Project D.R.E.W.

• [06:29] The Barn That Started It: How a few bands in a driveway became "Barnegie Hall" — and, eventually, a nonprofit.
• [15:02] Delivering Restorative Energy: What Project D.R.E.W. actually does over one weekend — Saturday, they talk; Sunday, the song is played out loud for the first time.
• [16:02] The Stories They've Never Told: How a stranger with a guitar reaches what decades of family never could.
• [23:19] Why It Works: Brian Ferguson on why songwriters who never served are exactly the right people to draw a veteran's story out.
• [35:15] A Crazy Good Turn: Our guests on who has done a crazy good turn for them.
• [39:50] The Man in the Song: A veteran hears a song about a rescue mission — and realizes he'd been among those rescued.
• [42:00] Captain Drew Ferguson's Song: The song Drew wrote as a young man, now sung by the whole room at the close of every workshop.

FRANK BLAKE: Well, Marilyn, Brian Ferguson, and Mike, welcome. We're thrilled to have you on the show and thrilled at what you all do at Project DREW for our audience. And unusual element in this podcast is that Brian Sabin, our producer, whose name you'll hear at the end of every podcast is also joining as a participant in the episode because he was a strong advocate for you all appearing on the podcast, knows you, lives in your area and has a passion for what you're doing. So welcome Brian Sabin as well.

BRIAN SABIN: Well, thank you, Frank. It's a pleasure to be here.

FRANK BLAKE: All right. So I'm going to just start with a general question of would you describe Project DREW for our audience? And I will rely on Marilyn, Brian, and Mike, you to sort through who provides that description.

MICHAEL WINNEN: You want to start us off, Marilyn?

MARILYN ZEIDNER: Sure. I'd say that Project DREW honors someone's service. That's the whole purpose is to create a lasting tribute to their service. And also we are very concerned about social support because that is a protective factor for suicide. So we like to connect the veterans to us and then to each other and they do keep coming back. So the ones who've already participated come back to support the new ones. But basically in a nutshell, it is to honor their service.

MICHAEL WINNEN: And the way we do that, workshops, as we call them, are weekend workshops, pairing songwriters and veterans together. And if you've had a chance to check out our new website, among our taglines are your stories of service, crafted in song, shared in tribute. And it's that simple and not that complicated. There's no prescription for what we're asking vets to do when they come to join us, but we sit and listen for a large chunk of the time. We spend the Saturday, day, afternoon, sometimes into the evening and listen to what story that they would like to tell. And our songwriters are amazing people. They're some of my favorite folks to hang out with and work with and they're able to take all it in and give a reflection on their conversation into music. And then really we let the power of music do the rest.

FRANK BLAKE: So I understand that one of the drivers for this is honoring Drew Ferguson, Captain Drew Ferguson, who is a special forces team leader and an Army Ranger. Perhaps if one of you would give background on him and why this manner of honoring him struck you as so appropriate.

MARILYN ZEIDNER: Brian?

MICHAEL WINNEN: I'll let you take that one, Brian.

BRIAN FERGUSON: Well, right on. So yeah, the name Project DREW, back to what do we do? Marilyn and Mike both nailed it. It's ultimately bringing stories of service to life through music, which is a profound experience, writing a song. I'm a veteran myself. I think anyone who served, no matter how long or where, it is this wearing the nation's cloth and serving at that level is something that can easily be discounted when you leave. And when you go back and you really take time to think about what it meant to you, to the people around you, the people you served with, it's profound. But the namesake of Project DREW is a clever acronym that Marilyn came up with, which is delivering restorative energy to our warriors. But more importantly, my brother was Drew Ferguson, as you just mentioned, Frank. And so Drew was younger than me, but had a more prolific career in the military.

He actually joined ahead of me and Drew wanted to join the Army as a kid. Our mom encouraged him. I first wanted him to go to college and he did that, but he actually went to Ohio University and just had a very successful time in ROTC. And out of that, by the time he graduated, the nation had two wars that were flaring. He went right to Ranger School and then became an infantry officer, served in the 10th Mountain Division, did one of these really long 14-month deployments to Iraq. And then afterwards, went through what's called special forces selection. So in the world of special operations, you have Green Berets and Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, Marine Raiders. And so Drew wanted to be a Green Beret, went through that selection course, which is very rigorous. And out of that, became a special forces team leader in 10th Special Forces group in Germany.

