If he weren’t already well-known as one of Fort Worth’s best frontmen for his work with indie-rockers Cut Throat Finches, Sean Russell might have a high profile based on his compassionate activism. Lately, Russell has shown this with efforts to organize a veteran-focused music festival as well as coordinating contributions to help a vet impacted by the Cooper Apartments fire.
Russell, winner of a Panthy for best male vocalist in the most recent Fort Worth Weekly Music Awards, has a special connection with vets. That was evident as we walked through the square in Granbury, where he’d gone for a business meeting, and he lasered in on the plethora of signs commemorating veterans’ past service.
“Is this always here?” he said.
Assured it was, the former Army infantryman nodded approvingly.
Nodding is something the good-humored Russell does a lot, but he doesn’t stop there. After former Air Force medic Leo Hartfield was displaced by the Cooper blaze, Russell threw an appeal for donations to his 5,000-plus Facebook following. In short order, people across the area responded generously with offers of everything from a refrigerator and a washer and dryer to silverware and curtains, including a bed, toys, and other items for Hartfield’s plus-size dog, Bane.
Hartfield, who lost his father not long after the apartment fire displaced him, was unable to provide an interview for this article, but in a social media post, he gave special thanks for the dog-related items.
“Bane went crazy,” Hartfield said. “Every toy and bed you got him, he can’t put down.”
For his part, Russell can’t seem to put down his concern for people transitioning from military service to the civilian world. At the same time he was raising support for Hartfield, he was initiating plans for a vet-focused event called Rally Point Music Showcase.
Courtesy Cut Throat Finches
“In the military,” Russell explained, “a rally point is where you regroup when everything goes wrong. That’s the crux of Rally Point Music. Let’s regroup. Let’s see what tools you have and what wounds you have.”
With that in mind, the planned event will take place on or around Veterans Day at a still-to-be chosen Fort Worth venue. It will consist of musical performances as well as booths staffed by organizations providing services to veterans.
“The idea of the concert is to feature vet musicians,” Russell said.
No less important will be the presence of organizations offering assistance with physical, mental, and other challenges of leaving military life.
“The idea of that is to get as many vets together as possible and connect them with services,” Russell said.
Russell credits music with providing vital help as he reentered civilian life, and other vet musicians say the same. Clay Anderson is a Marine veteran who was with the initial wave of U.S. troops into Iraq. After leaving the service, he studied audio engineering and today is lead engineer at The Cicada.
“I’m also a musician, and I’ve been writing music for about as long as I’ve been doing audio,” Anderson said. “I started getting into writing at the end of my time in the Marine Corps in 2004.”
Anderson plans to participate in Rally Point and said vets with something to sing could get solid benefits from the event.
“It really can be therapeutic to write about things that you experienced, whether they’re traumatic or not,” he said. “As a songwriter, you can talk your way through some of your past experiences by writing a song about it. That’s a very valuable thing.”
Kasey Dixon, a former Army Apache helicopter mechanic, plays cello for all sorts of gigs around Fort Worth, from classical to rock. A music major before entering the Army, Dixon started playing with local bands out of Fort Hood and found music served a critical function during the transition out of the service.
“Since then, I’ve seen many veterans who play music,” Dixon said. “It seems to be a common story that music was something that was there to help us work through sometimes very complex feelings about our service and things we experienced or saw. I think what [Russell] is doing is a superpower to give veterans in our area a chance to not only have a platform to play music but to have other folks discover them.”
For some vets, Rally Point could be much more than a musical career boost. Shannon Book served as a combat medic for the Marines through some of the war in Iraq’s most intense episodes of combat and says music literally saved his life.
“When I came back from Fallujah, I didn’t know how to express what was in my head,” said Book, now an Austin-based speaker and musician who travels the country addressing audiences on post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury, and suicide prevention. “When I finally realized that I could express it — loudly and obnoxiously — through music, I did. I started writing my feelings down and creating music around it, and I created bands to help me express all of it.”
Russell hopes that, through Rally Point Music, he and other musical vets like these can serve as examples for vets who haven’t yet been able to harness music to help handle life after military service. Rather than providing a handout, he wants to give vets a respectable way to connect to other ex-military musicians. At the same time, he’ll present an opportunity to tap into targeted services along with the reassurance that they deserve to use them.
This isn’t a passing fancy for Russell. He’s into it enough that he’s considering “Rally Point” as the title of a new album he’s releasing in January. Before then, look for the single “Unsettled Minds” that describes the troubled sleep of a 20-year Green Beret. Planned release date for the single? When else? Veterans Day, Nov. 11.
