In this episode of Veteran Led, John S. Berry sits down with Dave Bray, former Navy Corpsman and Marine Corps Veteran turned rock star, as he shares his remarkable journey from serving with the Marines to becoming a prominent voice in patriotic rock music. Dave discusses how his military service shaped his music career and his ongoing mission to honor Veterans and first responders through powerful performances.
Featured Quote:
“You still swore an oath. You still owe that oath to the people of America, and you need to continue some service. Don’t just go disappearing into the ether. Find something that you love, share it with the world, and continue your service to your country.”
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Music is a vibe, right? So you’re creating, you’re doing, you’re Bob Rossing the moment with sound, right? You’re trying to make the mountains look pretty. You’re trying to put some happy little squirrels over here.
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today’s guest is Dave Bray USA. From Marine Corps Veteran to rock and roll hero. Dave Bray is going to tell us about his journey from being a Marine to being the head of a rock and roll band and what he does today, both in music and for the Veteran community. Welcome to Veteran Led, David Bray.
It’s good to be here, John. Thank you so much for having me on the Veteran Led podcast. Man, I’m pumped for it. We can dive in. Whatever you want to talk about, I’m open up to it. Let’s go.
Well, let’s dive in. You were a Second Battalion Second Marines. You were a corpsman, correct?
FMF Doc, yeah. Combat medic or whatever you want to call it. Some presidents don’t know how to say the word corpsman properly, so it’s actually corpsman. We’ve been a part of the Marine Corps for all but its infancy. They don’t allow Marines to patch themselves back up. Marines are really great at breaking s*** and throwing things into clusters and just destroying things. So they call in the Navy to help us, help put Marines back together, basically, is short term.
So, Dave, you’re a corpsman for how many years?
So joined the Navy, did two years as a regular, just Dixie Cup Navy corpsman, and then crossed over in the FMF, did another two, a little bit more with the Green Side. And I was with Second Battalion, Second Marines out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, so I got to give a yut-yut and a hoorah to my brothers and sisters at the Warlord’s in 2:2 Camp Lejeune. And then, yeah, man, then I got out, but I did a lot in a short period of time. I was with a stay unit or surveillance target acquisition. I was a sniper team guy, so did a lot in a very short amount of time. Did a 22nd Mew. I was in Monrovia, Liberia for Operation Assured Response, and we were like a relief follow-up to guard the embassy in that area to keep rivaling fashions away from American soil, American consulate. So yeah.
Amazing. And then you get out, and now you transition to rock and roll. How the hell does that happen?
Well, I mean, listen, music is a part of my life. It’s always been a part of my life. I started out, I was actually born in England. My dad was an NSA guy. He was stationed there, and he met my mom, and we lived near the base. But I went to preschool as a young’un between the ages of three and five. And in that preschool, it’s English preschool. It’s not like American preschool where you’re like, ripping paper and eating paste. English preschool is very disciplined. It’s church hymns and those types of things. That’s where I first heard music was singing church hymns with other kids. And as a three and four and five-year-old kid, when you’re disciplined into singing in tune and things like that, it’s crazy. It’s very strict. It’s a little bit different, or it was. I found that music in my heart. I came here when I was five, and I was in the church choir, and I was in the youth choir for a while, and then kept going with music. Then I found in the back of the church, I was hanging out with a PK, and he had a set of headphones on, and I was like, What are you listening to, man?
He’s just like, Dude, check it out. It was like Metallica. I’m sitting in church listening to Metallica like something completely new, some completely different sounds, and I’m in this church. This combination of things started happening. I’m listening to this Metallica record, and I’m sitting in a church, and I’m having this moment of I love all these things that are happening around me. It was this perfect storm thing. It embedded itself in my heart, and I just never let it go.
By never letting it go, I mean, that’s a pretty bold statement because it takes a long time to get where you are today. How many shows are you playing a year now?