All in, he did four deployments, one to Iraq, two to Afghanistan, and one to Africa. Two, what are called operational detachment alpha ODA team leader tours, which is pretty rare. And he had an amazing career. I think the backside of that, which is sort of the subtext of the harder part of this conversation is that when Drew got out, he grappled for a number of reasons. And in 2017, he ultimately took his own life. And that was, as you can imagine, heavy for our family, for our community, for our friends and the larger ecosystem of teammates that he had. At that time, Drew, what's interesting, music was a huge part of his life. And my cousin Mike who's on, Mike went in, was a cousin of Drew's. And his kids, we had a lakehouse in Ohio and they would often play around the bonfire. And Drew found music, I think, to be an anchor, a way to bring people together.

So on deployment, he often had a guitar with him and would play songs in Afghanistan and Africa and that was a big part of his life. And so to see this legacy of something he loved be a way to elevate him in death, but also bring people together. We can spend a lot of time talking about it, but it is wildly profound.

MARILYN ZEIDNER: Can I add something to that?

BRIAN FERGUSON: Of course.

MARILYN ZEIDNER: In 2007, I had started this nonprofit Music on a Mission, which Drew is one program of it. But before that, before Drew, we take the power of music to people with different needs of all ages. So kids with disabilities, we go into 25 classes a month. I have a barn, Barnegie Hall, on my property that Drew used to play in upstairs, not just with my daughter, but with all their friends. And so after he left high school, I never saw him again, but he heard through his friends and my daughter that the barn had been renovated into a music venue and we have concerts that helped to support Music on a Mission. So he kept sending me money for Music on a Mission because he was a musician himself. So that's really why I was so compelled to name it after him, name the program after him.

MICHAEL WINNEN: Honestly, that's the first time Marilyn and I met. We had a memorial service for Drew in Veterans' Memorial Park in Avon Lake, right up on the lake, members of this military community and family and arts and all aspects of his life like nothing else I've ever participated in. And we played music for him and Marilyn, we said hello. We first met each other. Marilyn introduced herself and described her work as she did just a minute ago. And she said, "I've been meaning to do this kind of program with veterans and songwriters and I want to name it after your cousin." So I was floored. I was like, "I can't believe it. Well, can I come check it out? Can I help?"

And when I read Frank and Brian about your podcast and Crazy Good Turns and thinking about acknowledging these moments in your life, that would be a big one for me. If anything positive could come out of losing Drew, man, here it is. This is for me life changing, but we hope life changing for many people that join us, veterans and songwriters, it's just really special and profound work. And like I say, that would be a major one, a crazy good turn that could come out of losing Drew.

FRANK BLAKE: Can I ask you when you started this, and you do these in workshops and you'll have several veterans and then songwriters, did you think we're going to do this once and then you said, "Oh gosh, this really worked"? Or did you know this was something you wanted to carry? You just knew, "Hey, we're going to do this for a while." Or was it more, "We're going to do one event," and then there was such a positive response that built on its own?

MARILYN ZEIDNER: No, I knew that we were going to continue to do it. There are other programs around the country that do similar things. And so one of our song, somebody that had been doing concerts for us from Nashville had told me about a program in Austin that's different than ours, but that's where I got the idea. So I knew already that it was going to be a good idea, but I had no idea the magic that really happens. And a lot of our songwriters and veterans stay in touch with each other and they're invited to both ways, to birthday parties, celebrations, holidays. And to your point about public, we encourage our audience, including all the veterans, to follow the songwriters wherever they play out and many of them. In fact, just in the last month, we had one songwriter who was invited to sing a song, a Drew song at the Vietnam Memorial on Memorial Day.

And we had another songwriter who had done a song for a Holocaust survivor who was also an army veteran and she performed her song for 2,600 people, students and adults in two different events. So we do try to get them out and our songwriters have been asked to sing at funerals and they make a very close connection with each other.

FRANK BLAKE: So I'm curious, Brian Sabin, what connected you with Project DREW?

BRIAN SABIN: Well, so I've known Brian since high school, as he mentioned earlier. And I met his little brother, Drew, exactly once. And he was that memorable and that he was at a party where I was at and he was the most charismatic person in the entire building, just one of these people that just has a magnetic personality. You like him, even though you don't know him, you talk to him three times and you're like, "That kid's great," and it stays with you your entire life. And I don't know him well, but I know him enough and I know his story enough to know that he could have done anything. So for him to serve the country the way that he did is admirable. And then when things went the way that they went, as Brian said earlier, it was a tragedy, certainly for them, but really something that I think our entire community felt.

And Project DREW grew out of this terrible event like you'd see flowers grow from the dirt because at Drew's funeral, Mike was there and he performed one of Drew's songs and it was a really powerful moment that I still remember. And so I don't know how long, and maybe Brian or Marilyn, you guys can comment on this. I don't know how long there was a gap between that moment and the start of Project DREW, but when Project DREW started, it just seemed so natural like, "Oh, of course. Of course that's the perfect tribute to him." And so I'd be curious to find out about that period, how you all decided that this was going to be how you carried things forward. And then Brian, I'd be curious to hear from you as a veteran, why does this work? Why does songwriting work?

