“I never in a million years thought I’d go to Afghanistan,” said Adam Livingston, sax player for the Nashville, Tenn.-based band Mile 8. “We went to eight different countries, living sort of like the soldiers for a month,” he said.
This past fall, Livingston and six other band members packed their musical instruments and flew overseas to the countries where American troops are fighting.
American Forces Entertainment, an organization that has brought American featured artists of all types to troops for more than 50 years, took Mile 8 on its Middle East Tour.
“It’s not like what you see on the news over there; all everyone hears about are the deaths,” said Randy Boen, lead vocalist and guitarist.
He added, “No one talks about the new schools we’re building.” In Afghanistan, the band also played for children and locals. He said, “Children are the future. We had to get them on our side.”
Both Boen and Livingston agreed that the tour was humbling. The soldiers there from nine months to a whole year thanked them all for coming for a short while. “I felt thanks to them as well,” Livingston said.
Drummer Kurt Redding expressed humility as well. He said, “We were only around for a month doing what we love, and they were so thankful.”
“They are away from their families in a war zone all the time. We had to take their minds off of it for a while. That stuff had to drive them crazy,” he added.
Tonight the popular jam band will perform at Lucky’s Lounge for a Palmer Home benefit. For a door charge of $5 the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity will raise money for their traditional Paddy Murphy week.
“Starkville’s like our home away from home,” Livingston said. Because locals received them well, the band keeps coming back.
Since Mile 8 began in 1999, the band has introduced a new genre of jam. Because they mix their sound with reggae, funk, jazz and rock ‘n’ roll, their atypical stereotype of hippy tunes brings fans around from many other preferences.
“The sax gives our group a different feel, cause it’s still a minority instrument,” Livingston said. “Variety is the spice of life.”
Redding, who started drumming as a child with his mother’s pots and pans, inspired the band’s name through a mysterious series of disappointments.
“We got our name from a road sign my friends sent me,” Redding said. He added that he was always obsessed with the number eight. While he prepared to go to a series of Phish concerts, he lost his tickets.
While he sat at home, his friends went to the concerts, but sent him the sacred Mile 8 marker they found along the way. “They all signed it saying they wished I was there.”
To Redding’s reluctance, the band posted the sign in the middle of the stage front at many of their concerts. It got lost in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Three years later, a strange coincidence happened. “Our guitar player’s girlfriend from Murfreesboro told us that her neighbor had a Mile 8 marker in his garage,” Redding said.
The neighbor’s marker was, indeed, Kurt’s same sign.
“We lost the meaning of our name, but after three years it came back to us,” he added.
This coming April, Relix, an Indie-rock focused magazine, will feature Mile 8. This article will be their first widely distributed feature in print. This past November, JamBase, another magazine introduced their Middle Eastern tour before they took off.
“They make a huge sacrifice over there,” Livingston said. “On that side of the world, it made me really respect what they do.”