Photo By Cpl. Shawn Pierce | Sgt. 1st Class Kurt Legnon assigned to the Joint Multinational Readiness Center...... read more read more
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HOHENFELS, Germany- On a typical Saturday night you would probably find Sgt. 1st Class Kurt Legnon singing with the American Jam Band at local festivals or the Hohenfels American German Volksfest. With the onset of restrictions due to COVID-19 live music is suddenly threatened. Consequently, many artists to include Legnon have turned to streaming concerts on live stream via Facebook.
“I saw a lot of the larger name artist were doing this and it was something that I was always thinking about doing, so a few weeks ago I spoke with my wife and decided that I wanted to bring it home a bit and make it more personal for the soldiers and community members at JMRC,“ said Legnon.
His Saturday night jam sessions went from family and friends then to include soldiers from his unit and eventually morphed into “Live in Legnon’s Living Room” for the JMRC and local community.
“Since we have all of this social distancing, people can’t really enjoy live music like they used. When you go to a small town venue and you shout out a lot of songs and the band is able to play them and it really brings a sense of community to all of those listening to the live music,” said Legnon.
He explained that if he put his concerts on YouTube video, then people have commented in the link section but there would not have been any real interaction.
“I really like to be able to interact with the audience,” Legnon said. “With this format it is raw it is uncut, yeah you can probably hear my kids playing in the background and at some points singing along, but that brings it home and makes it real.”
His music concert comes with an extra twist. He has interwoven public service announcements in the form of parodies of a popular song to help remind folks to not bring the entire family to the commissary. Legnon says that when people are familiar with a certain tune in to hear those words that he can often help me easier for them to sing along and think about those words.
“I did a song to help remind people to think before you head to the commissary or PX with all of your family members to the tune of the Gambler,” said Legnon. “You’ve got to know when to load them and know when to leave them- you need to know when to stay at home and you need to know when to go.”
Legnon has been stationed at Hohenfels for six years and says he is often referred to as that American musician in his village. Yet, his music passion stems back to 19 years ago when he first got his guitar his senior year of high school. For him playing music and singing in the choir is something that has complimented his life.
“I grew up singing in church and I love singing hymns and music has always been a passion of mine and I wanna keep on going and share it with everybody,” said Legnon.
While some people are saying ‘oh I’m stuck at home’ and really focusing on the social isolation aspect, Legnon says he is glad to be able to bring a bit of live music to them.
“I just want people to be a little bit more relaxed and shine a little bit more joy into their house. Live music does it for me and I just want to share a little bit of that joy with everybody else,” said Legnon. “I really want to keep live music. Musicians across the world are doing these live concerts and I wanted to do the same thing for a community.”
Next live JMRC COVID-19 concert will be on April 24 at 7 p.m. on the JMRC FaceBook page.
| Date Taken: | 04.23.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 04.23.2020 07:27 |
| Story ID: | 368214 |
| Location: | HOHENFELS, BY, DE |
| Web Views: | 342 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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