Aaron Ray Vaughan Music

On a camping trip with his family 20 years ago, Aaron Ray Vaughan and his stepfather were off to some early-morning fishing on the banks of Copan Lake.

It was perfect out. The sun was shining, and his mom and sisters would be joining them on the boat later in the day.

But then they heard his mom screaming some 150 yards away. Awful screams. Something was wrong. They took off running to the camper where they found her crying.

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She pointed to the television, and they saw plumes of smoke as the second plane hit the south tower of the World Trade Center.

“Our hearts dropped. I remember my heart sank into my stomach and I remember staring at my dad and staring at my mom a minute, and I said, ‘I’m going to war you all.’”

Preparing for war after the 9/11 attacks
In that moment, 17-year-old Vaughan went from boy to man. He had just completed basic training in Fort Benning, Ga., in the Oklahoma Army National Guard. He now knew that his military service would be something entirely different than what he envisioned at peacetime.

“I realized there are evil and wicked men and what I signed up to do was to stop them from hurting innocent people,” he said. “Everything that I loved and everything that mattered came to the forefront and I knew that I had to go defend it.”

He had signed up with his parents’ blessing believing that it would steer him in a better direction and broaden his world outside of rural Oklahoma. He would also have an opportunity to go to college and have it paid for, so he had decided to give Uncle Sam a shot.

As he and his family tried to digest the crushing news, they prayed. But at the same time, Vaughan, like so many, was angry.

“I had this young anger inside of me that wanted to do something about it,” he said.

Aaron Ray Vaughan in basic infantry training at Fort
Benning, Ga. in 2001.
'Angry and ready to fight'
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Vaughan trained regularly at Camp Gruber in the 1st Battalion, 279th Infantry Regiment for the worst situations imaginable to get ready for war. He found out they were being deployed to Afghanistan in 2002. He was reserved yet ready.

“I wanted to see somebody pay for costing so many American lives and threatening our freedom at home,” he said. “That overshadowed a lot of the worry I did have.”

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The minute he stepped off the plane in Kabul in the middle of the night, everything was different, especially the smell of the air.

“I carried with me an alertness that I don’t think I’ve had in my entire life. I remember thinking to myself 'You’re not in Kansas anymore. You are here, you are in it. This is what you trained for,’” he said.

Vaughan was on a quick-reaction force. His unit responded to any distress call from the Allied Forces and provided convoy security on missions. One of those missions was protecting, liberating and training Afghan soldiers who had signed up to defend their country.

“I remember specifically thinking in my mind I’m here to help these people as much as I am to help my people back home,” he said. “It took a couple months for that to settle in because I was so angry and ready to fight.”

In his experience, it seemed the Afghans were open to the Americans being there and were doing the best they could to live their lives and doing the best for their communities.

“I tried to be as kind and hospitable as they were to us, for the most part, having foreign soldiers in your land,” he said.

He and his fellow soldiers talked with the men about their family lives. They played soccer in the streets with the children. Many of them would be more than 20 years old now and he wonders how and what they are doing now. Are they okay? What are they thinking? Do they even remember why they were there?

'It really takes a toll on you'
The women and girls struck a chord in him. They did not have the same freedom to live their lives as his mother and sisters did. He takes it even more personally now as the father of three daughters and a son which he shares with his wife, Kelsey.

"It really takes a toll on you as a man,” Vaughan said. “You want to help the men around these young girls and women to understand that they have the tools, they have the freedoms to raise them and care for them just the same.”

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Still, Vaughan said they never knew who to trust. There was always a sense of eeriness as they risked everything to offer the freedoms we have in America to people who, at the end of the day, had different values and ideas about the world.

They came from tribes all over the country and seemed to be loyal to those tribes with radicalization being more of a last resort, he said.

“As a soldier, we had to really understand them and teach them how to come together and unify, and as we tragically see now, it’s not that way,” he said. “The men there it seems to me are not ingrained with a knowledge or willingness to stand up and fight for their own freedoms. I know this sounds harsh, but they seem to almost cower to the tyrannical oppression from the Taliban and ISIS and other groups of that nature and that is not what we taught over there.

"Part of me just wants to see the men of that country stand up and say enough is enough and start standing up for their communities and their families and their children at home and for their own country. I pray for that.”

