Tom Douglas sat in a circle with orange-clad men, surrounded by gray cement walls. On their laps they held copies of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” In the middle of the read aloud, a young man who might have been dozing in and out of the session sat bolt upright and blurted out, “They killed Tom Robinson!”
“He got it,” explained Douglas, a Nashville songwriter who was teaching songwriting classes to men serving time at Hill Detention Center in Davidson County, Tennessee. “He understood the whole metaphor [that paralleled] his life in the system to the [injustice done to] this fictional character.”
“There were times with each person when you would just see that light come on, a light of hope to know that it’s not the end of the road, but a refreshing shot at a new beginning.”
This young man illustrates for Douglas what he calls the “waste of human potential.” He says, “If he’d had a father, what could this guy have become instead of spending years of his life in a gray catacomb?”
Lifting the Bar
Douglas, a member and ruling elder at Christ Presbyterian Church (Music Row), says he started teaching songwriting classes at the jail because of his friendship with Thomas Hunter, a local pastor who worked for the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office. Several years ago, Hunter took Douglas on a tour of the jail — a place where incarcerated men are given opportunities to learn various trades and skills, something they can use productively when they get out. A year later, Hunter got a call from Douglas saying he wanted to begin a songwriting class at Hill.
The members of the first class Douglas taught in 2014 reflected the demographic spectrum of ages, races, and educational backgrounds. But it became clear to Douglas that they all shared one thing: a fatherless childhood.
“The demographics, the psychographics [were] all different. But they all [had] one thing in common: no fathers,” said Douglas. “It’s a fatherless crisis in America, particularly in the poor communities. You take the fathers out, and the whole thing goes to hell, literally.”
But instead of lowering the bar for his students, Douglas decided to do the opposite.
“If the expectations are high for people, they’ll usually achieve those expectations. I [didn’t] dumb it down for these guys. I [spoke] to them like their colleagues or contemporaries.”
He passed out black-and-white composition notebooks and assigned chapters of classics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” After all, “great writers are great readers,” he asserts.
As the class discussed themes such as good versus evil, prejudice, and mercy in these works of literature, Douglas assigned them creative writing tasks, culminating in a project of crafting their own “life song.”
Hunter, who sat in on every class, said that this assignment in particular was self-revealing.
“[There were] the dark moments when they [came] face to face with the thing that may have brought them there, and it manifest[ed] itself in song, and they kind of work[ed] through that to find some kind of resolution or redemption,” he said.
“There were times with each person when you would just see that light come on, a light of hope to know that it’s not the end of the road, but a refreshing shot at a new beginning.”
Strains from the Grave
“It’s very humbling to be across the table from a guy that’s murdered somebody or raped somebody or been convicted of abuse of a child. It exacerbates my own depravity,” said Douglas. “Whatever those guys have done literally, I have done that in my mind,” he confessed. “We’re all criminals. We’re all in need of redemption.”
As the groan of fallen humanity flowed from the lyrics of his students, Douglas said he was again comforted by the Good News that gripped his own heart years ago. “You just see the lot of life and how base life can become, how much we are in need of Jesus rolling the stone away and overcoming death.”
Toe Dipping
At the end of the last class Douglas taught, all of the participants contributed to a song they composed together. Douglas said it gave the men a taste of the gift of creating. “In the beginning God created. God creates, and really we’re just recreating what God started. We’re just continuing a work that was begun with creation. We’re just dipping that toe in an ocean of creativity that lays out before us.”
For Douglas, Fame Doesn’t Cut It
Somewhere along the road from Tennessee to Texas, Tom Douglas had left his hope of a career in songwriting in a mound of dust. At least that’s how his 31-year-old self saw it. A four-year stint in Nashville without any noticeable success had left Douglas deflated, so he got married, moved to Dallas, started a family, and reinvented himself as a real estate broker.
But eight years later and edging toward 40, Douglas found himself sitting in a parking lot, more jaded than ever. He said he cried out to God, and the Holy Spirit convicted him that he had been worshipping everything but Christ.
“As I collapsed in the front seat of my gray Honda Civic, I wept. And I felt a burden lifted and shortly thereafter realized I had my eyes on success or songs or fame, or one of the other multitude of idols we create.”
Through repentance and faith, he began to rediscover the blessing of writing songs.
At a songwriting seminar, he handed someone a cassette of a new song he had written, and it ultimately fell into the hands of singer Collin Raye, who took his “Little Rock” to No. 1 on the charts in 1994. Douglas packed up his family and moved back to Nashville in 1997.
During the past 22 years, Douglas has seen more than enough of worldly success, watching his songs picked up by artists such as Miranda Lambert (“The House That Built Me”), Lady Antebellum (“I Run to You”), and Tim McGraw (“Grown Men Don’t Cry”). But Douglas is wary, always mindful that he must keep the joy of songwriting at the forefront, not the idol of the end result.
“We’ve been given a gift, but to enjoy it, to expand it, you have to use it. You’ve got to put it to work, or it will be taken away,” he says. “I don’t know too many people who survive fame. Fame definitely doesn’t do it, money doesn’t do it, the accolades don’t do it. The only thing that’s sustaining is the joy of getting to do it today.