"I have specialized in the old stuff. That is what makes me different from a lot of the other players around here," Bruce Curtis Fallgren said. Something else that makes him unique is his unlikely path to his career in music. Although he was enthralled with music his whole life, he didn't start to play guitar and write music until he was in his late teens, and not in front of an audience until his late twenties…and in the Army. About 10 years after joining the Army Reserve as a combat engineer, Fallgren was returning home after spending a hard day out building roads when he saw an Army Band Unit dressed in their Class A uniforms practicing on the parade grounds. "We had mess kits and our sleeping bags and dirty uniforms, and I thought, ‘Man… that's the outfit to be with,'" he said. "I had played tuba in grade school, and it just so happened they needed a tuba player and that's how I got on." Soon after he joined the Army band, they discovered his talents as a singer and he joined "The Country Band," a faction of the 67th Army Band. He served this post for the remainder of his career, even getting a chance to represent the state of Wyoming in Washington DC in the late 1970s. In 1991 after 22 years of service, Fallgren retired from the Army. After going through a divorce in the early nineties, he decided to take his show on the road. In 1997 he toured the country trying to make a go of his music. "I didn't want to get old someday and say ‘I didn't give my music a chance,'" he said. "I gave it a chance and I survived, it was tough." In the late 1990s, he found himself in Washington state taking care of his ailing mother (whom he lost to cancer in 2000). He then moved to Wimberley, Texas to help take care of a good friend, and former bandmate's widow. He moved to Kyle last year. Fallgren recorded his first album, My Fightin' Side in 2002. He decided to record the album, featuring the Merle Haggard title song, in response to September 11, 2001. "I was driving through San Marcos and I saw a bunch of college kids protesting about 9/11 and I thought… We just lost 3 thousand people there and some people would just think ‘well that's too bad, lets be more careful next time' and that's it," he said. "I think if you don't like this country, you should go somewhere else." It was also 2002 when Fallgren learned he had prostate cancer. He underwent surgery, having his prostate removed, but the cancer came back. While receiving radiation treatment at the Veterans Hospital in San Antonio, he continued to play and sing – making sure he at least kept his gig at a retirement home in Wimberley. In July 2006, he learned his cancer is officially in remission. Perhaps a fitting release, his second album, Something Was Missing In My Life is a collection of gospel songs the 59 year-old Fallgren recorded this year. "My mother always wanted me to sing gospel songs and I felt I needed to do that in order to go full circle in my music," he said. He continues to play at different venues in about a 25-mile radius of Kyle, to many different audiences. "I try and play music that relates to the people I'm singing it for. Since I have such a variety, I can cater music to the crowd," he said. "Some people are really receptive to the ballads, so I'll continue to play them. I can pretty easily take requests." Taken from the 3/07 story: "Classic Country Musician Performs in Kyle" which ran in the Hays Free Press.