‘Harmony’ Project Aims to Help Homeless

For David Powell and Katherine Woodward, music industry veterans and co-executive producers of the charity album “In Harmony With the Homeless,” the best way to help the homeless is by offering a hand, not a handout.

That’s why in 1993 they founded In Harmony With the Homeless, a nonprofit organization that conducts songwriting workshops in which graduates of the Los Angeles Mission’s homeless rehabilitation program are teamed with professional songwriters to spread messages of hope and renewal.

Among the professional songwriters who have donated their time: Bunny Hull, who won a Grammy as co-writer of the Patti LaBelle hit “New Attitude”; Gloria Sklerov, an Emmy winner and co-writer of the Anne Murray hit “I Just Fall in Love Again”; and the team of Joel Hirschhorn and Al Kasha, who wrote the Oscar-winning Maureen McGovern hits “The Morning After” and “We May Never Love Like This Again.”

About 60 songs have resulted, and artists ranging from Richie Havens to Mavis Staples to Lowen & Navarro were brought in to sing 13 of them on “In Harmony With the Homeless,” which was released last month by Seattle-based Miramar Recordings.

The artists, also including Rita Coolidge and Brenda Russell, will perform the songs during the third annual “In Harmony With the Homeless” benefit concert Tuesday night at the El Rey Theater.

All proceeds from the record and show, which will be taped for airing this month on “ABC in Concert,” will go to homeless rehabilitation programs.

Equally important to Powell and Woodward, the songs that have resulted from the workshops show that the homeless are capable of rebuilding their lives.

“We’ve been able to highlight solutions to homelessness in ways we’d never dreamed of,” says Powell, an independent music publisher. “The workshops have facilitated healing of individuals, as well as healing in the community.”

More than 35 formerly homeless men and women have participated.

“These are people who have already decided that they want to turn their lives around,” says Woodward, a singer-songwriter and professional psychotherapist. “They’ve already committed to that process, and we wanted to give them a chance to rediscover their own voice in the community.

“By writing songs about their recovery, it kind of puts their experiences, which have often been very painful and chaotic, into a very tangible form that they can see actually has something to offer to other people. Because they’ve been through the experience, they have a very viable, credible message to deliver.”

* Richie Havens, Mavis Staples and others perform during the “In Harmony With the Homeless” benefit Tuesday at the El Rey Theater, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., 8 p.m. $17.50. (310) 398-4760.