Well, okay, so cumulatively, I do a solo artist, which is mostly Black-Tie events. We do about 40, 50 Black-Tie fundraisers each year. And then for the band, we do about 10 to 12. We don’t overkill it with the band. The band is a specialty item that we have on our menu, so to speak. So like I said, we can go out as a small acoustic group. We can go out as a full band, which we’re going to be doing for you guys. I’m super pumped for that for the Memorial Day special. And then again, I do a lot of fundraising in the Black-Tie, military Veteran community, the law enforcement community, I’m big within that area, that expertise of these events that are looking for something special. They’re looking for that cathartic moment. They’re looking to give these people in the audience those goosebumps. And It’s just, like I said, it’s part of what came with me in that church. It was that same goosebump, cathartic moment listening to Metallica in the back of a church with God all around me. I’m sitting there, like I said, goosebumps and my arm hairs are going up, and I bring that to the events.
Again, the accumulation of two major things are the band and then the solo acts. We do 80, maybe 100 a year.
Yeah. Some people say that they never let it go, and they’re hobbyists, but you are a professional musician, and in fact, you’ve got quite a following. It’s interesting. You see a lot of Veteran bands, and they go back and forth between, are they rock and roll? Is this country? But you’re pretty hardcore rock and roll, and you do some covers, but you’ve got some great original stuff as well.
Thanks, man.
What are you most proud of?
Well, if you go back, it depends. I mean, proud is one thing, accomplishments are another. If you go back into what really brought me into light was my time with Madison Rising, which was a full-on rock band. I rewrote the National Anthem. It was at the time, I think, the oldest cover song ever redone into a rock rendition. I made a rock rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner.
Better than Jimi Hendrix, by the way, better than the Jimi Hendrix version.
I stole Jimi Hendrix’s solo. I put it in the Star-Spangled Banner. We just made a rock tune out of it. And that’s probably my claim to fame. But the follow up to that was the first single that I released for my solo career was a song called Last Call. That song was one that I had written for law enforcement, because as you know, when you do a roll call, we lose a brother or a sister in arms. In the military, we do a roll call, and they muster the battalion, and they go down through, and they will name out a few names of people that are present. Then obviously, they get to the fallen, and that name doesn’t respond. They call that name numerous times, and then they read the final remarks. What I did not know was law enforcement, they do the same thing over the air, over the radio. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that they had a thing for the final call for these fallen officers. And a friend of mine, Dan Covo, he sent me an email. He’s like, Doc, you got to listen to this. He’s a Marine.
He was serving with a law enforcement unit outside of Philadelphia, and he was sending me another last call, quote, unquote, audio file, and I’d never heard it coming through on the air. And this dispatcher, she’s reading the badge number. I’m like, What is this? You know what I mean? And then underneath, I read, and he’s like, Man, this is from this guy, Brad Fox. He was ambushed. He chased a bag guy into a ravine, railroad tracks, guy snuck around, and he found a good ambush point. Brad goes down in. He was a Marine, like I said, nine-year Marine guy. He was law enforcement. He goes in, charges ahead, and this guy ambushes and kills this law enforcement officer. The fact that he was a Marine, the fact that he was continuing his service in law enforcement, the fact that it was an ambush, the fact that it could have been prevented, the fact that he left a wife and kids at home, it crushed me. To hear this dispatcher reading this badge number, and each time, dead air in between the badge number, and hearing her break down every time she had to read the badge number, and then finally giving his last date of service and end of watch over the air.
It broke me, man. I sat there in tears and picked up pen and paper and just started writing, and I came up with a song called Last Call. That song is basically what I would like to be said in between each of those dead air spaces of those three badge readings or in between that roll call.
Wow. Sometimes we forget that the two times a citizen, the Veteran who serves in law enforcement or continues to serve somewhere else, continues to put his or her life at risk is something that’s very real and very necessary for us to have a society in which we feel protected. I think that’s great the way that you’ve been able to pull this together, because we know that so many of our brothers and sisters that serve in the military also go on to serve in law enforcement because it’s in their blood to serve. The way that you honor them, honor, I think, both groups, but we’re really the same group, aren’t we? We’re all the protectors.
