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It took over 10 years for a local veteran to bring himself to record a song written shortly after the death of his close friend while serving in Iraq.
Houghton High School teacher Jeff Hauswirth was taking part in Operation Iraqi Freedon in 2006 when fellow combat medic Jaime Jaenke from Iowa was killed by an IED.
“One of the guys from my truck came up and he said, ‘Hey, Doc!’—as the Corpsman, you’re called ‘Doc'”, Hauswirth recalled. “And he said, ‘Doc!’–the other team was called Appliance–he said ‘Appliance got hit and two people were killed’ and I just had a really eerie feeling, I knew that she was gone.”
After hearing the news, Hauswirth penned a tribute to her with his guitar and now that song, Forever 29, is the title track of a six-song EP soon to be available to the general public.
Hauswirth travelled to Nashville, TN last summer to work with award winning producer Michael Flanders who helped record those songs written all those years ago.
“Writing this stuff is one thing but then putting it away and not dealing with it—every time you pull it out and think ‘here it is, I’m going to record it’ so you start working on it again and it kind of brings you back to that time and I really didn’t want to go back to that time,” said Hauswirth.
The video for the song Forever 29 is currently available on YouTube while the entire EP will be available on all digital and streaming services starting April 26th.
Hauswirth said, “I forget which 40-something birthday of mine I had, but I wrote thinking about my friend, as I keep getting older, she will always be forever 29.”
Hauswirth will be donating 25 percent of each sale to a non-profit that supports veterans and their families.
Contact:
Humvee Records, LLC
PO Box 833
Houghton, MI 49931
(906) 281-1034
