We were lucky to catch up with Donald Dunn recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Donald thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

My Foundation is trying to change the image of a our service members. I feel strongly that it is not equal that a talented individual who chose to go in the military and serve their country for what ever reason ahead of their own personal dreams should be penalized. The example I will give you is this. You look at the music industry currently the industry is flooded with 18 to 25 year old musicians who has worked their butt off to get where they are at in their career. The other side of this is John do went into the military at the age of the 18 and served 10 years in the military and decided to persue his dream of becoming a full time musician at the age of 28 now. The odds are not going to be on his side because of his age. The industry is not looking for a person this late in their career. By the time they have put in the time and gotten the needed experience your looking at a 35 year old artist. Our goal is to give them the same opportunity in the veteran community. Why not have a music awards for veterans. A podcasting awards for veterans. I think it is the least we can do as a nation to return the kindness that the men and women of our armed services showed this country by protecting it. They may not be the next the garth brooks or the next Joe Rogan but for one day they can experience the feeling of the red carpet and the acknowledgment of the hard work they put in gigging and playing in vfw and bar from town to town.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started a podcast called Two Drunk Dudes in a Gun Room. This podcast was designed to bring our soldiers we served with back together and get them laughing and have fun. Just a little over halfway through season one I realized how it was turning into therapy for myself. I was talking about things that I never use to talk about. I had people tell me that it was helping them. Season 2 I have started bringing on more guests and exploring more methods of therapy and 501C nonprofits. This is where we started getting veteran Musicians on the show. I than seen how the system was hurting them by people not hearing their music. These were veterans that were using music as therapy and a career. I felt like you just can’t be anymore all in than this. If you fail than your therapy has failed and your financial status has failed. It is no secret that we are losing to many veterans a day. I decided to start a radio station for just veterans and their dependents called Gun Room Radio. This would help get their music played and known. Since than I have started building a non profit around this called Heroes Voices Media Foundation we have a program for Podcasters/Streamers Musicians and Authors/bloggers All three of these forms of media are forms of therapy and stepping stones in getting veterans back into society. We are always looking for help with the radio station and need DJ’s, Station Managers for the 3 channels we have. The Growth we have seen was faster than we expected and have to slow down to allow the infrastructure to catch up. We have started putting things in place to bring big things to the veteran community to include a Roku Channel for music videos just like the old MTV channel called MMTV Military Music Television as well as a channel for our podcasters. We plan on bringing the awards a reality for all of our veterans and to do this we will need help and some key partnerships.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The goal that is driving us is to get veterans that have started using media to tell their story, to not stop. All of these forms of media can be very hard between online trolls and looking at poor stats and the cost versus income can cause you to give it up. This will leave the veteran back to isolating not talking and giving up on themselves. What keeps me going is that I know if you do this long enough you will make connections with like minded individuals that will become life lines for you. You will find new programs that will help you that you did not know about. When someone gives up on a dream its heartbreaking, however when that dream is the only form of therapy they found that was working its a tragedy. So the drive comes from helping a veteran sing another song or complete another podcast so that they live another day closer to healing.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Funding has been the challenge for us. To my knowledge nobody has done what we have started. Nobody has started a radio station for just veterans, or had the desire to create a music awards for veterans so without this model nobody knows if there is money to be made here. This makes it hard to connect to business’s to invest in us. People like the thought and love to help veterans, however this seems to be uncharted waters for people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.heroesvoicemediafoundation.org https://www.gunroomradio.com https://www.militaryunitedpodcaststreams.org
• Instagram: @gunroomradio
• Facebook: @gunroomradio @heroesvoicemediafoundation @militaryunitedpodcaststreams
• Other: http://www.twodrunkdudesinagunroom.com/