BRIAN FERGUSON: Yeah, I think number one, I think what's brilliant is Marilyn immediately started that fall. Drew passed away the summer of 2017, that is gosh, nine years ago, which is surreal. And then she and Mike got going almost immediately. And the reason it works to Brian's question is there is an oversaturation. I am involved in a lot of veteran organizations. I live in Nashville. I kid around... I go to a fundraiser every week, every day, frankly. It is beautiful that our country is in a moment where there is an appreciation and understanding of what service means, especially at 20 years of a nation at war. The problem with that is the competition for resources gets scarce and that can create distraction and sort of confusion of where should a veteran spend time. What Marilyn and Mike have done, number one, my brother left behind enough resources to allow Project DREW to really be self-sustaining initially and Maryland runs it in a very austere way where it doesn't require a lot.

So the beauty is there doesn't have to be fundraising. And so the experience is wholly authentic. There's something that is very American about Cleveland, Ohio. And I do think when you look at just the demographic of people who served in both wars, there's an outsized amount of soldiers, sailors, airmen who came from Ohio and that part of the country because it's grounded, it's simple. And so when you go into this barn, literally this quintessential Midwest barn that's been converted to a music studio and you're paired with a songwriter and just a very authentic rounded experience is wholly my brother. I mean, my brother, I live in Nashville, Tennessee. There's a program here. It's under the lights and the fanciness of the Grand Ole Opry, which is incredible, but most veterans come out of a world where they're more comfortable in simplicity and authenticity. And so you get paired with a singer-songwriter and there is no pressure.

There's no lights, there's no camera, it's tell your story of service. And we have had veterans from every conflict World War II to present day. Marilyn mentioned Holocaust survivors. And when people start to tell their story in the right setting where it's not about recording you, it's not about sort of putting up on a pedestal to talk about a broken veteran, it allows a catharsis that people don't expect to... They don't see coming. And again, you've seen people in special operations to one of my favorite songs is I've Got a Brother and it's about a Marine who served in the '90s when there's no conflict and he just talks about what it meant to raise your hand to look out for your teammate or your brother. And so that experience, again, is cathartic. When you pair that with this private concert and you hear other veterans, there's something that the common thread of service is prolific. It elevates your soul.

I went through the program. My best friend's dad served in Vietnam and he was a door gunner and he never spoke about his service growing up. When I went through the program, he was in the program with me. And here's a guy who I admired my whole life, never spoke about what he did. He goes through this and he's so proud. He invites his family. And for my best friend growing up, for him to see his father tell a story and see a song, there's something that brings a family together. It's a broken loop that's been mended and that can sound heavy, but it's done in a way that it's just beautiful. So it works because it's simple, it's about your story and it's not about the fanfare or the fanciness of songwriting and it's not trying to leverage anyone's service in a way that's broken or more than there needs to be, which is just you raised your hand to do something hard on behalf of the nation.

FRANK BLAKE: So would you take us through one or more of you how the workshops work? So how many people are in it? How many days? What's the process?

MARILYN ZEIDNER: Sure, sure. But I want to add something to what Brian said. I already had been overwhelmed by getting money from Drew when I hadn't seen him for 25 years or something. So when I heard that he died, that was in July, his memorial was in August. I already had a workshop planned, the name, everything. I just needed to make sure that Brian okayed it, but I had it all in place. I knew I was going to do this then. And so the idea is we keep it to no more than six veterans at a time. We keep it small so that it stays very intimate and we pair the veterans one-on-one privately with a songwriter and they go off in different parts of the barn to talk. But that's the other thing that I wanted to add to Brian's, what Brian said, is that there's something about the connection that the songwriters who are listening so intently. And we've had a lot of veterans say they've never felt so seen or heard because of that listening and the empathy that the songwriters have, but also they're talking to a stranger.

And we've also had veterans tell us that they can't talk to their wife, for example, because it's too much and that she can't take it. So he doesn't talk to her about it. I mean, not everyone, but just a few people have told us that. And so to talk to a stranger, you don't have to worry about hurting someone's feelings or what they're going to think about it. They just talk. And one woman told me that her husband was a Vietnam veteran. She told me it took him 40 years to tell her the story that he just blurted out to a songwriter. So there is some kind of magic connection. Mike, you want to talk more about the workshop itself, about the weekend?

