Daily Inspiration: Meet Bobbie Allison-Standefer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bobbie Allison-Standefer.

Hi Bobbie, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In the beginning, we were briefly a part of just some songwriters who listened to veterans and wrote a song about their stories. The veterans told us that while they were proud of their songs and how they helped to get those thoughts out, they needed ongoing support. Just writing the song was the beginning we realized so Don Goodman and Steve Dean who are both hit songwriters in Nashville and I, having been in the nonprofit world and on multiple boards of directors, decided to develop a model to do just that.

We developed a model of ongoing classes where they felt safe to tell their stories among other veterans who had gone through the program and are alumni and they knew would have their backs. It’s called Vet to Vet Therapy. We teach them to get their thoughts out creatively through either songwriting or poetry or just writing out their thoughts continuously. And of course, music is therapeutic in and of itself. Putting their stories to their favorite genres of music is very cathartic for them and it opens the window to healing.

We had a retreat in Chattanooga, TN, in 2014 supported by the Vet Center and then started ongoing classes at the Erlanger Lifestyle Center which the hospital donated to us as a classroom and office in 2015. We have expanded nationally due to access to Zoom. We have four weekly classes which include a national Zoom all-female veteran’s class on Tuesday we call Trailblazers because women are Trailblazers in the military. In this class, they feel safe among other women to discuss their most intimate thoughts about their service. Hunter Girl, the American Idol second-place winner, started with us and she started this class as the lead songwriter. Minnie Murphy now leads that class. But Dana Black and other female songwriters love to be on our sub list.

We have a national co-ed class on Wednesday mornings hosted by Don Goodman and Steve Dean and live classes at the Vet Center that we started with Billy Crain of the Outlaws and Charlie Daniels Review Band as lead songwriters. We recently this year started a national pilot program for the National VA with their veterans who are nurses at the VA Hospitals across the country. We have done both Zoom and a live retreat in Murfreesboro. We have an album out called “The Way Back” about their experiences in the military and also during Covid. We are currently getting it registered on Spotify. It is a fabulous album with different Nashville songwriters singing those songs we produced at the County Q and Ace who are good to us. The fabulous Benny Quinn donated his awesome ability to master it for us. It is just so good.

We have become a vendor of the National VA because they love our program, and we currently are getting calls from all over the country to do retreats and some with concerts. It is a God thing I always say. We have cities calling us for a retreat because they think it would be good for their cities when they have large veteran populations.

We developed a new outreach program we encourage them to keep writing their thoughts creatively called Camouflage (Camo) Cafe, which is a live or hybrid (zoom in vets from everywhere) coffee house atmosphere where it is Open Mic for veterans to get up in a safe atmosphere with other veterans and sing or recite their poetry. It has been a really fun fellowship and encourages them to do this self-help therapy. They love it.

We now have been a beneficiary of the Nashville Grand Prix as a charity and will be a charity for Tootsies Birthday Bash coming up on September 17. That group of bars and restaurants which include Honky Tonk Central in wanting to help us has come up with Honky Tonk Veterans Jam where it is a night of fellowship, music, and fun highlighting veterans. It’s also a fundraiser for us. We are looking for sponsors for that. The events will be on the second Thursday of every month. We just had one on August 10th at Honky Tonk Central to honor Tennessee’s newest Medal of Honor recipient and one of our alumni, Captain Larry Taylor. His song is No Man Left Behind and his story and video are on our website under our music www.freedomsingsusa.org. We have been invited to the White House for his ceremony. John Taylor, Honky Tonk School, is a Vietnam veteran and is very supportive.

I could go on because there are just so many now reaching out to us we are growing faster than our funds. John Taylor, Honky Tonk Songwriting School, and David Corlew, Charlie Daniels A Journey Home Project and also a veteran, have been major benefactors in the expansion of our program to help more veterans and active duty heal. We were just contacted by an active-duty base, Fort Riley, in Kansas wanting us to come there. Morale is low in the military right now and recruiting is down. This is not good with all the evil players out there in the world who hate the US. So I guess we will try to help with that mission next.