Well, it’s the cousinry. There was a research that was actually done with DNA, and they actually found what they believe is a DNA genome that falls into the warrior genome. They believe they’ve actually found that specific genome mapped of people that end up going into service, going into law enforcement, and then people that are outside of that. It’s this common thread, this common genome. This goes into another song that I wrote called Warrior Inside, and that asks those questions. If I’m still breathing, am I still this warrior that swore an oath when I was 18, 19, 20 years old? If I’m still walking on the free earth that I protected, am I still that warrior? And that’s the answer to that question is, yes, you’re born that way. You’re born with that genome. You’re born with something that makes you want to go out onto a sports field and make impacts with other people. You’re born to look around in rooms and know that if something goes down, you’re ready to protect. It’s something that is born into you. It’s not a learned behavior. It’s an actual genome that God places within the right people to go out and serve and to protect.
And obviously, our law enforcement falls into that as well as, excuse me, as our Veterans.
Well, let’s talk a little bit deeper about that warrior genome, because that is what gets you out front, right? The warrior genome is not… You’re not the one hiding in the back. You’re the one charging toward whatever the catastrophe is. And I’ll ask you this, is that in music as well for you? Is it that warrior genome that gets you on the stage, gets you the courage to sing your songs in front of thousands of people who may like them, who may boo you, who may love you, you never know, but you get the guts to go up there night after night on stage. Is that part of the warrior genome, or is that something different?
There’s something to be said about that, because I would say that being people that are born with that warrior genome, there is still a basic training entity or something that has to happen. You have to be broken down and rebuilt by using it. So it’s like you can have all the tools that you want from Snap-On, but if you can’t do anything with them, it doesn’t matter. The basic trainings or the academies that these guys go through or whatever, it shows you, it teaches you how to put all the Legos together to become that person that when you hear calls to action, you run towards instead of in fear. So when you learn how to combat that fight or flight, it’s very similar to the stage because every audience is different, just like every enemy is different. So you don’t know if your enemy is well-trained in urban warfare or small combat tactical indoor things, or if they’re better in the jungle. You don’t know what your enemy is going to be more skilled at or potentially better than you at. So it’s the same with every audience. Sometimes we will go out for a country act and we’re coming out there with distorted guitars, metals, and big drums, and we’re like, hey, man, okay, before we go hit that, before we go slam this audience in the face, why don’t we warm them up?
We’ll throw some Toby at them. You know what I mean? It’ll still be rocking Toby, but we’ll throw them some curveball, just to get them used to listening to what we’re presenting. And again, it’s very similar. That warrior strategy or that warrior reaction is something that definitely falls into stepping on to that stage because you have to assess that crowd in a split second. You have to assess a situation in a split second. You have to assess the danger points. You have to assess the escape routes. You have to assess what you’re going to address and what you’re going to move civilians away from. So there is that. There’s some similarities, but obviously not at the same level when real bullets are being fired. I’d take booze over bullets any day.
Well, I think back to what they taught us about reacting to an ambush, which is just get off the X. If you’re caught in an ambush, it doesn’t matter where you go. Just get out of the way. Just move. And I think back to, and while I certainly have never played music on stage, I mean, not past like sixth grade or something in band, but I certainly have spoken on stages, and I’ve been there where maybe a joke falls flat, or I don’t hit the emotional tone, or maybe I just didn’t pause at the right time. The show must go on, and there’s just this, you can’t freeze. You got to get off the X. I don’t know if that’s ever happened to you. Tell us about your worst experience where you’re on stage, where all of a sudden you just felt like you were in the ambush and you had to get out of it and you kept playing. Tell us about that. Because that’s our fear, right? We’re going to bomb on stage, stuck there, everybody laughing or not laughing. What do we do?