MICHAEL WINNEN: Sure. And what Marilyn hasn't said yet, and I usually remind people of, is she plays such a key role in we gather vets that are interested and she's, "Okay, which workshop can you join?" And then we do have new songwriters, but we've grown to a larger circle of songwriters. And speaking of magic, Marilyn does have a knack for... I think these two would work really well together. And I got to say, every time, the songs that come out and the connections, it's really remarkable. And it can be simple little cues like, "What kind of music do you like?" And so anyway, so Marilyn's doing that behind the scenes, if you will, beforehand leading up to our workshops. But then just a basic structure. It's a Saturday morning meetup at the barn and it's just veterans and songwriters and few the project team.

And we do an introduction in a circle and why are we here and what we'll do today. And it's really only it's 20 minutes, half an hour. And then the rest of the time is just to pick a spot throughout the barn or outside on the grounds and share that space. It's really low key. Marilyn usually has some homemade food for lunch and some folks talk for a couple hours and they're good and other folks spend the entire afternoon. And each of our songwriters have a different way that they work. But then the next day, very next day, we'll come back to the barn noon-ish, 1:00-ish, and the songwriters have prepared this song and we'll play it, perform it, and we'll record it for the first time in a very small concert. So about 2:00 in the afternoon, we're sharing those songs for the first time.

And while Brian mentioned earlier, it's not glitzed up or produced, but I will say also behind the scenes we do have really great equipment in the barn. And to play in there and hear music in there is just really great. Sonically, it's home. And so Curtis, our sound engineer, and Jim Moraldi, who's really the architect of the barn, help us get really great recordings because it is nerve-wracking. As a songwriter, you just want it to be perfect and it won't be perfect, but you want it to sound really good and they can be very emotional to even play through a song like that. And it's new to you too. It's brand new, so you're learning the song too. But Jim and the team help us get a really good recording. And then that's usually some photographs at the end and exchanging embraces and mobile numbers and all that.

And then about a week or two later, the songs would be up on our website and some of that's like a CD as well, but basically we publish the songs. And we've asked the vets, of course too, the songwriters and vets, they own the song, but we ask them for a release so we can use it on our website so that others can access it.

FRANK BLAKE: And what feedback do you get from the songwriters from their perspective?

MARILYN ZEIDNER: Many of them tell us it's the most meaningful thing they do as a songwriter or as a musician. They're very nervous because it's a huge responsibility. Most songwriters, they write from their own experience and to write someone else's song and repeat it with that same emotion and same feelings is difficult and a big responsibility. And sometimes it happens, they don't like each other. I mean, the songwriter doesn't agree with whatever, but they still come up with the best song ever. So our songwriters are talented. I would put them up with anybody anywhere.

MICHAEL WINNEN: They're amazing. It's not for everybody. I know musicians who are fantastic and that's just not... They're like, "Wait a minute, 24 hours?" They're like, "I don't know. I haven't written a song in a week, let alone a day." But I think some of our songwriters also enjoy that challenge. I mean, they feel like, "It makes me a better musician." They feel good about writing a song for someone else. That creative tension seems to work. Our songwriters are like, "Gosh, if you're willing to share your story with me, the least I can do is play some guitar or piano and write a song for you." And some of the vets are like, "Okay, I could talk all afternoon, but what do you got in mind? You got to play something tomorrow." And it's a song, and there's nothing like a deadline. So that creative tension is part of, I think, what makes it work.

BRIAN SABIN: And Mike, you're one of those songwriters, right? You do this sometimes to him?

MICHAEL WINNEN: I am. So one thing, main role that I have, Brian, is along with Marilyn and Jim and the project team, I helped to MC the events and we played Drew's song at the end, the one that he wrote many years ago, shared with us for the first time at Kelleys Island. So we play his song called I Know A Place, and we'll invite the songwriters and vets from that workshop to join us. So that song comes out different every time, but I have written a brief story. I had an opportunity to write with one of Drew's teammates that deployed with him. So Alex Arthur, there's an iconic photo on our website, kind of a selfie that Drew took some training thing. They're getting ready to blow a bunch of stuff up and they took a selfie and Alex's over his shoulder was his comms officer. They called him Echo.

And so Alex and I met and was really special because we were telling him stories of growing up with Drew and Alex is telling us all about serving with Drew. But Alex and I wrote together a song that is called Echo and it's about his experience getting into the military, going through special forces, becoming a communications officer and how those experiences have translated into his life as a family man and lives in Texas. So I have written before and I've written other songs for Drew, but in the workshop just that once. And I can say it's profound and it's a challenge, but very, very rewarding.

