Dallas homeless choir hits all the right notes

Posted: 12/15/06

Dallas homeless choir hits all the right notes

By Marcia Davis-Seale

Religion News Service

DALLAS (RNS)—It’s Wednesday morning at the Austin Street Centre. The bell in the tower clatters harshly against the cold wind, beckoning people from the streets for a pious word or two, a prayer, perhaps a cracker crumb dipped in the Communion cup.

Up in the low-ceilinged chapel loft, Chris Snidow is shifting gears from psychiatric nurse to choirmaster as his proteges straggle in for a midweek worship service. Sun streams through beveled cuts of glass, splashing stains of hot color against the smooth white walls.

From the front row, Rufus Barnes clears his throat. He’s missing the other half of his duet, so he’ll go solo today. Other key vocalists are no-shows, so yesterday’s carefully planned repertoire is abandoned as if it had never been rehearsed.

Barnes grew up singing in the church, then spent years singing the blues in smoky night clubs, jive joints and now, on the streets. Diabetes took part of his foot and any prospects of steady work. He lost his family, his home and eventually most of his belongings.

He’s written a million lyrics before tearing them up. He never thought—homeless and older than 50—he would fulfill his lifelong dream of actually recording a song he’d written.

But that’s just what’s happening at the 400-bed shelter. Rising above the sour notes of hardship, the voices of the shelter’s transient homeless choir have found a permanent home on a professionally recorded CD of spiritual songs labeled The Seasons of Austin Street.

The CD includes a few Christmas songs and a poem, “Homelessness,” written by a former shelter dweller no one’s seen for a while. Snidow hopes she’s still alive. He has “sent word out on the street to tell her to come in,” he said.

A small portion of the proceeds from the $20 CD cover recording costs; most money, Snidow said, goes to shelter operations. The 120 church groups that support the shelter are snapping them up.

Attendance at rehearsals was forever unpredictable, so Snidow decided that scheduling a group recording session was out of the question. Instead, he escorted the members of his choir, one by one, to his cramped and cluttered home sound studio to record their parts. A few friends chimed in to round out the sound.

Laying down each voice separately, adding music, track by track, it took him 18 months to painstakingly synthesize a cohesive group presence and performance, and send the finished CD to be reproduced.

“This choir has given many a spiritual reconnection and helped their self-esteem,” he said.

Austin Street opened in 1983. What started as a drafty soup kitchen has grown into a well-ventilated, security-mindful shelter that includes a chapel for worship, funerals and weddings; transitional housing; thrift shop; day program for the mentally ill; and drug and alcohol support groups—all backed by a professional staff.

“A lot of psychiatric programs don’t want to recognize the spiritual, and if they get government money, they can’t.” said Snidow, 57. “But no one can receive long-term deep healing unless the spiritual foundation is laid down. … You can find God, sense his presence, even more so, in a shelter.”

Snidow would like to find time to rehearse Christmas music. But the daily rhythm of shelter life—anger management classes, job interviews and doctor’s appointments—always seem to get in the way.

Ron Byrd has found his way back to choir. His thin frame is draped in a wool coat with padded shoulders, street stylish but too heavy for what will become an unseasonably warm day. He takes it off and settles in at the piano.

“You can’t practice on the streets. Someone is going to have a complaint,” he said.

Between the cigarette smoke and the barrel fires lit for warmth, the relentless damp and cold, and the constant need to speak loudly just to be heard above the cacophony of street noise—all that takes a toll on the homeless singer.

“A lot of people think we’re lazy,” said Byrd, 52. “God is working with us personally, and homeless or not, all of us still have to sometimes say a prayer alone.”

Nearby, Debbie Whiddon shakes her head and laughs at Byrd. She’s petite and blond, with fair skin and freckles. Somewhere in her 50s, her eyes reflect the pain of a shattered life tentatively glued back together, holding for now.

She remembers taking voice lessons. But music got lost in the struggle to raise two sons and survive 20 years at the backhand of an abusive husband. She escaped to the streets, where she drank in her fill of hardship and hard liquor.

“I started out as a client,” she said. “And now I work here and have a future.”

She said she draws comfort from the lyrics of a song on the CD.

“‘Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God’ … That one song means so much to me. It’s what my life’s about now. I hope it will mean as much to others—struggling—who hear it on the CD.”