The Clanging of the Cans

I was sitting outside my local watering hole writing in my journal when to my left a homeless man of indeterminate age walked toward me on the sidewalk.

He carried a tote in one hand and a small duffel bag in the other. He had short red hair and wore glasses and it occurred to me that in all my encounters with Oregon's homeless, he was the only one with red hair.

As he came closer I heard a clanging sound emanating from the duffel bag. I instantly recognized it as the discordant anthem to Oregon's crisis of homelessness, the sound of empty cans knocking against each other in an enclosed space as their owner conveys them for monetary redemption via foot or bicycle or wagon or grocery cart or baby stroller or even once, a kayak rigged up on wheels!

I would like to record this unique sound and share it with musicians to integrate it somehow into songs or dirges. This sound cannot be replicated in writing. What are musicians doing with the crisis of homelessness? Anything?

The Stones did something with it in “Shattered.”

The Doobie Brothers did something with it in “Takin' it to the Streets.”

Neil Young did something with it in “Rockin' in the Free World.”

Surely some punk rock band is doing something angry with it.

Modern country music wouldn't touch it. They offer only cliché and fantasy with their storytelling, not reality. Country music didn't used to be only that. You just know Waylon Jennings would have taken up the subject. For sure, Johnny Paycheck.