BRIAN SABIN: So I'm really interested to hear as a songwriter and someone who's coming into this, you know you're going to meet a veteran, things could get heavy. So how do you start that conversation?

MICHAEL WINNEN: Yeah, I guess I don't have a great answer for that. I guess it just starts with maybe starting the end of that conversation, just, yeah, "Who are you? Tell me about where are you coming from? Where'd you grow up?" And in the case of Alex and I, we had Drew in common. But just once you get to know somebody who starts to talk about, tell me about your service. And what I tried to do was just ask clarifying questions, but not necessarily, I wasn't trying to lead Alex in any direction. It's really, what's the story that you want to tell? And in the song, if you do listen to Echo in the song, a big deal for Alex was all this negativity and hate and things that happened in combat and war, that doesn't define us. We don't have to sit there. We can do good things, we can do positive things after that.

And his positivity really showed through. So I tried to convey that in his song and a part of it too was what kind of music do you like? And he's into heavy metal. And as an acoustic guitar player, I was like, "Okay, well, we'll give it a shot." I'd like to record a heavier version of the same song. But a long way to answer your question, Brian, it's just trying to draw what is their story, what is it that they'd like to tell and how can I do that with music the best way possible?

BRIAN FERGUSON: And Brian, I think having gone through as a participant working with a songwriter, there is elegance in naivete, in not knowing. What I mean by that is all of these songwriters did not serve in the military, so their questions are really simple around the more profound things. Why did you decide to serve? What was it like? If two veterans talking, you get into the fine details of where were you in Afghanistan, what years, what base? Not that that stuff doesn't matter, but oftentimes the things that make the fabric of a song so extraordinary are the simple elements of what was the human desire here to serve? What impacted you the most? What do you miss the most?

And so the really good songwriters, I think just come with simple questions around the human story. And for me, I wrote this with Gretchen, who's just extraordinary. In our conversation, obviously she'd been involved and she knew my story and connection to my brother, but our conversations were just way more about life. And so the song to me is so beautiful because it reflects back things that I would've probably made more complicated in a deeper discussion with someone who really understood my service.

FRANK BLAKE: So you post the songs on your site. I'm going to ask each of you, if you're telling our listeners, listen to this song, which ones would you pick? And I'll start with you, Mike.

MICHAEL WINNEN: Start with me? Impossible question to answer. I tried to send... Beforehand, we sent a few examples to listen to. Impossible to answer, but I think a couple that I feel like are really profound. Brian's, of course, I love that he just mentioned, Find Me There. And a friend of mine that I worked with years ago in GE, he's a veteran and he wrote with Ray Flanagan and I think their song is profound. It's called Infantry Blue. And I could talk all about these songs for a while, but you got to check them out. And then Verlon Thompson is a national songwriter, been around music scene many, many years and just a great guy. I do like a couple of his songs as well. He wrote one called Living Without It. And it was about the brotherhood that he worked with, the brotherhood he felt and coming home from service and transitioning living without that was a real struggle for him. And it's just another epic tune. But anyway, I can go on and on, but those are a few that come to mind.

FRANK BLAKE: Brian? What one would you point?

BRIAN FERGUSON: Yeah, I think So Be It, Amen written by Angie Heimann and who else joined her for that, Mike?

MICHAEL WINNEN: Dave Shaarda.

BRIAN FERGUSON: Yeah, Dave was the vet, but that's about Vietnam. It's a little heavier, but it's just... I mean, to me, it's so profound and beautiful. And this is, again, a guy who really didn't tell that story for, gosh, 40 years. And it reminds you of the sacred nature of what when you send a nation... I don't mean to make this too grandiose, but the things about these songs that I find as a veteran in today's world, people who are hungry to go to war or conflict, you are reminded of what is required of young men and women who go serve and what it takes from them. And it reminds you of the sacred nature of service and sacrifice. And then the other one, Living on the Strongpoint, one of the first songs ever written, I think it came out of the first workshop, Ray Flanagan, but done with Zach Lewis.

And the reason that is so profound, Frank, is Zac Lewis served in 82nd Airborne, but he actually was a very good friend of Drew and me. And Zach joined in part because of Drew and another friend of ours from our hometown named Mike Medders who died in Iraq in an IED in 2008. And Zac left a very successful career in wealth management to go serve and he and Drew trained together. Zac's wife, Tori, taught my brother how to paint. They were stationed at Fort Bragg. And so after Drew passed, Zach was the first participant and Zac did essentially a year long deployment in Afghanistan. He had one of the first quadriplegics in his platoon. They lost almost half of their platoon in Afghanistan, really heavy losses in combat. But there's a line in there where Zac talks about his wife, Tori, as Navajo. And there's a line in there that says, "I kept a picture of a Navajo girl." And every time I hear that line, I cry.