It’s sound guys. Sometimes sound guys are back there going, I got nothing or this, that, and the other thing. And you’re immediately taken out of… Music is a vibe, right? So you’re creating, you’re Bob Rossing the moment with sound, right? You’re trying to make the mountains look pretty. You’re trying to put some happy little squirrels over here. And musicians, if they’re good and well-rounded, read very, very deeply into that atmosphere. So if you have, and this can go two ways. If you have other people on stage who are not clicking with what everybody else is doing, if you got a drummer back there that’s ramping up-time at rack, or you got a sound guy that’s just really not good at his job, and you can see people in the audience grabbing their ears. You’re like, oh, great. So we’re dealing with multiple things right now. And so you have to, in that moment, just like you said, you got to get off the X, you got to change something. And if it’s, hey, we’re going to finish that song, move into a different space so that you can give everybody just a moment, that pause that you were talking about.
Give everybody a moment to just breathe and reset. That can be a huge… Those few minutes or those few seconds can be a huge moment. And audiences, what I found is if it’s technical, they’ll give you some leniency. If it’s a non-technical issue and it’s just the band is bad or whatever, I’ve seen that. I’ve seen audio… You start seeing people just rolling out. It’s like, man, what went wrong? And then you realize later you talk to somebody and they’re like, dude, your guitar player was so loud. We couldn’t hear anything else. We had to move to get to a point away from him because he wanted to crank up. Because soundcheck, he was keeping his guitar low, and then as soon as he came out there for the show, he decides he’s going to crank it up to 12. Listen, there’s a million things. There’s a million factors. But I’ve had some epic fails. I’ve fallen off stages. I’ve tripped over wires. I’ve eaten it. You’ve spent… The amount of times I’ve been in atmospheres. Each stage is set up different. You take some spills, you take your licks, you lick your wounds, you get up, you keep rocking. That’s all you can do.
Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. We learn that in the military for every operation, but so true on stage. And I’ve done presentations where it’s something simple. I didn’t get a chance to run through the slides. I didn’t notice clicker sticks. I’m like, behind one slide, and then the whole thing can get out of sync. But I do think it’s when you get in that flow state, where like you said, where you’re making the mountains and everything is happening, that’s what makes it all worth it. If you have the right audience, it seems the message is always right. If you get the right audience in there, you know you’re going to have a great time. Then sometimes you get a cold audience, and it seems like nothing’s going to go right. But I’d ask you this, when it comes to leadership, I know that you do some solo stuff, but also have a band. What’s it like to lead a band? What leadership skills do you need to lead a team as a musician?
I think on the road, the biggest thing is just keeping everybody… It’s like herding cats a little bit. You’ll have the one guy who’s like, I just want to stay in the room. And I’m like, Well we got a meet and greet. Or you got the other guy who’s like, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m on the road, I can’t change my cycle. In a way, you have to be strict, but in other ways, you have to be malleable. You have to respect the wants and wishes of the guys that are out on the road with you. You have to give them space when they need space, and you have to lead them and drag them when they need to be led and dragged. Most of it with the band side of things is logistics. It’s food. Again, it’s military time. Hey, when can we eat? When can we eat? Who’s buying that lunch? Who’s buying that dinner? And if it’s something simple like that, and a credit card can take care of it, and everybody just gets at ease, or food, I can just be like, Everybody good with pizza? Boom. Or everybody good with this?
Boom. Do you guys want to go? I try to foresee what these guys might want to do because, again, long times, long travels, long times in busses, vans, automobiles, trains, planes. You don’t want to put a guy on stage who’s pissed off because his back hurts because he got thrown in coach. You know what I mean? So, hey, man, if you need an hour or something like that, go down, get a shower, whatever. Just the small things. So, if you can make as a leader, if you can take away issues, the small issues, away from the guys that they don’t have to worry about them. Hey, man, we’re getting hungry. If they’re coming to you saying, Hey, we’re getting hungry, I feel like, hey, I failed as a leader. I should have been providing food. I should have looked ahead for the simple thing. So if you can check the five major boxes, comfort, sleep, food, drinks, whatever. If you can check those boxes and take those worries away from guys who may not be used to being out on the road as much as you are, I think that just makes… It makes their life easier.
It makes my life easier when you ask them to get on stage or be somewhere at a certain time. You’re not met with that grumbling. You’re not met with those excuses or, Hey, can I get an extra half hour? They’re more apt to show. So you want your guys on the road to show up. Yes, they’re paid musicians, but you want them to show up wanting to take the stage with you.
