He served in Iraq doing counter-IED missions (Improvised Explosive Device), losing three team members in six months and an entire EOD team (Explosive Ordinance Disposal). Now Mark Goujon is a songwriter who released two songs last year, both of which had unique stories around them. He also talks about media coverage he has gotten, adapting poetry into songs, how he got connected to Nashville, and more.
“With every connection you make you have the opportunity to meet some great, valuable people.”
“I have these little Sony handheld recorders, so when I’m driving… I’ll have it in my car, no matter where I’m going and whatever strikes me, I’ll record it, I’ll sing it a couple of times, and I’ll go back, in the middle of the night is when, sometime after midnight… is when I normally will be at the computer, fixing it and making it as I go.”
“Recently I started working on a new song, called ‘The Angel Band,’ with a friend of mine who had lost a friend himself and he had written a poem and he had seen that I had helped adapt another poem for one of my other friends. So, it (songwriting) can come from other sources as well.”
“My focus had always been on poetry. When I was first writing I was doing it more to do kind of an autobiography or capturing a memoir of my deployment experience.”
“Don’t take anything as a roadblock. Honestly, just take it as a scenic route, because you never know what lesson you’re going to pull from it.”
“Sometimes it’ll open a door or a window that you weren’t even trying to find.”
"Love's Forevermore"
"Home Coming Home"