By Verna Slate, Williamson County Bureau
MARION, Ill. — Five area veterans spent two days in a retreat with Nashville singer-songwriters, working their service into verses and choruses. On Saturday, Sept. 12, they'll play those songs for whoever shows up at a free concert in Marion, according to Southern Illinoisan Local.
There's a long tradition in coal country of turning hard experience into song — union anthems, mining ballads, the kind of music that carries a story further than a plaque ever could. This concert works the same territory, just with a different generation's hard experience.
The show is free, which matters in a county where a lot of families are stretching a paycheck. It's also a rare chance to hear the war told the way the people who lived it choose to tell it — not through a headline, but through a verse they wrote themselves.
— Compiled from reporting by Southern Illinoisan Local.
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