if you want
Speaker 1: to get soft Reap on your phone, download our free
Speaker 1: mobile app and get easy access to our articles, podcasts,
Speaker 1: and gear reviews, all perfectly formatted to your device. Please
Speaker 1: subscribe to softwarep dot com to get access to our
Speaker 1: library of the books and our exclusive team room forms
Speaker 1: and content available on all your Apple and Android devices. Brad,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you once again being patient. I
Speaker 1: know it was we had some stuff go haywire on
Speaker 1: us this afternoon, but it was really great to talk
Speaker 1: to you and it's, uh, it's pretty interesting what you
Speaker 1: guys are doing. I think it's great that you guys are,
Speaker 1: you know, giving back to the community and the fact
Speaker 1: that a bunch of operators are out there making great
Speaker 1: music and we encourage all our listeners to check it out.
Speaker 1: It's really good stuff. So thanks for taking the time
Speaker 1: with us today. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And like
Speaker 1: I said, you know, it's you guys are providing a
Speaker 1: great service and getting people a voice where they may
Speaker 1: not you know, be heard necessarily, and you know that's
Speaker 1: that's a tremendous service too. So we we appreciate you
Speaker 1: having us on and having me on and you know,
Speaker 1: help help spread the word. So thank you. Oh, I
Speaker 1: look forward to the second album and uh yeah, we'll definitely. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'd like to have you back again sometime in the
Speaker 1: future when you guys release some more music and maybe
Speaker 1: we can talk some more about that. Yeah, no, I'd
Speaker 1: love to. There's the it's gonna be slamming. We took it.
Speaker 1: We definitely took it up a notch and all around
Speaker 1: it just more mature songs, better songs everything and sweet
Speaker 1: found who we are and uh and we're looking forward
Speaker 1: to getting it out. So I would love to come
Speaker 1: back anytime. Man. Well for myself, Steve Belchhari Brad Thomas,
Speaker 1: please check out his band Silence and Light. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with another podcast here real soon. You've been listening
Speaker 1: to self red Lydia