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Local songwriter has success with 21 Guns
by Mark Gabriel
A patriotic song co-written by a Wilkesboro man is being heard on prominent patriotic Internet websites and receiving local radio airplay.
The song "21 Guns—Fallen Soldier Song" concerns a mother's grief over losing her soldier son to a roadside bomb. It was co-written by Bobby Billings of Wilkesboro and Alan Gragg of Lenoir.
Gragg first wrote the lyrics as a poem after seeing cable television footage of a funeral for a solider killed while serving overseas.
"I was sitting at home one evening watching CNN, and they showed this woman at a military funeral for her son," Gragg said. "I thought, 'That's sad.' I'd like to help people feel the way she felt.
"These are tough times, and this is a way of giving back something to them. That's why I wrote it."
Gragg mentioned the poem to his friend, Billings, whom he sees from time to time while Billings works as a deliveryman for the N.C. Department of Transportation office in North Wilkesboro.
"I'd heard him sing before, and one day we got to talking about my poem," he said. "And he said he'd like to do it as a song."
Billings then took the poem and set a revised version of the text to a tune he composed.
"I recorded it in my home," Billings said. "Then, I told Alan, 'Let's see if we can get it played on the radio.'"
Gragg approached WJRI-AM in Lenoir, while Billings gave a copy of his demonstration recording or "demo" to WKBC-AM morning host Steve Handy.
"He remixed it some, and then put it on his show," Billings said. "Then, he said his phone lines just blew up with callers."
The Lenoir radio station also agreed to air "21 Guns," and the reaction surprised Gragg.
"We didn't think anything would come of it," Gragg said. "But they got it out there, and we've got lots of calls. It's amazed me that it's done as much as it has."
The song was recorded, and later, Billings used Windows Movie Maker to create a video to go with the song. The video features a montage of recent military funeral footage along with other narrative elements.
He first posted the video and the song to YouTube.com, and he began getting reaction almost immediately.
"I told Alan if we get 200 hits in two days, we'd be lucky," Billings said. "It got some 800 hits on the Internet, and it just blew my mind. I thought, 'We really have something here.'"
The song and video are also currently posted at MySpace.com, usa-patriotism.com and several other sources on the Internet. An Internet radio program, "Night Ride with Bruce Hodges," has also featured the song and has had Billings as a guest recently.
"He's known pretty well on the Internet," said Gragg of Hodges, who is also an announcer on WBRF-FM, a radio station in Galax, Va. "He's been in this for years, and he thinks the song is really good. I'm proud of this song, I'll tell you."
Besides the local radio airplay, Billings said he has relied on word-of-mouth publicity for the song, especially on the Internet.
"It's been unbelievable," he said of the reaction he has received for the song. "I'm really thankful. It's far exceeded my expectations." |
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