Chris Daughtry Plays for the Troops, Chows Down on Fourth of July

RCA RecordsTo some, the Fourth of July means the beach, beer and barbecues, but Daughtry will spend that day being reminded of the true meaning of the holiday — they’ll be performing for the troops at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. “It’s just, like, the best crowd ever,” says Chris Daughtry.

“That’s gonna be fun. We always love playing for the troops. We’ve done many tours overseas and different military bases and it’s just like the best crowd ever,” Chris tells ABC Radio. “They’re so grateful and so awesome and they do all the hard work, you know?”

In fact, Chris explains why there’s really a different feel when they perform for the troops, as opposed to just a regular concert audience. “Because that’s their time to see the show. They can’t go next week; they can’t see it another time when you come back through. That’s their escape time, you know, and they don’t take that for granted,” he tells ABC Radio. “You know like a lot of people [are like], ‘Oh, well we saw them last month,’ or whatever.”

“I dunno, they just seem extremely grateful and it makes us even more proud to perform for ‘em,” he adds.

Just because Chris is performing on Saturday doesn’t mean he won’t get to barbecue, though. And when it comes to his favorite type of meat to cook over the coals, he’s an equal-opportunity eater. “You had me at ‘meat,'” he laughs. “Whatever, just throw it on the grill and I’ll eat it. I’m a caveman, I’ll eat the crap out of some meat!” He doesn’t want too much seasoning on it, either.

“I’m a big fan of spicy food but when it comes to red meat I don’t want it too spicy,” says the singer, who’s evidently quite the gourmand. “I don’t want it to overtake the flavor and the rotund and robustness of the red meat.”

One thing Chris probably won’t be able to do on the Fourth is shoot off fireworks: they’re illegal in North Carolina, and doing that on a military base probably isn’t advisable. However, the singer says when he was a kid, doing that was a big deal for him.

“I used to love shooting fireworks as a kid — get all the M-80s and the smoke bombs and go out and put ‘em on your G.I. Joes and see how far they’ll fly,” he laughs. “Some of ‘em went pretty good and they would explode!”