2006-06-01 GROSSE POINTE NEWS Features
JTX rocks the troops
Beth Swanson
Local band JTX's lead singer, J.T. of Detroit performs for American troops in Afghanistan. The alternative rock band entertained soldiers during a two-week tour.
06/01/2006 - Hundreds of American soldiers in Afghanistan danced and sang May 6 while local band, JTX, performed during their two-week tour to entertain the troops. One hour after this concert, a helicopter crashed in the same place, leaving 10 soldiers dead.
"It was no joke over there," said JTX's lead singer and guitarist, J.T. of Detroit. "Ten people died right where we were. You don't go to the bathroom at night and there are no lights on at night because there's snipers in the hills. And every camp that we were at was named after someone that had just died. I was very nervous, but we had to do it."
JTX was approached to travel to the Middle East after his single, "Party Like a Rockstar," was played on the radio and became popular among Aerican soldiers. JTX's manager was contacted and asked the alternative rock band to perform for the troops a proposition to which they almost immediately obliged.
"As soon as they said we could ride in the Black Hawk helicopters between shows, we knew we were in," JT said.
The band played six concerts in the desert under tents and on basketball courts. Soldiers surrounded the stage area with Humvee headlights illuminating the performers.
"You have to imagine what it's like," JT said. "We come out on stage, and here's like, 500 soldiers a night who haven't had anything going on, and they'd just go crazy. They felt great and we felt great. It's an incredible adrenaline rush to hear total strangers singing your song back to you, and knowing that for 20 minutes or for two seconds, you've helped them take their minds off of the 24-hour thought of someone's got them at a gun sight."
After performances, the band greeted the soldiers and drank nonalcoholic beer together. During one meet-and-greet, Harding discovered a soldier from Grosse Pointe who lived on the street next to him.
JT met thousands of American soldiers in Afghanistan during the band's tour.
"It was pretty unbelievable to be in the middle of the desert and to meet a guy from one street over," he said. "We met thousands of soldiers, and I shook every one of their hands, and looked every single one of them in the eye and asked them where they're from. We all traded phone numbers and e-mails and pictures. It was like meeting your long-lost friends and family you didn't even know you had."
Charlie Weiss, JTX's bass player, backup vocalist and received two bracelets from soldiers. One was handmade with a button from the soldier's uniform and the other allowed entrance into an ammunition storage area.
Soldiers also conversed with JT about their personal adversities in Afghanistan.
"One guy was rocking out to our show and his fiancée had just broken up with him via a text message," JT said. "Another guy had twins he hadn't even met yet. But instead of going home for a week, the army offered him money to stay there and they would send that money to his wife. So, he did that because he needed the money.
"One lady was going on a very dangerous mission in the desert and the phones didn't work and she was trying to call home to talk to her daughters before she went, and she was crying in the rooms where they had the telephones."
Along with listening to American soldiers' hardships, JT and Weiss, along with guitaris Kevin WIlson and drummer Carry Weaver witnessed the struggles of thousands of poverty-stricken Afghan children living in the desert and on the streets.
When they passed by, children touched their hands to their lips, signaling they wanted food. Some were balding from malnourishment, some had impaired vision. All were covered in dirt.
"I'm talking five-year-old babies with no parents or anyone taking care of them," JT said. "When you see that, it's incredibly overwhelming. I would give them my Lynyrd Skynyrd baseball hat or my sunglasses if that was the least I could do."
Although these children were sick and bruised, JT and Weiss noticed they were somehow still awestruck and happy children.
"You see these kids with little tire sandals in poverty, but they seem so sweet and unaware," Weiss said. "It's very emotional when you see these little kids roughed up, but they still somehow have a little childish spirit."
JTX also had lunch with the Afghan National Army, being trained by American troops to fight terrorists. When the band took pictures of Afghan soldiers with their digital cameras, the soldiers were amazed at this new contraption.
"These are grown men who drive tanks and have machine guns, but they have never seen digital cameras," JT said. "And we would take a picture of them and show them the picture on the camera, and they would touch their noses and fix their hair as if they'd never seen their own faces."
While the Afghan National Army might have been fascinated with digital cameras, JTX was awestruck by traveling from base to base in Black Hawk helicopters, Air Force aircrafts, on camels and in convoys of bulletproof Hummers with soldiers hanging out of them, with their fingers secured tightly on the triggers of loaded guns.
"It was just surreal," Weiss said. "It was straight out of a movie. It doesn't seem real that we lived that. If somebody said, 'It's the last two days, stick around,' I would've stayed. I was very moved by the whole travel. I'd go back."
But they don't think their tour was an exceptional feat. Compared to the thousands of American soldiers risking their lives day in and day out, Harding and Weiss said their contribution was small.
"We just went over there to give them a distraction and to appreciate them," JT said. "We're doing these interviews, and our picture's in the paper, and all the radio stations have been calling me, but soldiers are over there years and years, so it's not like I think I did something super, super special."
Since seeing the war practically firsthand, JT and Weiss' perspectives have changed. No longer is it a distant war in an unknown land.
"When I sign online everyday, on AOL or Yahoo, that little newsclip comes up with the little sentence and it says '10 people die in Afghanistan,'" JT said. "So there we were Saturday night, where the helicopter crashed, 10 people died. Ten people that may have just seen us sing, I don't know.
"Suddenly it just seems much more realistic and when I see a little clip of it on the news, my head jerks, and I look over and it's like 'Oh, I was just there.'"
The musicians have learned to appreciate the many luxuries Americans take for granted.
"The trees seem so green here," JT said. "And when you see someone walking past Borders with their baby in a stroller, you look at it all differently.
"You just can't complain about anything if you're here. You're so lucky to be here right now, able to go to McDonald's, use cell phones, watch American Idol, go to Starbucks I don't complain about my Starbucks anymore. They'd give anything to have any of that."
JTX might have another opportunity to entertain troops where few entertainers are traveling to Iraq a place maybe even more dangerous than Afghanistan, JT said.
"I think I would go," he said. "I must say, thinking about it sitting here even though I just came back and had the time of my life it does make me nervous to think of going there. But of course, I think for sure I would do it. I would just have to do it, you know?"
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Beth Swanson, of Grosse Pointe Farms, is a Grosse Pointe South High School graduate and a journalism major at Michigan State University. She is serving a summer 2006 internship at the Grosse Pointe News.