FRIDAY, JULY 26
9 a.m.: Gates open
6 p.m. to midnight: Live music by Hillbilly Delux, Tall Tales of Truth, Savin Seymor and The Hellfire Club.
SATURDAY, JULY 27
8 a.m.: Gates open
9 a.m.: Fun Run departs
12 p.m.: Tribute ceremony
5 p.m.: One Night Stand performs
7:30 p.m.: Snake Bones Performs
10 p.m.: American Hitmen performs
SUNDAY, JULY 28
11 a.m.: Kid’s Rodeo
POCATELLO — It sounds like a novel. Two musically talented brothers join the U.S. Marines Corps and are deployed to Fallujah, Iraq to serve and protect their country during Operation Iraqi Freedom. There they meet another musical Marine and begin to jam together, quite literally in the line of fire in the evenings during their deployment. After their honorable discharge, they remain friends and relocate to another desert, the Salt Lake City area, and decide to pursue a career in music.
Truth is some times more wonderful than fiction, and the story of rock band American Hitmen, is a wonderful and ongoing work of fact.
The four Hitmen, brothers Tim Cord on vocals, rhythm guitar and piano and Dan Cord on backing vocals and lead guitar, Dan Jarmon on bass guitar, who are all Marines, moved to the South Jordan, Utah area where they met drummer Phil Snyder in 2007. They have been scheduled to headline the 13th Annual POW*MIA Awareness Rally and Motorcycle Rodeo this Saturday, July 27 at the Bannock County Fairgrounds in Pocatello.
Their performance will be one of just many over the three day event that also includes Hillbilly Delux, Tale Tales of Truth, Savin Seymor, The Hellfire Club, One Night Stand and Snake Bones.
The Rally will be held Friday, July 26 through Sunday, July 27 at the fairgrounds. Veterans and kids under age 18 get in free, and general admission tickets are $10 for the entire weekend. Purchase tickets at the door.
If you are thinking you have been hearing quite a bit about the American Hitmen recently, there are a couple reasons for that. For one, they have played in Pocatello before, at the Oasis bar with Savin Seymor, and, they have passed several rounds of competition on “America’s Got Talent,” a national talent show broadcast on NBC. After they performed Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” during the first audition, they were passed to “Vegas Week,” where they performed their version of the classic folk song “House of the Rising Sun.” They have since moved on to the third round, which will be the first in which America will have the chance to vote and decide who moves on. American Hitmen will perform live for the TV show at Radio City Music Hall this Tuesday evening.
Tim Cord credits hard work, being flexible and open to new ideas and staying grounded with the band’s recent success. Being Marines, Tim, Dan and Dan already have a strong work ethic, and Tim says that drummer Phil Snyder is a great completion to the group.
“His work ethic is massively different,” said Tim in a recent phone interview with the Journal, “and a huge thing to us is Phil is open to what a song should sound like.”
They have performed everywhere small bars across the country, including Jerome, Idaho to the grand opening of the Hard Rock Cafe in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where they performed “Walk This Way” with Run DMC founding member Darryl McDaniels. They were the first American rock band to perform in Vietnam in 36 years.
Tim said that no matter where they are performing, they always give the best show possible.
“If it is for one person or a 1,000 people, we play the same show. Even if we only play for one person and they become a fan then the show was successful. We are not doing it for fame or money,” he said.
For more information on American Hitmen, visit their web site at www.americanhitmen.com
In addition to live music, there will be a bike rodeo, show n’ shine, loudest pipes competition, tattoo and arm wrestling contests, mud drags, Power County Search and Rescue will host a breakfast both Saturday and Sunday morning at 7 a.m. There will also be food and beverages for sale.
There will be many activities for kids too, including bounce houses, face painting, a scavenger hunt, and rides on the “”Thumper” monster truck. Kids can compete for prizes in the kid’s bike rodeo on Sunday.
The guest of honor this year is LTC David Gray Jr. , a Vietnam Veteran from Florida. Colonel Gray is one of the 480 prisoners released because of the Paris Peace Accords 40 years ago. A tribute ceremony featuring Gray will be held at noon on Saturday, July 27.
A special feature of the event will be displays and presentations by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), an organization based in Hawaii that conducts global searches and laboratory operations to identify remains of unaccounted for Americans from past conflicts to return them home to their families. The group also helped to identify remains following the 9-11 attacks.
For more information on the 13th annual POW*MIA Awareness Rally, including a complete schedule of events, go to http://powmiarodeo.org