My New Song “Streets of Any Town” Highlights Nation’s Homeless Crisis

It was nearing midnight on a warm Saturday night in Nashville. As part of an inspiring music conference, geared towards artists using their music in the context of a larger ministry (The Objective, a conference put on by the Extreme Tour), we had been asked to go to Broadway’s honky tonk, to find people who looked like they could use some help, and minister to them with music. 

I had secretly decided I was going to skip it, and go to sleep, preferring instead to minister to the needy at a more reasonable hour. So when I got to Broadway, and a man seemed to come right toward me, I was kind of astonished! He was dressed in tattered clothes, and wore a large poncho that covered his head and shoulders, his face peered out, strikingly rugged and even handsome, with piercing blue eyes that were no longer bright. 

He told me of how he longed to escape the cycle of heroin addiction but that every time he tried, he would be found in withdrawal on the streets, and taken to the hospital. Only then to be returned to the streets in a vicious cycle from which he could not escape.  

Streets of Any Town Emerges

Streets of Any Town is this man’s story, but it is also the larger story of men and women across America who now live on the streets because they have been forced there for economic and social reasons. 

Streets of Any Town asks the rhetorical question, is it really okay in the United States of America to allow people to live on the street? The song also packs a religious punch with its refrain “the least of you”, recalling Jesus’ words from Matthew 25:45 —- ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ How a society cares for its most vulnerable members is a significant mark of its health.  

Release Date and More

Streets of Any Town is the fourth track from my upcoming album A Larger Dance releasing in October. 

The songs have been recorded and produced by GRAMMY-nominated-producer Billy Smiley (Johnny Cash, Whiteheart, Clay Aiken, and the Newsboys). Streets of Any Town features some of Nashville’s finest musicians with Fred Eltringham (The Wallflowers and Sheryl Crow), Byron House (Robert Plant and the Band of Joy), Blair Masters (Garth Brooks) and Brennan Smiley (The Technicolors).

Streets of Any Town will be playing on local country radio stations across America, promoted by Grassroots Promotion, out of Nashville. Kate hopes that the song, and its accompanying music video may be of use to any individual or agency working with issues of homelessness. 

Click here to Listen/Download Streets of Any Town

The song will be part of BWH Music’s new country collection, “Keepin’ It Country,” releasing in August.