I've listened to that song hundreds of times, but again, it gets back. I understand what he's saying there. This is this love of his life who's back home waiting on him, who's just full of this grace and innocence and he is in Afghanistan every day facing his own potential death. And it reminds you of just that duality of war in a way that is just beautiful and heavy.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow, powerful. Marilyn?

MARILYN ZEIDNER: I have to agree with all of them. I mean, all the songs, I couldn't pick one, but Living on the Strongpoint, I have listened to that song hundreds of times and every single time I cry when I hear it. I can just hear the opening guitar riffs and I start crying. Yeah, it's crazy. Unbelievable. And when the families come on Sunday, family and friends to hear these songs, often the veterans haven't talked about their experiences to their friends or family. And so the families are often blown away by the stories because they don't know what to expect. And one example is that our veteran, one veteran who tells us that he listens to his song every day, he played it for his childhood friend who he grew up with and has known his whole life. And the friend started crying and said, "Why didn't you ever tell me this?" And he said, "I just couldn't." But it came out in a song.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow. All right. I ask Brian Sabin, our producer, do you have a favorite of these songs?

BRIAN SABIN: Gosh, so they've mentioned several good ones. Good probably feels like an understatement. Personally, a song that I find that I just enjoy listening to for the sake of being a song is La Dey. That's a song by a Vietnam veteran. And Marilyn, you introduced me to that song, I want to say 10 or so years ago. It would've been nine years since it started, so maybe eight years ago.

MARILYN ZEIDNER: Yeah.

BRIAN SABIN: And so that was pretty early on in the workshop as well. Brian mentioned Zac Lewis. He's a friend and the person that Brian mentioned who is a quadriplegic or I don't think he's a quadriplegic. I think he lost four limbs in combat. That's Travis Mills. And we featured him on the show in season, I want to say season two, Frank. He's just a tremendous person. What's interesting to me when listening to these songs, other than the feeling of the song and listening to it is kind of what Brian mentioned earlier about the lines that stand out. So one that hit me particularly hard when listening to So Be It, Amen, is that line to be what I am, not just what I've been through.

And so I'd be curious to hear from you all, can you think, and you mentioned the Navajo Girl, Brian, but are there other lines that caught you as profound or just impacted you in a way that was unexpected?

BRIAN FERGUSON: I think myself having gone through, again, writing, the nature of the song that was written for me by Gretchen, she really kind of played this trick on me where the title of the song is Find Me There. And interesting, my brother, the last thing... My brother did not ever leave a formal letter or anything before he passed, but he did write me a poem and the poem was called Find Me There. And in our conversations, the poem that my brother wrote me is about the innocence and the beauty of the way we grew up in Avon Lake, Ohio, our hometown. It's about playing in the leagues in the fall and football and coaches and crushes on girls. It's the purity of youth. And so the conversation Gretchen and I had was about all of that in the backdrop of also a life of service and the privilege I had of serving in the military.

And so there's a series of lines in there where Gretchen talks about one of the lines is our backyard in our hometown, when he got lost, I wish he'd found. And she's talking about my brother's struggle, but in the context of just the way we grew up, and when I listen to that, it really gets me every time, but in a good way, I'm reminded and grateful for that. And the flip side is I've got a daughter who's seven years old and she still will request my own song. And so to hear her interpret the lines about my brother and my life, that's the other side of these songs that's so powerful. Yes, it's for you as a veteran, but the lines become ways to connect who you are for your family and loved ones around you in ways that you would never be able to.

FRANK BLAKE: That's amazing. That's amazing. What do you think Project DREW is going to be years from now? Is this going to sustain itself for five years? Pretty much the same? What's your view on that?

MICHAEL WINNEN: We certainly hope so. We certainly hope so. And we've talked from time to time about that, Frank, of when you talk about growth can mean a lot of things. We're not looking to scale the operation and do 20 workshops a year or make the workshops larger or any... I think we got good formula going and we want really, really authentic experiences for every vet. It would be great to continue to be self-sustaining financially and then also to have the workshops lined up where we think there's plenty of need for this and plenty of demand. But sometimes just availability and awareness of the program means that we got an open spot in a workshop kind of last minute. So it'd be great to get to point where we're kind of fully booked out and we keep growing our songwriter community. So I just maybe I think about more depth and strength than necessarily growth and scale, but that's a thought. I don't know if Brian or Marilyn, you want to add too?

MARILYN ZEIDNER: Yeah, I don't want it to be any bigger than it... I want it to be more well known and to have veterans scheduled just like Mike said, but I don't want it to be bigger or have more people at a time.

