Marine bandmates reunite in Lynchburg

Mike Corrado, Stacey Lamont Sydnor, and Joe Yankel reunite Sept. 11 – 25 years after 9/11 changed their lives

8:45 a.m. Sept. 1, 2026

DUANE CROSS
MCO Publisher•Editor

Twenty-five years ago, Mike Corrado, Stacey Lamont Sydnor, and Joe Yankel had a band, a growing audience, and a calendar that kept them on the road more often than not.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001, and the road changed.

On Friday, Sept. 11, the three former Marines will stand together again, this time at the gazebo on the Square. The Mike Corrado Band reunion performance runs from 6 to 8 p.m. as part of the pre-race event for the Tunnel to Towers 5K.

For Corrado, Sydnor, and Yankel, it will be more than another night of live music. It is a return to something they built together as young Marines at Camp Lejeune, N.C., before military service, careers, and 25 years of life pulled them in different directions.

Marines first, bandmates next

Corrado was an infantry officer. Sydnor and Yankel were musicians in the 2nd Marine Division Band.

Somewhere between duty schedules and military life, the three started making music together and formed the Mike Corrado Band. When active duty ended, the band kept rolling.

From 1997 through 2001, the group played roughly 200 to 250 shows a year, building an audience, piling up road miles, and sharing stages with acts including the Derek Trucks Band, Susan Tedeschi, Edwin McCain, John Mayer, and Vertical Horizon.

They had momentum when Sept. 11 changed the course.

For Corrado, that eventually meant putting much of the music aside and returning to service. He spent four years as a mobilized Marine reservist, including a deployment to Fallujah, Iraq, from March 2005 to March 2006, before later returning to active duty.

Sydnor and Yankel did not deploy to war. Both had served as Marine musicians and moved into civilian life after leaving active duty. The band that had spent years working the road suddenly had three members headed toward distinctly different lives.

The music never went far

Sydnor finished college and moved to Los Angeles, where he built a career as a session drummer and percussionist. His résumé grew into a mighty good one.

He has worked with Earth, Wind & Fire, The Jacksons, Mariah Carey, and Chaka Khan, including a world tour with Khan. He is currently performing with Corinne Bailey Rae.

Yankel stayed close to music, too. The saxophonist continued to play with various acts and churches while building an academic career. He is now an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Corrado’s road led back through the Marine Corps before eventually bringing him to Middle Tennessee. After retiring, he settled in Shelbyville, built Harmony Hill Studio, and found a new way to bring veterans and music together.

He now hosts the VetTunes Podcast, highlighting veterans working in the music industry, and works with veterans and veteran service organizations through recording projects and songwriting retreats.

Their careers scattered, but the music stayed with all three.

Back where it started

The trio’s most recent full-band show came July 4, 2025, at Camp Lejeune during the Marine Corps’ 250th anniversary celebration, when they shared the bill with Switchfoot and Parmalee.

That night took them back to the base where the band began. Lynchburg brings them together again for an anniversary none of them could have imagined when they were young Marines playing music on the side.

“For Stacey, Joe and me, this is much more than another show,” Corrado said. “We built this band while serving together as Marines, and 9/11 changed the direction of our lives. Reuniting 25 years later, in support of Tunnel to Towers, gives us a chance to honor those we lost, those who answered the call, and the families who continue to carry their sacrifice.”

The concert comes ahead of Lynchburg’s Tunnel to Towers 5K, an event rooted in the memory of Sept. 11 and in honoring the military members, first responders, and families whose lives were changed by that day.

The setting will be about as hometown as it gets. The courthouse will be right there. Folks will gather around the Square. The sun will start dropping behind downtown Lynchburg, and three Marines who once spent their nights chasing a music career will pick it back up for a couple of hours.

Twenty-five years later

Sydnor went on to tour the world. Yankel built a life around music and higher education. Corrado went to war, finished a Marine Corps career, and eventually settled just up the road in Shelbyville.

None of it followed the path those three young Marines might have pictured back in 2001. Sept. 11 changed that path, but it did not erase the friendship or the music they built together.

On a Friday night in Lynchburg, they get to play it again. Twenty-five years after Sept. 11 sent their lives in different directions, Corrado, Sydnor, and Yankel will be back on the same stage, in the middle of a small Tennessee town gathered to remember.

For a couple of hours on the Square, the band plays on.