Welcome Home

Michael and Nell write about homelessness, gentrification, other issues in new album

BY HANNAH HERNER

At the 2019 Annual Homeless Memorial, Nell Levin and Michael August chose a special song to play. “Welcome Home” pays tribute to people experiencing homelessness, as well as anyone who may feel like they aren’t welcome in Nashville.

Evicted now you’re sleeping in the park

Rain and cops and no rest in the dark

You’re body’s feeling old but you’re left out in the cold

You need a place to live, Welcome Home

“Welcome Home” is the title track of Michael and Nell’s recently released 12-song album, which covers issues from gentrification to non-violent resistance to peace in the Middle East, to the plight of young immigrants.

Levin has worked on affordable housing for decades. She was the leader of the Tennessee Alliance for Progress for 14 years and more recently was part of Nashville Organized for Action and Hope’s (NOAH) task force. This nonprofit work has inspired the pair’s songwriting.

“It’s really a recognition that it’s not just homeless people who have trouble staying in their homes and maintaining,” August said. “There’s a broad spectrum of the population that is having some real issues with just maintaining their residence with prices that just keep going up and up and wages just keep stagnating or going down. You can’t maintain under those circumstances.”

August and Levin both moved to Nashville in the late ’80s and met at a songwriter’s event. They’ve seen the gentrification of their own neighborhood of East Nashville since they moved in in 1996. Another track on the album, “Displacement Blues” was inspired by looking down their own block.

“We moved into this working class mixed-race neighborhood and now there’s a house across the street from us that’s for sale for $1.85 million dollars,” Levin says.

August and Levin say they are past the days of trying to be involved in the more corporate music business. The country industry is quite conservative and not open to “issue” songs like the ones they write, they say. They find more love on folk radio.

“I just think we’re at the phase of our life, we’re old, we don’t give a shit anymore,” Levin says. “We’re not trying to make the charts of country music or anything like that. We’re just at the point where we’re going to write what we want to write and say what we want to say.”

The pair has played a number of protests and nonprofit benefits over their careers. They’ve supported environmental groups, protests against President Donald Trump and played the Annual Homeless Memorial twice. Next will be an upcoming Black Lives Matter rally. Michael and Nell want their music to be socially significant.

“That’s part of our mission,” Levin says. We want to offer our music where it can be heard and it will support a cause that we believe in.”