James Gregg / Arizona Daily Star

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Iraq war veteran Angel R. Perez has buried three buddies in two years, but they have not gone away.

They visit him in the dead of night, or they pop into his head while he's standing in line at the grocery store.

They seem to be asking for a voice, Perez says. So the budding singer-songwriter has given them his own.

Memorial Day is a constant affair for the sergeant first class in the Army National Guard. Around Tucson, he performs his own unique tributes to the casualties of combat: original songs inspired by comrades killed or wounded at war.

Some listeners are moved to tears by his tunes, such as the ballad "21 Guns":

"His music is unbelievably moving," says Shannon Black, a morning-show co-host on Tucson country radio station KIIM-FM. Black heard Perez sing at a country music event at a local Chuy's restaurant recently.

Perez was in uniform when he dropped by that day, and at first, she says, no one knew what to make of the guitar-toting figure in camouflage and combat boots.

"By the time he finished, I had tears in my eyes," recalls Black, 39. "Everyone in the place was on their feet clapping, cheering and crying."

At the Chicago Bar on East Speedway near North Wilmot Road, where Perez often performs short sets during the nightclub's Monday jam sessions, patrons also seem to approve.

Donald Adkins, 48, says he was struck by how the soldier's songs steer clear of political commentary, focusing instead on simple tales of sacrifice.

"He just sings about his experiences, the things that happened to him and his friends. And his voice is so sweet that people love to listen."

Perez, 43, seems a bit overwhelmed by the praise. "I think I'm OK, but I really don't know if I'm that good," he says.

"I'm just trying to sing what I feel. I hope that people who hear it will be touched by it and remember all the soldiers we've lost."

Perez, a 1982 graduate of Cholla High School, got his first guitar at age 11. But it gathered dust for years after he married, fathered four children and did a stint in the Navy.

It wasn't until 1999 that he started playing regularly again. By then he was a member of the Guard's 2/180th Field Artillery, based at that time at the Valencia Road armory.

In 2004, his unit got the call to go to war. Perez's Martin D-1 guitar went with him.

At night in outposts around Iraq, Perez, a platoon sergeant, would play Green Day songs to cheer his soldiers and break the boredom of their long, dusty convoy security missions.

After more than 600 missions mostly free of major danger — "we got shot at maybe three times; that was it" — Perez came back to grapple with the question that haunts war vets of all generations: Why had he been spared when so many others had not?

Once he was home, Perez was touched repeatedly by loss. His 23-year marriage ended in divorce. Several soldiers he considered friends died one after another, two killed in action and another by his own hand.

Alone in bed, Perez would stay up until 2 a.m. scratching down thoughts in spiral notebooks with ballpoint pen. The musings later would form the basis for his lyrics.

"Bring Me Back My Boy" is dedicated to the memory of Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Charles R. Browning of Tucson, a folk-music fan and a father of two who volunteered for a second wartime deployment shortly after his first one ended. Browning, 31, died on June 1 in Afghanistan when a homemade bomb exploded near his vehicle.

Perez initially was ordered to travel to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to escort Browning's body back to Tucson. The duty ended up falling to someone else, he says, but the act of preparing his dress uniform for the trip mentally put him in the shoes of those who carry out that sad task.

"Private Robert James" is a tribute to all fallen troops, who Perez fears are being forgotten as years pass.

"Here's hoping that there's someone out there remembering his name," he sings of the fictional recruit who "always had a smile on his face."

"Last Letter" is about a suicidal Iraq veteran. Perez says he met the man a few months ago during a mental-health checkup at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The veteran confided that he had tried to kill himself after his second deployment, Perez recalls.

Perez has no idea how far his music will take him. He's making a demonstration recording in a local studio, but right now there's a much bigger issue on his mind: The possibility that he'll be sent back to Iraq before his time in the military is up in 2011.

If that happens, he says, his spiral notebooks will go with him.

"Songwriting is my therapy," he says. "If I didn't have music, I probably would lose my mind."

On StarNet: Go to go.azstarnet.com/ singingsoldier to see a video of Angel R. Perez performing his songs and to view more photos of him.