{"id":973420,"date":"2019-11-10T08:03:19","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T15:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=910405"},"modified":"2019-11-10T08:03:19","modified_gmt":"2019-11-10T15:03:19","slug":"joe-walsh-on-his-all-star-vetsaid-concert-its-what-america-is-supposed-to-be-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/music-news\/joe-walsh-on-his-all-star-vetsaid-concert-its-what-america-is-supposed-to-be-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Walsh on His All-Star VetsAid Concert: It\u2019s \u2018What America Is Supposed to Be About\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Last month, Joe Walsh<\/a> wrapped up the Eagles<\/a>\u2019 sold-out residency in Las Vegas, where the band performed Hotel California<\/em> in its entirety \u2014 followed by a 23-song bonus set of greatest hits \u2014 with help from a 46-piece orchestra and 22-member chorus. Preparing for those shows was a mammoth undertaking, but it still pales in comparison to Walsh\u2019s next project: overseeing the third annual VetsAid charity show, which brings a lineup of guitar heroes and roots-rockers to Houston\u2019s Toyota Center on November 10th.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve played other people\u2019s charities, but running one yourself is a whole different story,\u201d says Walsh, who launched VetsAid in 2017 to help fund veterans charities at the grassroots level. \u201cThis started off as an idea, and sometimes, things are better left that way, but VetsAid became real! This year, we\u2019ve got the Doobie Brothers, ZZ Top, Brad Paisley, Jason Isbell, Sheryl Crow, and me. You\u2019re not gonna hear that lineup at any other concert.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Walsh, VetsAid has become something of a personal crusade. His biological father, a flight instructor for the U.S. Army, was stationed in Okinawa during the build-up to the Korean War. He suffered a fatal crash in 1949 while flying the Lockheed F-80, America\u2019s first operational fighter jet. Walsh, just 20 months old at the time, has been forever affected by the loss.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up with a part of me missing, which was my father,\u201d he says. \u201cI never really knew him. I always wondered, \u2018What if?\u2019 I wondered if he would approve of what I was doing. I\u2019m sure he would\u2019ve told me to get a haircut a couple of times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walsh credits the experience with deepening his empathy for other Gold Star families who\u2019ve lost relatives during times of conflict. It also opened his eyes to a battle that remains sadly unfinished: the struggle of American veterans to acclimate to civilian life after experiencing the horrors of combat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see a forgotten war that\u2019s ongoing, and more suicides than combat deaths,\u201d he notes of the veteran experience. \u201cGuys are coming home shattered, and the transition back to civilian life is too high of a mountain to climb for a lot of them. It\u2019s especially hard for those who don\u2019t live on the east or west coasts. There are regional help centers in the middle of the country where vets can get assistance, but those places don\u2019t really have a budget. I\u2019ve been looking for the ones that are valid, and I\u2019m raising money to try and keep them going. That\u2019s what VetsAid is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shows have raised $1.2 million over the past two years. Roughly $800,000 of that total came from last year\u2019s event in Tacoma, Washington, where Walsh shared the bill with Haim, James Taylor, Chris Stapleton, and Don Henley. Although the 2019 lineup won\u2019t feature any other members of Eagles, it will reunite Walsh with Sheryl Crow \u2014 whose newest release, Threads<\/em>, features a Walsh cameo<\/a> \u2014 as well as his old touring partners, the Doobie Brothers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to mess with each other onstage,\u201d he says of the Doobies, who, like the other acts on the bill, will perform an abridged set focusing on radio hits. \u201cThey did something to me \u2014 I don\u2019t even want to tell you what they did, but it involved the Chippendales \u2014 so in retaliation, I got a petting zoo to come onstage during their set, which was almost easier than calling people and asking them to play VetsAid! At least the animals couldn\u2019t say \u2018no.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Drew Carey, who served in the United States Marines for six years during the 1980s before launching his TV career, will serve as the unofficial emcee of VetsAid 2019, reprising his role from last year. Walsh has planned a few attractions offstage, too, including \u201can area for Gold Star kids and Gold Star families to meet each other, where the kids can play video games and talk to one another and form friendships, and families can come together, network and exchange resources.\u201d For those who are mostly there for the music, though, he promises speedy turn-around times between sets, cheap ticket prices<\/a> and, if the mood is right, some one-off collaborations. The one caveat? Fans are asked to check their political baggage at the gates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not political,\u201d Walsh insists. \u201cPeople who don\u2019t approve of each other in a political sense can still come together and sit next to each other. In these divided days, it\u2019s a wonderful healer and unifier to just put down all of that contention, come into a show neutrally, hear really good music and support the vets.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, the goals of VetsAid reach deeper than the Democrat\/Republican divide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish there was more public awareness,\u201d says Walsh, whose own political past includes two half-serious runs for public office \u2014 including a 1980 bid for the presidency that found him promising, if elected, to turn \u201cLife\u2019s Been Good\u201d into the country\u2019s new national anthem. \u201cWe\u2019re sending a message that we have the vets\u2019 back, and that there is help available. I think that people are gong to leave a lot happier than they were, with a sense of what America is supposed to be about.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, Joe Walsh wrapped up the Eagles\u2019 sold-out residency in Las Vegas, where the band performed Hotel California in its entirety \u2014 followed by a 23-song bonus set of greatest hits \u2014 with help from a 46-piece orchestra and 22-member chorus. Preparing for those shows was a mammoth undertaking, but it still pales in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-973420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-13 08:12:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KFMU Solar Powered Radio","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kfmu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}