Military record label prepping next album

Entertainment

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By Seamus O’Connor - soconnor@militarytimes.com

To The Fallen Records, a label featuring only current and former military personnel, is gearing up to release its next albums. Their first CD, “To the Fallen — Vol. 1,” a hip-hop compilation, debuted in 2007.

The next project was going to be a rock/country combo album to debut late that year, but the overwhelming number of submissions means there will be a separate album for each genre, according to Sean Gilfillan, the labels co-founder and a former Army captain.

“We get about 20 submissions a day,” Gilfillan said in an e-mail.

The country and rock songs speak about the same basic ideas as the rap and hip-hop on the first album: loving music, praise for the armed forces and the fear and stress of going to war. The albums promise to be true samplers, with possible tracks featuring heavy metal, emo and Springsteen-style rock, as well as honky-tonk and pure country ballads.

The tracks are submitted by military members all over the world, Gilfillan said, including from those currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The seven tracks submitted for the rock and country albums available for preview now are still in a rough stage, because they have not been cleaned up in production yet, he added.

“We base our choice on the overall message, the ‘feel’ of the song, the lyrics, the music, and the singer’s voice,” Gilfillan’s e-mail said. ”During this stage we are looking at potential ... not quality of the production and recording.”

For all the artists, but especially the active-duty service members, To The Fallen Records offers a rare chance to have their potential recognized. With deployments and duty obligations taking up much of their time, many artists feel strained to enhance their musical careers.

“That’s a challenge,” said Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Greg Perpignan, whose stage name is G.R.E. “Most of the time, when you talk about the music industry, that’s happening (during) late night hours. So I have to balance that between work, family and my dreams.

“Whenever I get a chance, I just take it, in other words.”

Army Spc. Erik Lee Conley (artist name E. Lee Con) was forced to choose between military and music when the band Kilgore asked him to be their roadie during the Ozzfest tour in 1998. He went with them, but promised his commanding officer he would return to the Rhode Island Army National Guard. He held up that promise by re-enlisting in 2004, and is now a potential artist for the upcoming TTFR rock album.

“All I want now is to play for all deployed troops worldwide with my band, as a soldier, for the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines,” Conley said in an e-mail.

Spc. Brandon Boggs, a.k.a. Bank Roll, said that it’s “very difficult” to find time to be both a soldier and a rapper. At the same time, the two are intertwined, he said. It was on his first of three tours in Iraq that “I noticed that freedom ... I felt I really know what it was about,” he said.

Also common among the artists is appreciation for TTFR’s focus on military artists, which they say was lacking in the music industry.

“I thought it was about damn time when I first heard about (TTFR),” Perpignan said. “There’s a bunch of people out there that are talented, and no one was there listening. Of course big record companies are not going to pay attention, because we’re not mainstream. But hopefully, that will change.”