Paul Tull, CRNA, MS, MA, works at the John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he cares for veterans as a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA), administering anesthesia for a variety of procedures. Outside of the operating room, he’s caring for veterans in a different way — as a songwriter who uses the power of music to help his fellow veterans tell their stories.
Tull serves as the program director for Freedom Sings Arkansas, a chapter of the national organization Freedom Sings USA, which uses music arts therapy to help veterans, military personnel, and their families reach emotional balance through the creative process of songwriting, according to its mission statement. In addition to songwriting, the organization offers peer support, which helps veterans and their families cope with trauma, process their experiences, and readjust to life following military service.
Freedom Sings USA holds both in-person retreats and virtual classes where veterans are paired with professional songwriters. There is never any cost for the veterans to attend.
“In 2017, Freedom Sings USA came to Arkansas for a retreat,” Tull said, recounting how his experience with the organization began. “Michael Dobbs, the Voluntary Service Chief at the Little Rock VA, knew I liked to write songs and told me there were some Nashville songwriters coming to town on a retreat to write songs with veterans. He asked if I thought I could show up. That was an easy yes for me.”
A veteran of the Arkansas Army National Guard, Tull wrote his own song with one of the songwriters from Nashville during the first retreat he attended. He said he still gets emotional talking about the experience. “I never saw combat, but my father and my uncle were in Korea, and my son spent a year in Afghanistan. When I wrote this song, I was a bridge or a conduit for their stories.”
After writing his own song, Tull knew he wanted to help other veterans process their experiences through music. The veterans’ songs often tackle serious topics such as combat experiences, PTSD, addiction, sexual assault, and returning home from war. With the veterans sharing such difficult experiences, building trust is imperative. That begins with a meet-and-greet event the night before the retreat where veterans can meet the songwriters and choose someone they’d like to write with.
“Writing these songs is a soul-bearing experience, and there’s got to be trust and there’s got to be reassurance on my side. I always tell the veterans that we’re not going to change their lyrics and the song will be approved by them before we record it,” Tull said.
“The crux of Freedom Sings USA is veterans helping veterans,” he added. “I think when somebody trusts you enough to open up and talk about things they’ve never spoken to anyone else about, that’s pretty special.”
He said there’s also something about putting words to music that makes emotions easier to process, and that one of the co-founders of Freedom Sings USA, songwriter Steve Dean, likes to say, “When you sit down with a guitar, things come out easier.”
Music in and of itself is therapeutic, said Freedom Sings USA Executive Director and co-founder, Bobbie Allison-Standefer. “You can associate music with any moment in your life. Our songwriters work with the veterans to write songs in their favorite genres, and many of them talk about the music they listened to while they were deployed.”
The organization’s work with veterans doesn’t end with just songwriting, Allison-Standefer said. They have a creative arts therapist on staff and do creative writing and veteran-to-veteran therapy in addition to music arts therapy. They work with veterans across all branches of the military and have specialty classes for female veterans, special operations veterans, and other smaller groups.
Recently, Tull helped organize and participated in a retreat in Tennessee just for veterans who served as nurses in the military and currently work as nurses at the Department of Veterans Affairs. This led Veterans Affairs secretary Denis McDonough to mention Tull’s work with Freedom Sings USA during an address for National Nurses Week.
Music from this retreat was recorded. The album with the nurses, who were all registered nurses or licensed practical nurses, was released in May in celebration of National Nurses Month.
CRNA veterans weren’t part of the original group, but he hopes to work with CRNAs in the future to tell their stories. As nurse anesthesiology professionals, CRNAs have full practice authority in every branch of the military and are the primary providers of anesthesia care to U.S. military personnel on the front lines, navy ships, and aircraft evacuation teams around the globe. Additionally, more than 1,100 CRNAs currently work in the VA system.
“I personally know close to a dozen CRNAs who have served our country, and many provided full-service anesthesia in combat. I also know of many more I haven’t met yet,” Tull remarked.
It’s much more than a job/it’s an honor and a calling, begins the first song on the nurses’ album — lyrics that could also describe Tull’s work writing songs with veterans and helping them heal.
When asked if there was an experience with a particular veteran that stood out to him, he said, “The honest answer is every one of them.”