Read an excerpt from 4TROOPS: The Mission Is Music!

Release date: 10/8/2010

4TROOPS: Live from the Intrepid

Backlit, they stride through smoke and haze, past the aging machinery of a ship of war and onto a stage set up in front of the vintage airplanes inside the hangars of the Intrepid. Cut to a drummer in parade dress making his way through the audience as he beats out a solemn cadence. The audience, a tapestry of civilians, veterans, active-duty troops, and their families, sits on metal benches, leaning forward in anticipation. It’s March 15, 2010 and 4TROOPS are about to kick off the first big public concert of material from their forthcoming CD. Not only that: the show is being filmed for broadcast on PBS stations across the country—and for release on DVD.

Behind the performers, a large projection screen flashes images of events from Intrepid’s storied past. As they walk to their mics, we hear the piano intro to “For Freedom” and a soldier selected from the audience just moments before announces in foot-drill tones, “Presenting . . . 4TROOPS!” David Clemo raises his mic and begins, “Somewhere a trumpet sounds in the night / A soldier is standing there. . . .” Daniel Jens picks up the line, then Ron Henry, then Meredith Melcher, and the voices meet in harmony. As the song unfolds, they move around the stage naturally, changing positions, making contact with each other and the audience, trading off lines in solo, duet, and quartet. Photos from their lives and Army careers come and go on the screen, along with other military imagery, ending on a rippling flag as they sing “. . . and for freedom she’ll ever wave!”

When they finish, the crowd erupts in cheers, and the joy and relief on the group members’ faces is plain to see. Those are predictable emotions for performers putting on their first big show and getting a great reception to the opening number. The relief has another source as well. The production truck had arrived hours late, delayed by a storm that had flipped cars and closed highways up and down the East Coast. Then a tiny technical glitch held up and finally derailed the dress rehearsal.

“By the time we traced three wires randomly patched, the audience was coming in,” says Shelley Ross, who produced and directed the show and the sixty-minute film. Producing a live concert from a truck on land cabled to a ship floating in the water had some built-in challenges. “You have to be careful—because the tide is always going to be at a different level than when you cabled up.” Once the “mystery glitch” was solved, Ross had to direct a live show with a crew of ninety, most of whom had never heard or seen the group before. “I was the only one who knew what was going to happen.”

Ross is a veteran producer who won three Emmy awards and the distinguished Peabody Award for her work at ABC News, where she was executive producer of Good Morning America and Primetime Live, clocking more than 2,500 hours of live TV. She was already brimming with ideas for the concert film. “It was perfect for PBS: the appeal would be national and multigenerational. And since it’s not a broadcast network, it could be presented in the PBS concert format,” keeping the focus on 4TROOPS and their audience.

“My first task was to come up with the right venue to provide a visual backdrop for the concert.” Ross scouted West Point and contacted various military bases before settling on the aircraft carrier Intrepid, a vessel steeped in military history. As soon as she toured it, she knew this was the only place to introduce 4TROOPS.

“Once I heard 4TROOPS’ personal stories, I didn’t just want to produce a concert with pretty songs and pretty lighting. My challenge was how to bring the deeper meaning of the songs to the small screen. So I created a story arc for the show that, in my head and heart, is like a veterans’ pop opera. First we invoke the spirits of the Intrepid. Then we start introducing themes—for example, the first set of songs speaks to family, freedom, and mercy or compassion.”

Ross aimed to capture the spirit of the ship by making it part of the set. “What strikes you on the Intrepid, and looking at the photos of it in service, is the history that’s embodied in every old stairway, all the coats of paint, every exposed pipe, every gnarly metal artifact. I wanted to light every bit, draw attention to it. In the very first song, ‘For Freedom,’ you’ll see archival films and photos of the Intrepid being hit by kamikazes and burning at sea, the ghostly images of navy pilots who served and all those sailors who were buried at sea.” 4TROOPS would be able to bridge that history and the generation now serving.

Excerpted from 4TROOPS: The Mission Is Music, by Former Cpt. Meredith Melcher, Former Sgt. Daniel Jens, Staff Sgt. (Ret.) Ron Henry, and Former Sgt. David Clemo
Copyright © 2010 by Sony Music Entertainment. All rights reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Newmarket Press, 18 East 48 Street, New York, NY 10017, www.newmarketpress.com, www.4troopsmusic.com