COME HOME AMERICA Aims to Ignite Movement to Serve Military as They Serve Our Nation

Come Home America by Marcus GoldhaberAcclaimed New York Singer-Songwriter Marcus Goldhaber Launches ‘Home for the Holidays’ Season for the Troops with Veterans Day Charity Release.  Proceeds from Song, Concert Tour and Upcoming Album to Benefit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)

 

With thousands of American combat troops about to spend another holiday season far from their families, COME HOME AMERICA has been crafted by acclaimed New York singer-songwriter MARCUS GOLDHABER as a new patriotic standard aimed at launching a movement to repair our increasingly damaged connections with those who’ve sacrificed during our decade at war.

Available Veterans Day to jump-start the “home for the holidays” season, COME HOME AMERICA (Fallen Apple Records) is Goldhaber’s stirring ode to our nation’s two million service members across the globe, as well as the 24 million veterans back home, both embraced and discarded. The mission is simple: to benefit the needs of this new generation of returning veterans, while improving and strengthening the dialogue between civilians and military families for years to come.

{youtube}Od6Cgsaj4qw{/youtube} Proceeds from COME HOME AMERICA benefit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (www.iava.org), which strives to build the “New Greatest Generation” as the first and largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Goldhaber will be participating with IAVA in New York City’s Veterans Day Parade.

Remembering the troops at the holidays is just the beginning for COME HOME AMERICA. Produced and arranged in Nashville by Cliff Goldmacher (Ke$ha) with the stylish accessibility that has earned Goldhaber high praise from People Magazine to Jazz Times as a recording artist and fixture on Manhattan’s jazz-cabaret circuit, COME HOME AMERICA is being released for the holidays as a precursor to the 2014 COME HOME AMERICA Concert Tour and a like-minded album of Goldhaber originals due Memorial Day 2014. The album, the followup to last year’s highly praised Almost Love, will be arriving as the yearlong COME HOME AMERICA Tour, starring Goldhaber and the COME HOME AMERICA Band, will be hitting stride in concert halls, stadiums, military bases, and parades around the world – all while continuing to benefit IAVA.

“Much of this comes down to education and the absence of a continuing dialogue between civilians and military families,” says Goldhaber. “I have a strong wish to bridge this gap so that we can all feel more connected to each other.”

Marcus GoldhaberGoldhaber was careful to construct a broad, sweeping melody and rousing chorus that “you want to wrap people in like a blanket,” to help transmit his message in an inclusive and accessible way. By countering his vocals with restrained nuance, Goldhaber was able to marry the intimate approach more natural to his style with the expansive message of COME HOME AMERICA.

“I needed to connect people who don’t know a lot about this subject and help bridge that gap,” he says. “If it’s something that’s accessible and memorable, it’s something that people can get closer to.”

Goldhaber also plays piano on COME HOME AMERICA, and is joined by top Nashville players Keio Stroud (Mike Farris, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Johnny Neel) on drums; Dave Francis (LeRoy Parnell) on bass; Kerry Marx (Johnny Cash, Charley Pride, Ronnie Milsap, B.J. Thomas) on electric guitar; Catherine Marx (Alison Krauss, Reba McEntire, Olivia Newton-John) on keyboards, and Star Search winner Britt Savage Disney, Care Bears) on backup vocals.

COME HOME AMERICA is an entirely new recording of the version Goldhaber was originally asked to write for the 2012 Project Eleven veterans’ charity compilation. Faced with a three-day deadline, he found inspiration in George McGovern’s 1972 presidential nomination acceptance speech of the same name. COME HOME AMERICA picks up on the late South Dakota senator’s message, delivered while the U.S. was mired in a seemingly unending war in Vietnam. McGovern’s vision that America might “come home” to the ideals which had nourished it from the beginning resonated with Goldhaber’s feelings about the America he was experiencing 40 years later.

With his new remake of COME HOME AMERICA as the springboard, Goldhaber can more effectively build on the mission of its message, reinforced by First Lady Michelle Obama last year in her holiday video greeting to the combat troops overseas: “Our military families sacrifice so much on our behalf, and Barack and I believe that we should serve them as well as they serve this country.”

“This war has been going on far too long,” says Goldhaber. “Too many of our soldiers are returning with suicidal thoughts, post traumatic stress disorder, estranged family members and loved ones, and we, as a country, are not fully embracing what all of this means. Most of us go on living our lives, and are not truly connected or educated about what our troops have been asked to endure.”

COME HOME AMERICA will be released Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11, 2013, through iTunes, CDBaby, and Amazon.

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