BRIAN FERGUSON: Frank, I'm radically biased here. This is tricky though in that I do think this is... I've seen every veteran program you can imagine. I've seen those that are endowed with, I'm involved in one that raises every year $10 million and it's important work to be clear, but that becomes its own thing. And having seen all of these veteran organizations, I really believe this is one of the most high impact personally valuable programs that exists in the marketplace of veteran resources. And at the same time, because we were at war for 20 years, there are just so many of my peers who are now ready. A lot of folks, you have to be in the right season of life where you're ready to do this and there's more people, there's a large population.

And the tension is always, how do we do that and continue to... Because these songs, yes, they're personally valuable. The thing for me that's incredible is this is now a registry of collective national memory. If you take time to listen through these songs, there's very few things that exist like this outside of traditional history. And so capturing those, to me when I meet friends or I meet someone and I'm like, "You should come through," and they do. And then that song is memorialized. The question is how do you balance the local reality of this small experience? It is extraordinary because it is so humble and kept small and private with the reality that there are hundreds of thousands of veterans who would deeply benefit. And the natural sort of arc most people take is, "Let's scale it." And I think that's also what often kills the beauty.

FRANK BLAKE: So where can our listeners go to find out more about you, listen to the songs, support your workshops? Where do you point them?

MARILYN ZEIDNER: Projectdrew.org.

FRANK BLAKE: All right, that's pretty straightforward.

MICHAEL WINNEN: Pretty straightforward.

FRANK BLAKE: Very good. So Brian, do you have any other questions?

BRIAN SABIN: I don't have any other questions other than to just say thank you, Frank, for featuring this organization. And thank you all, Brian, Marilyn, and Mike for the work that you do.

MARILYN ZEIDNER: And to you.

FRANK BLAKE: Now, we always ask our guests to tell us who has done a crazy good turn for you. And so, maybe we'll go around to each of you. Start with you, Mike.

MICHAEL WINNEN: Okay. I mentioned earlier the whole Project DREW and meeting Marilyn and hopefully good things coming out of missing Drew, my cousin. I'll get a lighter one if I think way back to grade school. So I'm in engineering. I've been in engineering for decades technically. I went lots of schooling and been doing technical stuff my whole life, but I think back to seventh grade and I was trying to level up in math and there was a end-of-the-year test in algebra. And I got a okay-ish grade. As I remember, it was maybe a C++. And my teacher at the time, Cindy Watt, Cindy sat me down and said, "Hey, let's look at these a few. I think you know these." She gave me a couple more problems and she was sort of surprised that I got that grade that I did.

Long story short, she's like, "I think if you work really hard, I think you can do algebra." It had been early in advanced math for eighth grade. And she gave me a shot and she was the teacher for that class and there were only three of us, small school, and there were only three of us that did that advanced math course. And had she not taken the extra time on that one test and just looked at it and like, "Oh, sorry, stay in eighth grade math," I don't know that I would've had the confidence as a young man to like, "Oh, okay, I can do hard stuff and learn hard math." And I appreciate that. I think she did a good turn for me by taking the extra time and giving me a shot and on I went to technical stuff and science and math.

FRANK BLAKE: Well done, Cindy. That's awesome.

MICHAEL WINNEN: Yeah.

FRANK BLAKE: Brian.

BRIAN FERGUSON: It's probably anchor bias because I'm on here with Brian Sabin. We're talking about hometown, but I go back to this all the time, but Brian and I both had a high school football coach, Coach Dlugosz. And when I think of so much of the work ethic, so much of who Drew and I became, there's a whole spectrum of teachers, that's whole school system. But I would say that I now as an adult understand what was required to coach young men in football in the way that Coach Dlugosz did. And the level of personal devotion to each person, understanding... We use these terms like resilience and how do you think about goals, but when they don't work out, how do you work harder? All these things that became for me the bedrock of really how I thought about the world beyond Avon Lake. I go back to that a lot because at the time it was a big part of my life, but it was never about football. It was about becoming a solid young man of character and had an outsized impact on how I would later show up in the world.

FRANK BLAKE: That's phenomenal. That's phenomenal. Marilyn?

MARILYN ZEIDNER: Well, mine is maybe a little different, but when I started Music on a Mission in 2007, we were very, very small and I was still working a full-time job somewhere else. I was a director of a domestic violence shelter. So a friend of mine, I decided to have a fundraiser for Music on a Mission on my property and I had this barn, but it was in very bad disrepair and one of the doors was so heavy I couldn't even open it. So I invited a few bands to come and play outside on the driveway as a fundraiser. And so one of my old friends that I knew actually dated in high school came with his little trio to play and he looked at the barn and he said, "Why don't we renovate this into a music venue?" And I was like, "Yeah, okay, sure." Thinking that'll be the end of it.

