Iredell native to play Newton next week

When talking about the course of his life, country singer Rockie Lynne likes to tell the story of Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind man to summit Mt. Everest.

"When he talks about the experience he doesn't focus on the five minutes he spent on the top of the mountain," Lynne recalled in an interview with the R&L. "He says he talks about all the stops along the way and the base camps and the preparation and the people who were with him."
To Lynne, that's a pretty good analogy for life itself.

"It's all about the journey, man, not the destination," he said.

Next week that journey, in a less metaphorical sense, will lead Lynne back to near where his roots are.
The northern Iredell County native will play at the Hickory American Legion Fair on Wednesday.
In a sense it's a make-up date, Lynne said, of a concert he had planned to do there several years ago that was rained out.

"We had everything ready to go," he said. "But we just couldn't go on. I promised I'd be back. It just took a little while."

Time seems to float for Lynne, a 1983 graduate of North Iredell High School.

"I'm in no hurry to get wherever it is I'm going," he said.

But Lynne, who now lives in Nashville, said he is excited about getting back to the region and particularly happy to be involved with an American Legion event.

"It's great to be part of something for veterans," he said.

As far as veterans' events go, next week's concert pales compared to what Lynne did last winter.
For three weeks during the holiday season, Lynne performed in Iraq and Afghanistan "and a lot of other little places all around there."

Lynne said he sometimes played on make-shift stages made of large rocks and other small clearings on obscure Forward Operating Bases.

"Most of the places we played, no other entertainers had been to before," Lynne said. "Some of the places were really out there and the folks would tell us where to go if the (stuff) hit the fan."

Lynne, an Army veteran himself, said he did not seek fanfare for the shows prior to traveling overseas. He said he reasons were purely altruistic.

"Some cats go over there to help their careers and that's cool," he said. "But we did this for one reason only, and that was to say, 'thank you' and to let these guys know that someone cares about them."

Lynne said the memories he took from the experience will last the rest of his life.

"When we're 70 and 80 years old and we talk about Christmases from the past," he said, "this will be the Christmas we will be talking about. I can't tell you what an honor it was to be able to do that for those guys and to be a part of that."

During the concerts, Lynne handed out CDs to the troops that contained seven songs he had written just for the tour.

Since his return he has added five more songs and, just in the past week, he and his band finished recording a concept CD, tentatively titled "Songs For Soldiers."

The CD (which Lynne refers to in an old-school way as an album) is set to drop, appropriately, next Memorial Day. The first single, called "Ain't America Beautiful," will be released in January.
"The album looks at a soldier's life and their situations from all different points of view," Lynne explained.

He talked about one song called, "I've Never Been There," which examines the experience of a combat soldier through the eyes of a singer who is entertaining the troops.

Lynne co-wrote the song with Richard Leigh, whose biggest hit is probably the Crystal Gale lament titled "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."

As with the concert, Lynne said the CD is more representative of his feelings as a supporter of the troops than as an entertainer in a very competitive business.

"We're putting this out because it's the right thing to do," he said. "And we've put a lot into it and hope it does well. But the reason we're doing it is because we think it's the right thing to do."

And then Lynne is talking about the journey again. And this time he ponders on his future.

"I still think of Statesville and that area as my home," he said. "I still have a house there and I think someday I'd like to spend my winters in North Carolina and the rest of the year in other places. But you never know."