We also work with family members, especially Gold Star. We use different songwriters in Nashville. Not every hit songwriter can do what we do. It takes a special songwriter with the heart to empathize with the veteran and listen to him/her to understand when they tell their stories. We are very selective with who we use and do have our favorites that always are favorites with the veterans when we take them on retreats. Life experience is usually the key, but sometimes we are surprised by young songwriters like Hunter Girl who just have the heart talent, and personality.

We also want to thank you for contacting us to spread the word. Hopefully, articles like this encourage veterans who know they need something but have not been able to find anything that helps to reach out to us. We now have several different ways to help them, especially if they love music of any genre. Suicide in the veteran community is said to be 22 a day. We have also heard it spiked to 24 a day. If we can prevent one, then it is mission accomplished.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Well, of course I’m smiling at that question. Having an idea and putting it into actual existence has its ups and downs. Finding the money is usually the biggest problem. You jump through a lot of hoops to get grants and they are time-consuming, but we do go after them. So far they have been small grants. Our major donors have been the Lyndhurst Foundation, John Taylor, Tootsie’s Honky Tonk School, Erlanger Hospital, and Charlie Daniels, A Journey Home Project. But we have concerts with our songwriters.

They have hits that people know and love. We do auctions at these. Veterans Day week is big for us. We will have a Trailblazer Luncheon for female veterans at the Walden Club in Chattanooga on November 4. This year, we will have pop-up boutiques for shopping, an auction of Nashville experiences, and of course, Steve Dean and others will do a mini-concert. Free mimosas are very popular. Starr Card chairs this every year. The Frank Brown Songwriters Festival in Flora-Bama is doing a fundraiser for us and we have quite a few songwriters going to sing at a concert on the main stage on Friday, November 10th.

We do a small golf tournament around Nashville called our Scramble and Jam. This is a golf tournament and then we have our talented veterans sing and do a concert after the tournament. It is a lot of fun. Last year, Hunter Girl dropped in and you never know who might drop by. That is on November 11 outside Murfreesboro. We have been invited to host the opening ceremonies of the Hamilton County Fair and do veterans’ music at different times throughout the three-day event.

That is November 10-11. While that is not a fundraiser it raises awareness of our programs. Of course, we will have the Honky Tonk Veterans Jam on November 9th at Honky Tonk Central. And when we get money, we try to go into the studio and do actual mixed and mastered versions of the songs for albums. We do album drop parties as fundraisers too. Our newest album coming from the Vet Center with Billy Crain as the lead, Hey America, will be out soon and we will have a great fundraiser with that.

Another problem has been differentiating our model from those just writing songs with veterans. We are an actual Creative Arts Therapy using songwriting as the modality. We have a Creative Arts Therapist on staff. All the others are just songwriters writing songs with veterans. However, now our reputation has grown tremendously, and our model is popular. Finding great songwriters who actually can do this model effectively is another hurdle.

Just because they can write a commercial hit does not mean they can work with a veteran. The song has to be great, and it has to be his/her story and get to the main theme of what’s in their heads after listening to their entire story. It’s not easy, but great writers with a heart to help can do this. We are fortunate to find the ones we need.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a Certified Senior Advisor. I inherited an insurance business and decided to specialize because it is so confusing for those aging to get the right healthcare like Medicare decisions and make the right decisions on planning for the rest of their lives. So, I also know what’s available for veterans. But I come from a military family in that all my four brothers served in the military, and I have witnessed PTSD personally.

I also have volunteered in my community with nonprofits, sat on boards of directors as an officer, and have started another nonprofit that does alternative therapies. I had been approached by a counselor at a VA about alternative therapies because he said all they had was psychotherapy and drugs and the young men and women coming back with mental and emotional trauma after combat were getting addicted to street drugs and alcohol and their lives were spiraling into chaos. I feel it was a “God thing” that I helped start a ranch outside Ft. Benning doing that kind of therapy and ran into some songwriters who came there to write with veterans.

