From Covid quiet to Memorial concert commotion

The pandemic twisted a lot of show-business careers, for bad (mostly) and good.
For Scotty Hasting, it was good. He went from a struggling war veteran to an emerging country-music star. And now he’ll perform for the masses at PBS’ Memorial Day eve concert.
“When it gets quiet, the demons come out,” Hasting said. “Covid was way too quiet.”
He needed a distraction. Fortunately, an old guitar was nearby.
In his 30s, Hasting learned to play the guitar … and then to write songs. “Before Covid, I don’t know if I knew where songs come from,” he said.
Now he’s getting national attention. The PBS concert (8 p.m. Sunday, May 25, rerunning at 9:30) puts him alongside great voices, including gospel’s Yolanda Adams, opera’s Angel Blue, and Loren Allred, who dubbed the power ballad “Never Enough” for “The Greatest Showman.”
It’s a huge leap for a guy whose original goals were more basic.
Hasting grew up in Hebron (home of the Cincinnati/Kentucky airport), dreaming of baseball. A 6-foot-4 first baseman, he got as far as semi-pro ball.
That wasn’t enough. “I had this need to be part of something bigger.”
So he joined the Army and was surprised by how much he liked it. “The first thing I noticed was how easy it is. You’re told what to do, when to do it, how to do it.”
Another surprise was “how close you get to to people around you.”
He was an infantryman assigned to a cavalry-scout unit. “I got to play with a lot of cool stuff,” he said, including the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Then, in April of 2011 in Afghanistan, he was shot 10 times.
Airlifted to safety, he spent seven months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (six of them as an outpatient), somehow staying confident. “I always thought I was going to be back with my guys” in Afghanistan.
But he flunked the physical four times and was told he would be confined to a desk job. Instead, he chose a medical retirement and stepped into a void.
It was almost a decade between his wounds and the day he tried that guitar. He did find one interest — archery, with the U.S. paralympic program — but that shut down with Covid.
Music was next. “As a kid, I always liked to sing, but never in public.”
The music made a difference. Archery “would stop the PTSD for seven seconds,” Hasting said. “With a song, it was three minutes.”
He signed up for an open-mike night at a Nashville bar and sang Toby Keith’s “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.” This clicked instantly; soon, he was trudging from bar to bar. “I was doing 3-4 hours a night, six days a week.”
The nightmares persisted, including memories of a colleague, Adam Hamilton, who died in Afghanistan while Hasting was at Walter Reed. “He was a guy who lit up a room, who made everything better.”
One day, Hasting drove from Nashville to Akron, to visit his friend’s grave. Urged by songwriting partner Jesse Wayne Taylor, he reluctantly tried to put it into words. “That just poured out; 30 minutes later, we had a song.”
The result (“How Do You Choose?”) flows with survivor’s remorse: “Tell me, God, did I win or lose?/Why am I here and he’s with you?/How do you choose?”
This guy is a songwriter — but he also grabs songs from other people. That includes the two he plans to sing at the Memorial Day concert — “I’m America” and “Red, White and Blue.”
They are solemn songs. So is “‘Til the Last Shot’s Fired,” which he recorded with Lee Brice and Dolly Parton. But he also had a change-of-pace:
“My friends were saying, ‘Dude, you’re not that serious. You’re a fun guy,'”
Hasting said. Then “Pro Beer” arrived. “I fell in love with it; it’s so goofy.”
In the video, he hoists the sort of red beer cup that the late Toby Keith sang about. On the cup is “TK” and a heart.
The first song Hasting (a big, Toby-sized guy) did in public was by Keith. The latest single, “Pro Beer,” is in Keith’s good-time spirit. In between, a career has taken off.