Coffey Anderson brings laughs and tears for Veterans Day

QUINCY — Probably at least half the audience had never heard of Coffey Anderson before his concert began Tuesday night. An hour later, he had a whole auditorium’s worth of new best friends. 

“I grew up in small-town Texas, central Texas,” Anderson told the audience. “You know, central Washington, it's the same … one of those towns where your coaches teach you U.S. history. Where the teacher is a bus driver and she's smoking on the bus. That ain't even legal, but there's no cameras because our budget didn't work that way. Y'all got Microsoft money. We got soft micro-money.” 

Anderson was in town to perform for Veterans Day in a concert sponsored by Veterans Operation Creation. About 420 people came to see the show, filling the venue about three-quarters full, said VOC member Tom Parrish. 

“That's kind of what I expected,” Parrish said. “We wanted to sell out, but the name recognition was a bit tough. But now if we were to have him come back again, it would sell out quickly.” 

The show opened with the VOC singers singing the national anthem, and then Anderson came on stage. With his voice, an acoustic guitar and irrepressible humor, Anderson performed a set of eight songs that swung the audience between belly laughs and tears like a line of ice skaters playing crack-the-whip. He moved effortlessly between light-hearted fare like “Your New Boyfriend is Ugly” and more serious patriotic and veteran-oriented songs. The audience was drawn into the singing as well, joining him to sing “Happy Birthday” to Anderson’s daughter through his phone and in a rollicking rendition of Garth Brooks’ song “Friends in Low Places.” 

In between, he recounted the stories behind the songs, including a time when he was about to do a show, and learned that the bride and groom at a wedding across the street planned to use one of his songs for their first dance. 

“Their friend knew me and saw me and let me in,” he said. “The DJ is playing my song through his computer, and they're already started dancing to my song. So the DJ sees me, and he turns the volume down and acts like something is wrong with his computer. The groom is like, ‘I'm about to knock this dude out for ruining my honeymoon.’ I started singing my song ‘Better Today.’ And the first note I hit, the bride looks at the groom and goes, ‘How much does this cost?’ She was already in wife mode!” 

Moving into more serious territory, Anderson recounted an encounter he had with a female army veteran. 

“She said ‘There's a lot of good women that serve, and we feel invisible. I spent 22 years and my husband served 12. But because he has tattoos and a hat, people shake his hand, not mine.’” Anderson said. “Now, I have … three girls. I want them to feel encouraged, seen, loved. I want them to be able to shoot straight and reload.” 

He went onto social media and asked fans for ideas for a song honoring female veterans. 

“We had 9,054 comments that day,” Anderson said. “One comment that stood out was ‘You can’t spell hero without her.’” 

That became the title of the song. Before performing it, Anderson asked all the female veterans to stand for a round of applause. 

Anderson’s final song was entitled “Mr. Red White and Blue.” He had written it, he said, to honor a veteran who was the sole survivor of his unit, but no record label would touch it. Finally, he and some friends shot a bare-bones music video, and it went viral. He began getting requests to sing it at soldiers’ funerals, including a tour honoring the 13 service members who were killed in the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

“I saw nine mamas bury their babies in two weeks,” he said. 

He dedicated the song to anybody who had ever had a family member serve, recalling his own father, who had served in the Air Force. He said it was up to regular people to bring the nation his father fought for together.  

“And it takes all of us to make that happen," Anderson said.

    The Veterans Outreach Connection singers perform the national anthem before Coffey Anderson’s concert Tuesday.
  

    The audience joins Coffey Anderson in singing “Happy Birthday” through his phone to his daughter Emmarie, who turned 12 while her father was performing in Quincy.