Crooning the words of his award-winning composition with a band of fellow veterans Thursday, one would hardly suspect that 44-year-old Scott McKee could barely strum a guitar two years ago.
The Battle Creek man purchased his first guitar around 1984 — he was one year out of high school and joining the Army. After five years of service, he went on to other professions, never considering those two elements of his past would one day become instrumental in a new stanza of his life.
McKee recently won first place in the original music category of a national music competition for veterans for a song he penned, titled "The Spirit of Music." The honor earned McKee an all-expenses-paid trip to the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival, which was held in Riverside, Calif., Oct. 20-26.
The father of three talks energetically about the trip, his eyes drifting off, as if watching a movie as he recalls the people he met and the sights he saw in Hollywood and Santa Monica. It's a far stretch from the downward slope his life had taken a little more than two years ago when McKee lost his job of 15 years and divorced his wife.
To cope, he began filling the voids with alcohol. When he decided to stop the downward spiral before he lost anything else, he sought treatment at the Battle Creek Veterans Affairs Medical Center. It was there that he met music therapists and mentors, who showed him how music could be medicine for the soul.
"It played a major role," he said of music in his recovery. "One of the things that people recovering from alcohol and drug abuse need to do is find something in their free time, when they're not working, to take the place; to just not be bored."
It kept his hands from idling, and gave him a renewed sense of confidence.
"It's not just a great hobby, but turned into something that I'm good enough to play professionally and it takes up a lot of my free time," he said. "It's just good. I makes my spirit feel good."
VA hospitals are longtime followers of the school of art therapy. Several local veterans have qualified for the festival in the past, but only a few have been invited to attend, including artist James Palmore of Kalamazoo who also went to this year's festival for winning first place in the digital art category.
Sharalyn Davis has worked as a music therapist at the Battle Creek VA center for 24 years. She said she believes music helps people return to a more natural state that relieves stress and releases creativity. It's an especially valuable tool for veterans, she said, who are usually accustomed to stringent boundaries and military rules.
"For many people at the VA, it helps lighten them up. Sometimes we take everything so seriously and can get overwhelmed," she said. "But music can help heal physically and psychologically."
Davis was responsible for nominating local vets for the annual Creative Arts Festival. The festival was a merger of two similar festivals that began in the early 1980s and is designed to highlight the artistic capabilities of veterans, many of whom use art for its therapeutic values.
"For the men and women that are a part of it, it helps them to pull themselves out of their shell," said Michael Munie, public relations support staff for the VA National Events division at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. "Having people appreciate their art work and see what they do ... helps them know they're doing something good."
More than 3,100 veterans from 113 VA facilities across the country entered the national contest. Of those, 130 artists, musicians, dancers, thespians and writers were invited to attend the festival. The event is free for participants thanks to sponsorship by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Help Hospitalized Veterans and the American Legion Auxiliary.
Participants took art workshops, performed and went sightseeing around the Los Angeles area. Most of McKee's time was spent rehearsing for a large production performed at the end of the festival.
"The days were 12 to 15 hours of rehearsal. It was work," he said.
At the end of the day, however, McKee said the musicians would gather for late-night jam sessions. Despite the impending election and their common military backgrounds, he said there was little talk of politics or trading stories of time in the service.
"It was just a lot of basic camaraderie and practicing," McKee said. "I probably learned more in a week than I had in months."
McKee said he plans to enter in more categories next year with the hopes of qualifying for the 2009 festival, which will be held in San Antonio, where he received training to be a medical technician while in the service.
Although he's currently a self-employed home improvement contractor, his successful experience with the VA center inspired him to pursue a career there and he is in the process of interviewing for a med tech job. He also is taking classes at Kellogg Community College in hopes of earning a degree in music and volunteers for various VA events and with the center's music therapy clinic.
If he gets the med tech job, he said he hopes that will lead to a position in the recreation department where he can pay forward the good fortune he received.
"The whole thing was amazing," he said. "It was way beyond anything I could have imagined."
Lori Holcomb can be reached at 966-0675 or lholcomb@battlecr.gannett.com