Yeah. And I’ve seen it all from, at least in the movies, almost famous. You got to worry about your singer is going to be on a roof saying, I’m a golden God, going to jump into a swimming pool. Oh, yeah. Groupies. You don’t have none of those problems, right? I mean, just logistics. That’s the easy stuff.
It’s very simple. And my guys are professionals. We’re all professional musicians. These guys are in other acts. They know now how social… I think there was this cusp where people weren’t really sure the power of social media, but they also know now that, Hey, you better show up, man, because people are videotaping. They’re watching, they’re listening, they’re going live. So what you do is being watched, and it can have ripple effects.
That’s outstanding. Yeah, you think about it, what you’re doing on stage is amplified, and what you’re doing off stage is amplified.
Almost more for the off-stage stuff. If you’re acting like a total Jack Wagon off stage, that will be the thing that goes viral. You playing the perfect solo or ripping the best freaking song. That’ll get a thousand views. But man, you having a bad day and cussing out the barista at Starbucks, viral, man.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s move to the after-action review where we talk about great leadership and horrible leadership. Let’s start off with your three examples of great leadership, Dave, that you’ve either experienced in the Marine Corps, in the Navy, or in the music industry.
Yeah. Well, you brought up a valid point. I was watching some of Veteran Led’s other podcasts, but one of the things that you bring up is the crawl, walk, run. And I would say that in that piece, there’s just one thing missing, and it’s repeat, because you can’t keep running at a high level of speed forever. It doesn’t matter if you’re David Goggins or who you are. You’re going to get lost in the woods, spun around with the light on your head in the middle of the night, running an ultra, right? There is this repeat motion that a lot of guys have a really big problem. They want to go crawl, walk, run, back to walk instead of being like, Hey, man, sometimes you’re not going to get to go back to walk. You’re going to go back to crawling. You’re going to go back to zero. And that’s got to be a part of the acceptance that’s in your heart. I was on tour with Concerned Veterans for America, and Pete Hegseth is now the Secretary of Defense. The guy was in his late 20s, maybe, while we were out in CVA and we were touring with them.
Amazing organization, amazing group. Pete was the leader. He was the guy that was bringing people together. He brought the right speakers together. He brought the right band, obviously us. Then we went across the country for years, and we circulated Veterans. We built a network. To watch him do that and to watch him be that leader, and then he stepped into Fox News, and then he steps, obviously, into SecDef. You have this example of a guy who was crawling, working. He went to college, did his thing. Then he starts running. He feels like he’s getting ahead, boom. Then all of a sudden, he’s off the road. It may have looked, it may have seemed like it was crawl, walk, run, run, run, run, run, run, now he’s SecDef. But if you know him, you see these different levels of, Hey, I’m releasing a book or this, that, and there are these moments of, I’m going back to walk or I’m going back to crawl. But Pete was an amazing example. He’s amazing orator. He was an amazing guy to watch on stage. I learned a lot from him. I also went on tour with Ted Nugent.
Ted was one of those guys who invites you back to his dressing room, and there’s a lot of bravado there with Ted. Ted’s a big guy, six, probably three, 240 pound, big dude. Everybody knows his background. Ted’s an amazing musician, started out, was playing with Chuck Berry, for crying out loud. He was playing with the best of the best before people even knew who the best of the best was. So to see a guy like that, stick around and again, it may feel like the last 40 years of Ted Nugent was all crawl, walk, run, but there was times in there when nobody heard a peep out of Ted Nugent. And where did he go? What did he do? He had to go back and reinvent himself. And I think that reinvention is a part of a good leader. They can look, realize they’ve hit either the brick wall and go back, or they know that they got to pivot. They got to get off that X. Hey, I’ve been grinding this stone up in this run level, and I can’t keep going. So Ted was another one. Pete was another one. I’ve met quite a few people along the way in the speaking circuit.
