Plainfield Songwriter Featured in Magazine

It started as a one-off of sorts.

Songwriter Aaron Kelly heard friend Zach Skeen was coming home on leave from Iraq, just in time for Thanksgiving.

A member of rock/folk/blues band Overman, Kelly started singing to himself about Skeen’s impending homecoming: Woe is a battlezone, Zach Skeen’s coming home, I hope he stays.

“Sometimes musicians will turn any mundane thing into a song, and sometimes it sticks,” Kelly said.

Indeed, the song, which would eventually be titled “Come Home Soon,” stuck with the band.

Now, the tune is garnering attention for the Plainfield-based musicians. American Songwriter Magazine recently featured Kelly in its print and online editions.

Kelly, one-fourth of the band that also includes Matt Radowski, Russell Eggenberger and Robert Cool, talked to Patch about the song and how it came to be included on Overman’s 2011 album, “The Future is Gonna Be Great.”

“It sat there for a while,” Kelly said. After Skeen’s return to Iraq, he began adding to the song.

“It was more of a therapeutic thing,” Kelly said. He began writing the second half of the song from the soldier’s perspective.

I'm unpacking my two bags,
in Baghdad on Christmas Eve
Hoping maybe someday,
if we win that I can leave

I'd like to go to college,
back home or way out west
I've never seen a Rocky Mountain,
shining sweet sunset

Or rubbed elbows with the pretty stars,
of Hollywood at night
I think those movie star girls,
could make me feel alright

The world is such a crazy place,
and I have grown to see
That there are many more ways,
to be all I can be

Eventually, Overman started playing the song at live shows.

“You kind of test your material live in front of an audience,” Kelly said. “We played it for about six months and got a really good reaction.”

Fan Ed Lozanski was moved to post a grateful reaction on the band’s website:

Having lost my best friend in Operation Iraqi Freedom, I find this is an amazingly beautiful, yet tragic song. If only everyone were so lucky to have their best friend, father, mother, brother, sister, son or daughter come home safe from harm's way….. Wishful thinking…. Thank you for sparking memories that you seem to forget far too fast…

The song also got a reaction from Skeen, a U.S. Army mechanic now home from Iraq and newly married.

“He was really flattered,” Kelly said. “The first time we played it for him, he got a little bit emotional.”

On Monday, American Songwriter published a Q&A with Kelly on its website.

“It was so surreal,” the songwriter said of learning the magazine was interested in featuring the tune. “They’ve actually had some really good pageviews.”

Kelly said the magazine has also asked the band to send in a copy of its latest album and any new material it’s working on for another potential feature.

“So I’m really excited about it,” he said.

With bandmates living together in a at , dubbed the “Overmanor,” the musicians have contributed considerably to the local music scene.

“We with ,” Kelly said of the Irish pub formerly housed in the new location. “It was a really good spot for original music.”

Kelly even hosted a weekly songwriters’ night at the bar. While the band doesn’t have any plans to return to the new downtown Plainfield venue, Overman tours throughout the Midwest.

The band is slated to appear July 13 on Grant Park's Bud Light stage at the Taste of Chicago.

For more information on Overman or a free download of “Come Home Soon,” visit www.overman.info. The band’s album is also available on iTunes and Amazon.com.

To read American Songwriter’s profile of Aaron Kelly, click here.