This song is about a real place. The people are real and their misery is real.
Acoustic, singer/songwriter, rock and roll, pop.
Story behind the song
Before my time, they were called hobos. When I was a kid, most were called winos. I'll never forget how Reagan emptied the mental hospitals in the eighties. Many of those people ended up on the street with no place to go. When it was pointed out to Ronnie that so many were homeless, he laughed and said they were choosing to be homeless. Today they're still here sleeping in makeshift shelters tucked under highway bridges, public lands, and doorways.
No matter what we call them, they are human beings. How can a country that claims to be Christian turn a blind eye?
Lyrics
Luckie Street
Don Sechelski
A child in the doorway, a man on the street
They are society's debris.
Except for the haunted desperation in their eyes,
They look a lot like you and me
Down on Luckie Street.
We try not to see them, we try not to hear
They are a people without voice
Like the lepers of Canaan are they guilty of sin
Homeless by their own choice?
Down on Luckie Street
Bridge
Are they hungry in the land of milk and honey?
Are they homeless in the home of the free?
Is it harder to be starving in your belly
Or starving in the spirit?
Down on Luckie Street
Does it make any difference how they came to be here?
Does it matter what color they might be?
Whatsoever we do to the least of these here
We're doing it to you and me
Down on Luckie Street.
Bridge
Are they hungry in the land of milk and honey?
Are they homeless in the home of the free?
Is it harder to be starving in your belly
Or starving in the spirit?
Down on Luckie Street
Down on Luckie Street
