WHO SAYS MUSICIANS AND ACTORS DON'T CARE ABOUT OUR TROOPS?
Okay, first, I need to thank my 14-year-old son, Ryan, for contacting Nick Cloutman of the band, LUSTRA, (<-- click on this link to go to their site).  Ryan initiated a donation of 10,000 CDs from this awesome band. Nice job, Ryan - even if you were supposed to be doing your HOMEWORK!

One evening a few weeks ago, after exchanging emails with "Nick", I called downstairs to Ryan,
     "Hey, Ryan! Do you know a 'Nick Cloutman' ?"

Ryan's response was:
      "Yeah, Mom! Of course! He's the lead singer in this great band called 'LUSTRA'!"
      (Suddenly I felt OLD and out-of-touch with what' "in" ... I used to be very hip
       and know all the current music ...)

I replied to Ryan, "Oh - he is very cool and sweet.  He's emailed me a few times tonight and wanted to confirm I was your mother. Oh yeah, and the band had agreed to your plea and they're sending us 10,000 CDs for the troops this Christmas!"

Typical of a 14-year-old boy, Ryan's response was:
     "Oh yeah - Oh yeah - Who's the MAN? Who's the MAN?!"
     (accompanied by some weird dance thing... )

Two weeks later, the CDS arrived and we sent them over to the troops.  Thank you notes from the troops are starting to come in and I forwarded the first one to Nick who was very happy to hear the news.

To give you an idea of who LUSTRA is and how REAL they are - here's an excerpt of an email I received from Nick yesterday:

     "Hey Andi,

     Thanks so much for taking the time out to write and thank me personally.
     As I said, we're all really proud to be part of such a great cause and
     I'm truly impressed with all the work you've done.  Your donor list is 
     mind-blowing! ... We've spoken about producing a link from our MySpace page
     to your home page.  I just have to get someone with a little computer savvy
     to get this together for us and we'll have that up and running...Feel free to
     get in touch when you make it out to LA and we can get together for lunch or
     something...

    All my best to you and your family,
    Nick"

For all our troops out there - this photo was taken especially for you by your admirers, the band, LUSTRA:

(Photo courtesy of Freedom Rock)

and to LUSTRA - THANK YOU for generously and selflessly supporting our troops and for donating to Give2TheTroops!

Love,
Andi  (and all of us at G2TT!) 

P.S. Update! Ha ha ha! Ryan is wrong! Nick is NOT the lead singer.  He plays rhythm guitar and according to Nick, he just makes 'yowling noises behind the lead singer, Chris.' - so this OLD MOM got to correct her 'know-it-all' son! 

That is really awesome! Way cool!

I wish the news would report on the wonderful things musicians do, rather than all the negative. Thanks Lustra for showing you care.

That is great! Thanks Lustra for going above and beyond what most do! :)

Hello. It would be awesome if the band could donate more CDs to G2TT in the future. It would be great if they could wear G2TT t-shirts at one of their concerts, too! Thank you!

It was nice to see a band support such a great organization! Kudos to everyone involved!

Ten thousand hats off to Lustra--you guys are AMAZING! Your donation was a truly wonderful and generous gesture! !!! I am a fan FOREVER!

WOW!! This is such great news! Thank you to Ryan for setting this up and to Lustra for supporting our troops with such an amazing donation! You guys truly went above and beyond :)

ps. I love the picture

This is an excellent story that should be forever told. Thank you for such an outpouring of support for our troops.

That rocks, Andi. I'm going to send more folks to this web site. Keep up the great work!

Many Thanks to Lustra - Music for the morale of our troops!! we appreciate your support. THANK YOU

Thanks, Lustra, for stepping up for the troops. I can only imagine how great our soldiers must feel knowing they are in your thoughts! Thanks for your support!

As a sister of a deployed soldier I think what Lustra did for our troops is awesome! I know the soldiers loved the CD's. Thank you!
Stacy from Hawaii :)

Lustra - you guys are awesome!! Thank you so much for supporting the troops! Keep those CD's coming - our troops love it! THANK YOU LUSTRA!

That's fantastic! Love the pic. Thanks to Lustra for their support of the troops!

Thanks so much, Lustra, for your support of our troops! After all, they are the reason we are all free to choose our paths to happiness! God Bless!:)

LUSTRA is my new favorite band!!!!

Music heals the soul. Two, three, or four minutes, of listening to music, may provide peace of mind. Imagine that. Thank you Lustra! Thank you troops! Happy New Year to all!

Thank you Lustra and Ryan. This is a tremendous example of Troops support, and all parties to it deserve a WELL DONE!
The Troops regularly ask for CDs and these examples of the appreciation and thoughtfulness of Lustra will be put to immediate use. Having been stationed overseas, I want Lustra to know how important this donation is. Thank you once more. :)

For them,

Pete Cassell
Give 2 the Troops
Washington Branch

To Nick and the members of Lustra..your support of our troops is awesome..please consider more donations in the future and helping promote G2TT....Andi/Ryan thanks for all your efforts..You do great work..Thanks.

This is very, very awesome. THANK YOU LUSTRA!! As a mom of a U.S. Marine I know how much our troops appreciate gifts such as yours.

