Celebrating the Boot Campaign’s one-year anniversary this month, the initiative is releasing a special edition compilation album filled with Texas music entitled When They Come Back on Sept. 14. Many of the artists featured on the CD have participated in the Campaign’s signature photo shoots involving military combat boots, like the Eli Young Band, No Justice and Wade Bowen.
While attending the University of North Texas, James Young and Mike Eli formed the first lineup of their band that would later include Chris Thompson and Jon Jones. In 2005, the group’s second album, Level, was released on Carnival Records, and they earned a spot opening for Miranda Lambert as well as making appearances on CMT and GACTV.
For When They Come Back, the Eli Young Band will be heard on “Home,” a song from the last album, Jet Black & Jealous, with idea that the people surrounding you make a place feel as if it’s a home: “So I'll shake some hands/Chase that falling star…Gonna sow my seeds somewhere/But home is where you are.”
Fellow country music band (based in Oklahoma but climbing Texas music charts), No Justice, recently debuted the group’s first national release with 2nd Avenue, and it quickly landed on the Billboard Heatseekers chart\ (No. 22) and Billboard Country chart (No. 53). The Red Dirt Kings recorded the album in Nashville with help from Rebecca Lynn Howard and Johnny Cooper.
The sentimental “Red Dress,” written by frontman Steve Rice, is a perfect addition to the CD as it examines a couple’s difficulty being apart for long periods of time. Rice sings, “We knew it wouldn't be easy living this way/Hours on hours days upon days on a hard worn highway,” an identifiable feeling for those in the U.S. military with families.
Waco, Texas’s Wade Bowen contributes his song, “If We Ever Make it Home,” another appropriate piece with the hopeful lyrics, “If we ever make it home/They’ll be peace like we’ve never known/Nobody’s gonna walk alone/We’ll be leaning on each other.”
About the Boot Campaign
Known as “the Boot Girls,” Ginger, Leigh Ann, Sherri, Heather and Mariae banned together one fateful night in Tyler, Texas to launch The Boot Campaign giving gratitude and appreciation for the American military. The initiative is quickly gaining awareness with the repertoire of boot images expanding every day. The Boot Girls ask Americans to put their boots on during the routine of daily life to symbolically walk in the shoes of our military men and women, remembering their service and sacrifice. The Campaign’s signature boots are available for purchase online with proceeds benefitting organizations like The Lone Survivor Foundation.
For more information about The Boot Campaign, please visit: www.bootcampaign.com.