If you look at bad leaders, I don’t want to really point out bad leadership, but it becomes very obvious when you see bad leadership, when you see poor leadership. It’s very obvious. It shows up in ways that makes you say, Well, maybe, instead of being, Hey, that’s a good leader. That’s a good leader. But I’m going to put it out there. I think if you look at the comparison between the last two presidents, I don’t think there’s much a comparison of which one is a great leader and which one wasn’t.
Well put. Well, if you want to nail down leadership You look at the top levels. You’ve given us some great examples. You’ve given us some bad examples. Who is the leader that you aspire to be, Dave Bray USA?
I think in music, I think a guy… I’m stretching here. But if you look at a guy like Trent Reznor, who, again, was an early Electronica guy, I don’t even know why Trent pops to mind. But now he goes into writing scores of music. He did albums that were just the music part of things. I don’t know what his leadership status is, but to see his growth in what he developed for the ears of the masses, I think is pretty amazing. He’s written scores for music like for the movie, The Social Network. And if you go back and listen to it, you’ll be like, Man, that is totally Trent. But again, if you look at other musicians who I believe did it right, Toby Keith. I mean, the guy right after 9/11, I think he did 300 shows in two years all around the world for free. I don’t think that you cannot see him as the pinnacle of what you do with music once you’re successful. So that to me says volumes, although Trent’s music is probably more closer to what I respect. Toby was just a pinnacle of a Patriot. He was just a leader.
Then finally, I tour with Bret Michaels as well, and I look at what Bret does. I look at what he does for the community. I look at what he does for the Veteran world, and he’s just a huge supporter as well. So Bret Michaels, shout out to Bret, and shout out to Toby, rest his soul.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today on Veteran Led. Dave Bray USA, where could listeners learn more about you, your music, your band, and your upcoming events?
Well, sure. Everything’s at davebrayusa.com. Music on a Mission is basically the catch line. The record is Music on a Mission. I got a couple of albums out there. They are narrated storyteller records. So you get a song, you get the narrations behind the song, you get the meaning behind the music. Basically, again, you asked me about where the music started for me after the military, and it came down to continuation of service. And I think people that put off the uniform and put the boots in the closet forget that you still swore an oath. You still owe that oath to the people of America, and you need to continue some kind of service. Don’t just go disappearing into the ether. Find something that you love, share it with the world, and continue your service to your country.
Thank you so much. And I got to tell you a huge shout out from my team. I said, Hey, we’re going to blow up Memorial Day. We’re going to have a big event. Who do we get? And everybody said, You got to get Dave Bray. You got to get Dave Bray. And I’m like, All right, let me… And of course, I know Jason Steiner. We’re involved with HEROSTOCK and some of these other organizations, so we hear a lot of bands. But I was like, No, this is real rock and roll. I was blown away. I was like, wow. It wasn’t like, Oh, yeah, this guy’s pretty good. It’s like, no, this is the guy. Get Dave Bray USA. That’s it. We’re done. We don’t need to hear anybody else.
Well you made a good choice. Thank you very much for having us. That’s going to be at Papillion?
May 25th, and we’ll get the announcement out there. But May 25th, Papillion, Nebraska. A huge Memorial Day celebration featuring Dave Bray USA. Have some other bands, other entertainment, and a great time to celebrate our fallen heroes, but also to celebrate those who continue to serve. Memorial Day is a tough day for a lot of us. There’s a lot of great individuals who are no longer with us, but it’s also a great day to smile at our brothers who are still standing by our side and to celebrate that we’re still here and that we still have each other.
Listen, don’t miss this show. May 25th, it’s going down, Sumtur Amphitheater in Papillion Nebraska. Dave Bray USA and the Patriot revival is going to be rocking. I’m telling you, if you like country music, you like rock music, we even do a little folk, some singalong stuff. You don’t want to miss it, family friendly. It’s going to be a great day to celebrate our fallen brothers and sisters and stand shoulder to shoulder as Americans and celebrate our country.
Amen. Thanks so much, Dave Bray USA.
You got it, John. God bless.
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting Veteran leadership in business, strengthening the Veteran community, and getting Veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching @VeteranLed on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments. We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Led.
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