Thank you for supporting our troops. Its appreciated more than you will ever know. God Bless:)

Thank you LUSTRA! You have no idea how many lives you touched with your music! You did a wonderful thing for the troops! You're awesome! Happy New Year and Rock On!! :)

My name is Eric and I am currently in Baghdad. I just want to say that I received probably over 200 CD's of you guys and they all are almost gone after handing them out to everyone. So many soldiers over here have heard of Lustra and took a copy of the CDs that Andi has sent over here. You guys are awesome. Keep us posted on any new albums you come out with. And I want to say Thanks for your support that you are giving us overseas, even the slightest amount really means a lot.
Oh ... and I like the sign you guys made, if you could send that over here I would hang it up. Maybe you should look into doing a concert over here for us. Thanks again!
SPC Shackelford

It just amazes me to see the kind of support we recieve here in Iraq. A great big thanks to Lustra for all the support they are showing. I am sitting here right now listening to their CD (that arrived in the mail today). All my counterparts and I apppreciate everything that you and other Musicians and Entertainers do everyday to support those of us deployed here in Iraq and throughout the world, far from our loved ones, to serve this great country of ours. I would also like to send out thank you's to the Band, "Shovelhead" for all of their support. They are another great band that has come forward to show their support for us troops. Thank you. And of course, a Big Thank You is in order for Andi, the whole Grant Family and Give2Troops ... without you, the morale of many of the troops here would be very low. Thank you all for everything that you do to show your support of us here. Thank you so very much and know that we appreciate everything you do.

Way to Go!!!!
This is great news.I agree with Patrick C. about the shirts, that would be WAY cool. Thanks LUSTRA for everything, you guys are great!

Well, I am the MAN

Seriously, I'm glad I could help out. And Mom, besides, Homework is so over-rated especially the work part. I like going home. Doing this was something I wanted to do and was glad it happened. Thanks a lot LUSTRA, and Nick (and my mom) for helping make this happen!

YOU GUYS ROCK!! Thanks for supporting G2TT. You couldn't have picked a better organization to help!! G2TT shirts would be cool for you to wear during a concert..the soldiers would LOVE it!! (My husband is deployed in Iraq).

Thanks LUSTRA!!!....and Ryan!!!
That was a very generous donation and I know the Troops loved it. I also agree with a previous post, a picture of LUSTRA in G2TT shirts (maybe holding up a CD or playing instruments) would be awesome! How about if they wear the G2TT shirts at one of their concerts to "encourage" others to remember our Troops? Ok, Ok, I may be getting carried away here but it isn't a "bad" idea. I hope LUSTRA can link to our web page. It sure would be an honor to have such a generous and caring group linked to our site.

Thumbs up to you Lustra!!! As an Army mom who's soon recently came back from Iraq, I can't tell you how much everyone over there appreciates what you have done for them. Showing our support is the best thing we can do for them. Keep up the good work.

The best thing about playing guitar in a band is that you feed off the crowd's energy. The best thing about being a G2TT volunteer is that we feed of each other's energy. The best thing about Lustra is that they rock - on and off the stage. Thanks guys for your incredible generosity and efforts on behalf of the troops!

P.S. Ryan - you rock too:)

Great Job, Ryan!!!
And thanks Lustra for being gracious and cool enough to donate the CDs to our troops, and for supporting them. I agree with everyone here... you guys ROCK and so do our troops!!!!!;)

This is awesome!!!! Another great example of what our country needs more of.....people coming together to let our troops that are in harm's way know that we support them. Hats off to Lustra for showing that you care!!!!

I think this is so great. Way to go Lustra for your very generous donation!!!

Hello, thanks and Happy New Year to all the positive people posting on this board. I just wanted to drop a quick note and say how proud we are to be a part of such a great effort. To be met with such gracious responses from all of you is just an added extra.

It should also be known that our donation wouldn't have been possible without the generosity of Scott Benson at XOFF Records who bank-rolled the "military issue" of our latest disc, incurring all sorts of rush-fees in order to make the holiday deadline. So, big ups to Mr Benson for allowing to take part in the donation process on the scale that we have.

To all the troops, we salute you. Thank you for bravery and hardwork. Without you, we couldn't do what we do.

Additional thanks to Andi, Ryan, and all on board here at G2TT for making us a part of this.

Tireless thanks and best wishes from all of us in LUSTRA. We wish you a happy and prosperous New Year and look forward to rocking you all in person soon.

All my best,

Nick Cloutman
LUSTRA

I would like to be the first to recognize Mr. Benson for his considerable contribution along with LUSTRA's equally generous effort. I am hoping for their continued support in our worth while and constant effort for our troops. You have more fans now than ever and it's all good for everyone! Here's to your continued success and support and a wish for a Happy New Year!!!

Hey! I know who Lustra is!! They sing "Scotty Doesn't Know!" Wow! That is very cool that they donated all those CDs... even cooler is that they are READING this blog and what we're all writing. Way cool. Hope Lustra will be releasing more music soon!

Thanks so much for donating your time and effort!!!!!!!! For more comments see the tag center!!!!!!:):):):)

RYAN, excellent! During the Thanksgiving weekend packing party, you said you were working on making this happen, and you totally did - I'm so impressed! LUSTRA, thank you for your generous hearts, creative minds, and cool music. This is an amazing thing you have done for our troops, and I just can't thank you enough. You all are awesome, you rock, nice yowling Nick, and most importantly, I TOTALLY LOVE THAT SIGN!

that's pretty sweet, lustra's hot and i know the troops will definitely appreciate this!:)

Andi and Ryan,
I'm going to embarrass my son Nick by telling you how proud I am of all of you. Of course I'm proud of Nick because he's my son. Ryan you are still very young and yet you have an appreciation for the effort and commitment which these young Americans are making in Iraq. I was in Vietnam and I lost friends there. They were just kids, younger than Nick. It was also an unpopular war. We don't have to support the war to support the troops. They are our friends and our neighbors, the kid down the street. I am proud of Nick and the band and proud of you Ryan and Andi for the efforts you have made.
Bill Cloutman