David Kos spent around two hours telling Cleveland musician Bethany Joy Svoboda about his years in the U.S. Marine Corps, service that took him from Virginia and North Carolina to Japan between 1992 and 1996. By the next day, that conversation had become a song called Cold Dress Blues, performed live for him in a converted barn in Avon Lake.
The workshop was the 31st held by Project D.R.E.W., a program that pairs local veterans with songwriters for a two-day weekend built around a single private conversation, according to Signal Cleveland. Veterans individually tell their military-service stories to musician collaborators, who compose a song in roughly a day; the songs are then performed the following day at a private concert for the veterans and their loved ones, recorded and later shared on the project's website, per the same report. Kos, who has served as an Avon Lake council member for 20 years, told the outlet that veterans from different backgrounds and service branches recognized the project as something special.
Project D.R.E.W. says on its own site that the process is designed to let veterans set the terms of their own story. “This is private and moves at the pace and direction each Veteran chooses,” the organization states, describing how each songwriter then crafts an original song as a tribute to the veteran's experiences. The program adds that there is no requirement to perform or appear publicly: “There are no cameras, social media, or forced participation of any type,” according to its page on what veterans can expect.
A Program Born From Loss
Marilyn Zeidner founded Project D.R.E.W. in honor of U.S. Army veteran Drew Ferguson, a childhood friend of her daughter who died by suicide after returning from deployment in 2017, Signal Cleveland reports. Ferguson was an Army veteran, painter, poet and music lover, per the same account. A 2018 report from Ideastream noted that Project D.R.E.W. takes its name from Ferguson and that Zeidner, who lives in Avon Lake, co-founded the program with Mike Winnen.
Zeidner told Signal Cleveland that the two-day format can help veterans who have struggled for years to share their service stories finally open up to a songwriter. She described one striking example: a woman whose husband had taken 40 years to tell her his story began telling it almost immediately once he sat down with a songwriter, according to the outlet's reporting.
For Svoboda, who has participated in Project D.R.E.W. since 2021 and has completed around 12 songs for the program, the process cuts both ways. She told Signal Cleveland she had little knowledge of military life before working with the project and has learned from the veterans' stories directly. She also described performing a new song live for the person it was written for as nerve-wracking but powerful, per the same report.
Inside Barnegie Hall
The workshops and concerts take place in a barn that Zeidner and her husband, Jim Miraldi, own and operate on their Avon Lake property, nicknamed Barnegie Hall. Miraldi, a Lorain County court judge, began restoring the barn in 2009 with local volunteers, working for 14 months on a structure that was 129 years old when restoration began, Signal Cleveland reports.
Beyond Project D.R.E.W. events, Barnegie Hall hosts concerts by musicians from northeast Ohio and nationwide, seating around 100 people at a typical ticket price of about $20. The venue relies on email and word-of-mouth rather than advertising, drawing from an email list of roughly 2,000 people, and at least half of its shows sell out ahead of time, according to the outlet. All revenue above what bands are paid goes back into the venue's programs, per the same report.
How It Compares Nationally
Project D.R.E.W. is one of several songwriting programs built around veterans and creative expression. Songwriting With: Soldiers says it has held weekend retreats across the country for veterans of all conflicts and has connected with hundreds of veterans and military families since 2012, according to the organization's website. A separate qualitative study of a similar nonprofit program, Operation Song, interviewed six participants — five male veterans and one spouse helping her husband take part — and described the essence of their experience as a “catalyst to invoke personal change,” according to the Journal of Veterans Studies. The same article argues that social and creative experiences may complement treatment for veterans with PTSD, though the evidence reviewed does not establish that Project D.R.E.W. itself produces specific clinical outcomes.
For now, the program continues its work in Avon Lake through workshops and private concerts. The Marine Corps years behind Cold Dress Blues and the four decades one veteran's wife waited to hear her husband's story are among the experiences reflected in songs performed at private concerts.
