From Homeless To Nashville Hit

With guest host Jane Clayson.

Country singer Doug Seegers was homeless for years in New York and Nashville.  He’s out with a new album and will break your heart.

Doug Seegers had big dreams when he left home right out of high school way back in 1969, guitar in hand.  It’s been a long, often very hard life, lived under bridges and homeless shelters in Nashville.  Always writing songs but never quite making it in the music business. Then a lifetime later, Seegers’ luck turned.  This hour, On Point:  Doug Seegers.  the beautiful voice of a lucky man.
 -- Jane Clayson

Doug Seegers, Nashville-based country singer. His first album is "Going Down to the River." (@doug_seegers)

Barbara Lamb, Doug Seegers' road manager, fiddler and back-up vocalist. (@babslamb)

Emmylou Harris, mulitple-Grammy-winning singer-songwriter. (@EmmylouSongbird)

The Tennessesan: From Nashville sidewalks to Swedish stages, Doug Seegers prevails -- "Fame is a velvet challenge. It provides constant affirmation, but it also puts the famous at a distance from the people who adore them. That distance exists even in proximity. There's a clear sense of who is wanting and who is wanted. There's someone saying 'Please' and someone saying 'Thank you.' And there is a constant series of clipped interactions, like a bride might have at a heavily attended wedding reception."

NPR Music: Homeless In Nashville, Huge In Sweden -- "Country music fans were introduced to a new face at last month's Americana Music Awards in Nashville, when 62-year-old Doug Seegers opened the show with a song from his debut album, Going Down to the River. Seegers is originally from Long Island, N.Y., but says he wanted to be a country singer from Day One. He wrote his first song at 16, and, after finishing high school, joined a country band and moved to Austin, Texas, performing under the stage name Duke the Drifter."

Rolling Stone: Doug Seegers Shares Homeless-To-Famous Journey — "Everything changed this spring. Swedish country singer Jill Johnson came to Nashville and asked Downey to point her toward songwriters who had fallen on hard times. An initially reluctant Seegers played Johnson 'Going Down to the River,' a wrenching tune that uses the time-honored metaphor of water as salvation, a place where redemption can be found and sins washed away.