That is where I met Don Goodman who wrote Ol Red and Angels Among Us, and more number 1 hits. We talked and I told him we needed something like this. I put together the first weekend retreat with songwriters writing with veterans supported by the Vet Center in Chattanooga. There I met Steve Dean, Watching You, and other number 1 hits, and the rest is history. Don, Steve, and I started the class at the Lifestyle Center and then we developed the model along with the help of the veterans who were going through the class. They loved it and some of them became the first all-veteran council and later they became the Board of Directors when we set up the 501c3. God has brought the talent we need to grow this.

COVID helped us expand because we had to go to Zoom for classes. Then we realized we could reach veterans and active duty wherever they are. Since my background is taking ideas and putting them into an actual model, my brain went in that direction from the beginning. How to reach these veterans and military members and get them help The help has to be attractive and there has to be fun intertwined for them to be attracted to it.

Music is therapeutic and using it to help them with those stressful thoughts is a natural progression to how we are proceeding. You teach them to creatively get those thoughts out and then give them a platform to talk or perform for those who fully understand. I am proud we are expanding so rapidly and have national credibility with the VA and veteran organizations around the country trying to help veterans. We will partner to bring as much help as possible. We bring fun as well with our events and concerts. We say we are “community building”. After veterans go through the program, they are a part of our family and can plug back in to help other veterans. Serving their country was the highest purpose in their lives.

We can give them another purpose they are seeking, to make sure everyone serving our country comes back home mentally whole and can enjoy their families and the way of life they took the oath to uphold and defend. We also want to increase awareness of the sacrifice all these men and women and their families give to the rest of our country. That’s the reason we use the best songwriters with a heart for this we can find. The veterans are the messengers so none of their buddies who sacrificed their lives are forgotten.

That is important to them. Our songwriters are the conduits to do this and help in the healing. When a veteran tells us we saved his/her life or that he lives to get from class to class and he/she knows there are those waiting there who just understand and have the highest respect for that service and sacrifice, that makes me the proudest.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
Since we are a different type of industry, it is hard to say what shifts or changes there will be. Of course, since we are not writing to get hits, but to do some healing, it is in creative arts therapy and we are now working with NOAH, the National Organization for Arts in Healing. NOAH is reshaping healthcare in many meaningful ways.

Rewiring the brain away from trauma and getting into creative arts and the beauty of that brings hope for healing and being able to live life to the fullest. However, we understand what we do also involves the music industry, so we have to get into protecting the veterans’ rights to their stories and songs. We have a relationship with BMI and sometimes with ASCAP. We register the songs with veterans as a songwriter just in case there is a song that a hitmaker hears and wants to cut. That’s the business part of what we do. We want the songs and stories heard, so we protect the publishing as well.

Zoom was a major shift recently in helping bring alternative therapies to anyone around the world. Coming up with hybrid classes where there are live classrooms and those who can be there on Zoom is huge. Now we can also do a Camo Cafe where we can zoom in on veterans who want to sing or recite their poetry. We had an Afghanistan/Iraq veteran in Hawaii recite his poetry to a room full of people at a Camo Cafe in an American Legion in Georgia, AL Post 214, how cool was that?

The veteran could see everyone in the room and hear their comments and applause. He was troubled when he came to us. To see his grin and satisfaction made us feel successful. I see technology being a game changer.

Pricing:

• Songs and albums are on our website for any donation.
• Sponsorships for our programs at any level.
• Sponsorships of retreats around our country at any level.
• T-shirts: $25
• Hats: $25

Contact Info:

• Website: www.freedomsingsusa.org
• Instagram: instagram.com/freedomsingsusa
• Facebook: facebook.com/FreedomSingsUSA
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/freedom-sings-usa/
• Youtube: youtube.com/@freedomsingsusa

Image Credits
Will Taylor, FSUSA Marketing Director Central Arkansas Veterans’ Healthcare