And that was a Sunday night and Monday morning he called me and said, "Well, I hope you don't mind, but I have a contractor coming to your house." And for 14 months he brought volunteers every single weekend except for two in 14 months and they completely renovated the barn into a music venue. I ended up marrying the guy, but that's another story.

FRANK BLAKE: There you go. That counts as a crazy good turn.

MICHAEL WINNEN: That's right.

FRANK BLAKE: That's wonderful. I have one other question sort of inspired by Brian, what you were talking about the wow moments for you as part of Project DREW that occurred not during the workshop but afterwards when someone expresses the impact that it's had on their lives whether from a songwriter or veteran. Maybe just if you've got some comments on I'm sure there are many, but would pick a highlight.

MICHAEL WINNEN: I could start with... Let me go back to Brian Sabin. You mentioned you liked the song La Dey. Bill Kraker is the songwriter. Bill's a legend and he's a bass player and an amazing singer. I still don't know how he plays bass and sings. It was a challenge to do that. He met his veteran, Joe. And so Joe's a Vietnam vet and la dey is Vietnamese for come here. He describes it in the entry to the song, the segue to the song. So Joe ran rescue missions and part of the chopper team and he'd be rescuing Vietnamese and American troops together. And la dey, come here, let's go. And so Bill played that song many places. And Marilyn, please jump in and correct me for accuracy, but he played it in an event, I think at one of their church or something. And another vet came up to Joe and Bill later and turns out that Joe was one of the guys that saved his crew--

FRANK BLAKE: Wow.

MICHAEL WINNEN: -- saved him in combat.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow. Wow.

MICHAEL WINNEN: He's like, "Can you imagine this guy hearing this song about La Dey?"

FRANK BLAKE: Wow.

MICHAEL WINNEN: And so just that connection, all the details there might not be completely accurate, but nonetheless, that veteran heard that song was like, "Oh my gosh, this is Joe. This is the guy who was in the doorway and saved me and my buddies." So that was definitely a wow moment, one of many that I remember.

FRANK BLAKE: Yeah. That's a hard one to follow. Drew or Marilyn, you got anything to...

BRIAN FERGUSON: I'll say this is not quite your exact question, Frank, but I think for anyone listening, I think what Project DREW represents for me is a wow moment at scale. We all hope the people we love live beyond their legacy in a bigger way. And just the project itself and my brother's memory is extraordinary. But one of the very tactical things that happens, which is surreal, the way life works, but we've alluded to this a few times, but my brother, when we were growing up, it's crazy. We have the original footage from 2007. We're at Kelleys Island, Ohio, this little island off the shore of Cleveland and Lake Erie. All of our aunts and uncles built this cottage that we shared, 20 cousins growing up. And every year we do a cousin's weekend. And my brother, I don't know if he was in college or the army at the time, but he'd written this song and the song was about a group of friends who were convening to go through an evening socially together to have this communal experience as friends. And it's called I Know A Place.

And the refrain, it kind of builds. I know a place we can go. I know a dance we can dance, a song we can sing, a drink we can drink to warm our bones, but it ends with I know a dream we can dream to change our lives. And so it was classically in my brother, very simple lyrics but profound ideas. And it was meant to be sung by people. It was written with such simple lyrics and chords that anyone, even myself who's tone deaf could sing it. And so we used to sing it as cousins. And when Drew died, Mike played it at my brother's funeral as Brian Sabin referenced in front of a few hundred or a thousand people.

And it was for me to sit in the back and see my brother's song being sung in unison by all of these people we'd grown up with, it was surreal. But now every workshop ends with all the veterans singing that song and their families and the singer-songwriters and musicians. And so we now have, I don't know how many workshops there's been, but 30 some recordings of different versions of that song. And that, Frank, is a testament. The things we don't see in life, how they're working and you zoom out and my brother continues to bring people together and gets people to sing and think about the tribal communal experience of life together. I can't think of anything more profound.

FRANK BLAKE: Wow. Not going to say anything better than that.

MARILYN ZEIDNER: No.

FRANK BLAKE: That's a great spot to end. Thank you all. Thank you, Brian Sabin, for connecting this. You're doing a crazy good turn. Congratulations and thank you for participating.

MARILYN ZEIDNER: Thank you for having us.

MICHAEL WINNEN: Thank you, Frank.

MARILYN ZEIDNER: This was great. Yeah.

BRIAN FERGUSON: Thanks, Brian.

BRIAN SABIN: Thank you.