Mike Corrado: Music & Lyrics

• MP3 play whole song, hi-fi (broadband)

This song in a way picks up where “On My Watch Tonight” left off. I have received countless e-mails from service members, families, veterans and supporters about what OMWT has meant to them or how it affected their lives. These letters and e-mails are often quite humbling. I had also performed a few shows for military family and spouse support groups and it was there where the song “Start Saving Me” started. It wasn’t until almost a year after I returned from a twelve month deployment to Iraq, when I really started piecing together what its like for the families and spouses of our service members while we’re gone.

Start Saving Me is about any long distance relationship, but in particular about that military wife or family member that is left behind to keep the home fires burning and keep life as normal as it can be for their children, their families and last but not least themselves during extended deployments and loved ones far from home. In this particular case, the military wife is fighting her own battles at home having to play both parental roles to the children through back to back deployments. She understands what her husband is off doing and supports him but she’s starting to wear a little thin, not with him but with the wars, the worrying and the distance between them.

He calls home, she answers and tries to sound composed and that everything is fine. They get such a short time to talk that she does not want to worry him with all the little things at home that are starting to break her down. She is strong, she knows what it takes to make it through this time and she handles it, all the while telling him in her mind that when he’s done saving the world, she needs saving to.

Throughout my time in the Marine Corps, I have met some amazing service members and their families. They say the toughest job in the military is being a military spouse, an it takes a strong, special, patient, tough and a hundred other adjectives I could think of, person to be one. I also did not have to look far from home to see that. I was deployed for a year when my first daughter was just three months old and returned when she was this whole new little person. Since the birth of our second daughter, I have been fortunate enough to be home and I am getting to see all the little things I missed while deployed not only with our newest daughter but realizing how difficult it was to for her to raise a child and run a household by herself.

I hope with this song, I can share some of the feelings the families or couples go through during times like these. Not just with our military but with any relationship where one loved one is separated from another.

The phone rings from a million miles away, a familiar voice
So I lie and say, I’m doing alright, as if I had a choice
You’re a half a world away, I miss you more each day
But when you get home there’s one life to save
Forget the world, start saving me
I’m holding on, I can barely breathe
So come on home and rescue me
Forget the world, start saving me, save me
I can feel myself breaking down piece by piece
Another phone call, fingers crossed
Come on rescue me
You’re a half a world a way, I’m holding on to faith
But there’s only so much I can take
Forget the world, start saving me
I’m holding on, I can barely breathe
So come on home and rescue me
Forget the world, start saving me, save me
Come on and save me

Mike: Acoustic Guitars, Vocals, Bass
Tommy Brothers: Electric Guitars
Lamont Sydnor: Drums