Damien Horne

See link. - People.com

On cold winter nights, he’d run the car for a while, heater blasting until it got hot. Then he’d cut off the engine, but the car cooled off pretty quickly.

So he’d unpack his suitcase and put on every shirt, sock and sweater he owned. That usually worked for a few hours, anyway.

But some really cold nights, aspiring music superstar Damien Horne would get out of the car and climb through a window into an abandoned school building near where he and his friends had parked on Shelby Avenue in East Nashville.

It was a little warmer in the school than in the car. A little.

“Sometimes it felt like you might be freezing to death,” Horne said.

Today, Horne doesn't have to worry about sleeping in a car. He's in a country trio on a major label, and he has landed on Nashville Lifestyles' 2016 Most Eligible Singles list.

The journey to get there started in 2002, when Horne and three bandmates lived in their cars for their first six months in Nashville.

But Horne knew homelessness before that. At 18 he got on a Greyhound bus in his tiny hometown of Hickory, N.C., to seek fame in L.A.

“I had a naïve boldness,” he said. “I just thought, ‘Oh, it’ll work out.’ ”

The couple of hundred bucks he brought with him ran out quickly, so Horne ended up begging on the streets for a while.

Horne eventually made his way back to North Carolina, formed a rock band called Stellar Tree and convinced the guys to head to Nashville to make it big.

They left in two cars, arrived around 3 a.m., parked at an East Nashville gas station and slept in the cars overnight.

In the morning, Horne and his buddies took their two guitars, walked across the bridge and set up on the corner of Second Avenue and Commerce Street downtown.

They used one guitar case to beat on for drums, and the other sat open in front of them to collect tips.

The guys sang only their originals, anti-establishment rock songs that let lead singer Horne whip around his dreadlocks.

They ate in gas stations or from the $1 menus at fast food restaurants.

Most nights found them cold and sleeping in cars outside that abandoned school.

Sometimes, they’d get enough money for a $50 riverfront motel room. But that wasn’t a lot better.

“It would be a crackhead hotel; it’s not like a hotel you’d want to stay at,” Horne said.

“People were fighting, or someone would break into the car and steal our equipment. It happened back to back. And you’d get in those moments: I’m making the wrong move again.”

Then one night, singer/songwriter John Rich — between his gigs in Lonestar and Big & Rich — walked by Second and Commerce and threw a $100 bill in the open guitar case.

Rich invited Horne to a weekly jam session called MuzikMafia, and Horne’s fortunes changed.

The guys got day jobs and an apartment, and Horne started getting music gigs outside of street performing.

Horne has lived comfortably off songwriting and gigs since, now as part of country trio The Farm.

But he always remembers being homeless and what it taught him.

“It gets dark like that. But right when I’d get to those points, there’d be hope. And John Rich might toss $100 in your case,” he said.

“When you have a dream or a purpose, it’s never going to be easy. In those dark times, I have to remember, you’re always a second, a moment, one event from turning it around.” - Tennessean.com