In his view, they were given all the tools in the world to defend their families and their country along with 20 years of blood, sweat and tears and American lives. Vaughan disagrees strongly with the way the US pulled out of Afghanistan but said that he thought that it did have to end eventually.

"There had to come a point where we turned it over to the men and women of the country and say, ‘Look, this is yours - defend it at all costs. Now we are not seeing that. It is heartbreaking. It is crushing,” Vaughan said.

Still, there are successes to never forget and be grateful for. America and its allies have protected our homeland. Since Sept. 11, 2001, there has not been another foreign jihadist attack on US soil.

Life after returning home
Vaughan continued serving through 2013. Back home after living through the hardships of war, Vaughan sees things through a different and always hopeful lens.

The discovery of his inner strength has been life-changing. There is no challenge in everyday life that cannot be overcome, and he teaches his children that in their schoolwork and with their friends and relationships.

“There is nothing in this life that we cannot handle,” he said. “There is nothing that we cannot stand up and overcome,” he said. “(The war) gave me a feeling and a sense of pride and understanding that there are things worth fighting for and the things we have we need to not take for granted.”

Oklahoma-born and raised, Vaughan today works as a pipeline controller at Phillips 66 and prior to that he was a police officer in Bartlesville and Dewey.

He is no relation to the legendary Vaughan brothers of Texas, but it is not a stretch to wonder if he is. He has had a guitar in his hands since he was eight, recorded in Nashville and played across the country.

He was lead singer in NewKings, a Christian alternative band, for 10 years and is now a solo artist.

His debut album, “Sparks,” will be out in October with his faith and life experiences running deep in his Red Dirt songs. Vaughan enjoys a peaceful life now, but the soldier within that helped protect the American way of life has never left.

In his new song, “Old Man,” he shares this with the refrain, “Don’t wake the old man.”

Vaughan’s upcoming performance dates and album information can be found at aaronrayvaughanmusic.com. - Examiner-Enterprise

story from: bmonthly November 2021
Business Spotlight: The Dynami...
Aaron Ray Vaughan
Local Singer Releasing First Solo Album
by Tim Hudson
Music fans will be sporting a big grin come December 3rd, as local favorite Aaron Ray Vaughan releases his first solo album.

“It’s my first solo album so I’m really excited about it. It's red dirt country, so it’s a lot different than anything I've done before,” he said.

The effort titled Sparks will also be heralded by a series of CD release shows, beginning with an evening at Crossing 2nd. “I have a tentative release date and party scheduled for December,” he said, noting that the date is also the same night as the opening of Christmas in the ‘Ville.

“I’m going to have the release party at at Crossing 2nd and I'll sing and play some of the music from the album, and then I'll have a DJ there that is going to play for the rest of the evening so we can all get together have some fun, talk about it, and mingle.”

The record will be somewhat of a departure from what Aaron’s fans are used to, since his recent output was more of the classic rock persuasion. “Prior to this I was in a Christian band. We played more like southern rock, but it was Christian-influenced. It wasn't in-your-face worship or anything, but it had a lot of that spiritual faith-filled stuff that we carry infused in our music,” he said. “I did that for 10 years or so.”

The new direction, however, was somewhat dictated by fans.

“After 10 years of singing that syle of music, I just decided after talking to a lot of family and friends to record the original stuff I had been doing over the years. A lot of people told me you should do this song or you should do that song, which wasn’t really what we were doing. I veered off that and decided that I wanted to start recording the music that everyone had been asking for,” he said. “So I decided to step away from New Kings, which was the band that I was with before, and start doing the solo stuff. I was just going to record everything for family and friends so they could have the songs that they wanted, and it turned into a situation where a lot of people were asking me to play at their venue. So it just kind of evolved.”

It has been a big experience being a part of the music and the people who make it. “It’s that that hunger for live entertainment. I would like to hit some festivals. Ideally, I think my goal is that I want to do a show at the Cains Ballroom sometime next year, and then we'll see how the release goes and how much of a response we get from it,” he said. “But if I can get some festivals and other dates scheduled on the weekends, and people really want to get out to see me, and it's not too cold in the winter, I will try to make those happen.” - bMonthly Magazine