Blues Traveler Honors Troops with "Forever Owed"

To all the men and women of the US Armed Forces,

Track one of "North Hollywood Shootout" is a very important song to me. It's called "Forever Owed" and is unlike any song I have written. When you are writing songs for an album you tend to refer to personal experience and this usually runs the gamut of love and personal growth. For three Thanksgivings this last decade, I got to experience something that was beyond me. I had gotten glimpses of it when Blues Traveler went to Korea and Japan in 1998 with the USO visiting various troops and airbases as well as the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk, Bosnia and Kosovo in 2002. I got to learn a little more closely about sacrifices made on behalf of all of us in this country, sacrifices that I have heard of from the lore of my parents and ancestors. When you are young you hear talk of honor, but it doesn't prepare you for the impact it has when you meet it face to face in the real world. The USO had indeed opened our eyes as civilians to this incredibly selfless spirit of dedicating ones energy to something higher.

In late 2004 we signed on with the Air Force Reserve to head to the Middle East. Our band has had at one point or another many relatives throughout the services, based on that alone we felt that we owed it to our heritage. But we were about to learn first hand the feeling of personally owing someone you have never met. Oddly enough this feeling comes not from receiving. This in fact was our first chance to just do something for someone else, and to give. When you look into the eyes of a Marine who has been wounded and you see that what bothers him most is that his brothers are still down range and he's mad at himself because he's not up there with them you can't believe how idealistically and how purely that man can love something outside of himself. And when you see that same man affected by the fact that you care, that you actually bothered to come and visit him and thank him... well for me it was in a way the first time I truly felt useful.

Trying to keep up with the troops just in order to entertain them was physically demanding but also awe inspiring. Every single person there had chosen to be there wearing their ideals and beliefs on their sleeve. This includes the families of the service men and women who exhibit as much courage as the most battle hardened warrior.

Truthfully I've met so many great people at the USO and Air Force Reserve and these were people like me. Civilians who get that excellent glimpse and get to know what's being done on our behalf. The third time I went I got to finally go down range. We played Balad in Baghdad in Iraq as well as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and I tried my best to remember every second.

The local lives that are saved by our troops never get reported and I felt very lucky getting to witness. On the way home we stopped by a hospital in Germany and some of the troops we had entertained in Afghanistan had just been hit and sadly had beaten us there. There was one soldier who was badly wounded. I had gone to that hospital for three years, and it was while listening to this particular soldier's tale, and how he regretted and couldn't understand why he had made it and his Corporal didn't, that I finally burst into tears. I will never forget the feeling of this man pulling himself up with his one remaining limb to hug me. It is a feeling I will keep with me forever.

I have caught so many of these moments on my digital camera, unfortunately, the camera went missing. It really doesn't matter because these images and countless others are burned into my brain, and will certainly forever be framed in my heart. And over and over what I kept taking away was the awareness of something that will always be owed to the men and women who fight for our freedom. What I love about my song is its simple truth, which isn't a statement of political belief or philosophy but just the facts; "til I can bring you home no I will never really be free". Because you who serve are not only a part of us but the best of us. I will carry my meager taste of honor with me for the rest of my life. And I truly believe it has made me a better man because once you have experienced serving something higher than yourself, you are forever changed and the feeling is forever owed.

- John Popper