Current News
- Give US Your Poor Celebrity and Homeless Artist CD released by Appleseed Recordings. To order, click here then go to bottom of page and click "order," and scroll down for listing "Various Artists: Give US Your Poor".
- Artists Natalie Merchant, Buffalo Tom, Mario Frangoulis, and Mighty Sam McClain among others announce Boston concert for November 16, 2007. Click here.
Natalie Merchant Teams With Music Legends for a Special Project to Benefit the Homeless
Nov. 9, 2007 —
Platinum-selling singer and songwriter Natalie Merchant is lending her world-famous voice to the homeless.
"Homeless people are dehumanized by the whole experience," Merchant
told ABC News' Charles Gibson in an interview, "and really isolated and
robbed of their humanity in the eyes of so many of the nonhomeless
people."
Merchant decided that the way to restore human dignity to the
homeless was to give them a voice, and she lent them hers. Merchant and
other musical celebrities like Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi
and Keb' Mo' paired up with homeless and formerly homeless musicians to
create a new album called "Give Us Your Poor." Songs on the album were
also written by homeless artists.
Merchant described the collaboration as a musical petition on
behalf of the homeless: "It's like stop pretending you don't notice us.
Listen to us. And that's what I want this record to do. I want people
to listen and allow these people to reestablish their humanity."
"That's how we express our humanity, is we speak to each other.
We tell our stories. And they were telling their stories through their
music," she said.
But Merchant wanted to do more than just sing a duet. She
solicited demos throughout the country's homeless shelters until she
found Nicole, a 15-year-old who crooned about looking for someone to
rob after feeling desperate and being jobless.
"It seems the song just had the essence of what I was looking
for. I was looking for the story of a homeless person trying to explain
what it feels like," she said.
She produced and arranged the song, then recorded it with six
musicians who are living or who once lived on the street, including
Grammy-nominated blues man Sam McClain, who spent 20 years without a
home.
"When people open their mouths to sing, it comes from a deep
place where they store all the experiences of their lives," Merchant
said. "And when the mighty Sam McClain opens his mouth, you know this
man has had a life where he has known a lot of pain and suffering, but
also joy."
Regarding the entire collaboration, she said, "It was a
deep, fundamental, emotional exchange that took place. They were able
to express themselves in a way and on a scale that they had never been
able to before."
Merchant's work with "Give Us Your Poor" isn't over yet. She is
co-headlining a benefit concert with Mighty Sam McClain and other
artists in Boston Nov. 16.