Sheet music: Rocker Kenn Rowell
gives blankets to the homeless

by Caren Lissner

"I'm getting a vibe," says musician Kenn Rowell from the front passenger seat of his friend's blue Saturn wagon, bands of light sliding over the car as it heads down Broadway on a cold March night. "There's somebody around here. I can tell. It's like 'Spider-Man'; you develop your spider senses, doing this. You almost get an innate sense of where they are."

Rowell and the driver of the car, his band mate Neil Richter, are looking for homeless people so they can hand them free blankets. Along with his fellow musicians, Rowell collected 688 blankets last Dec. 11 at the ninth annual Blank-Fest benefit concert in Nyack, Rockland County, an event Rowell founded.

Starting on Christmas Eve and continuing intermittently throughout the past few months, Rowell, who lives in Spanish Harlem, has delivered hundreds of blankets to people and shelters with the help of friends.

"The first year, we got 40 blankets," the garrulous Rowell ticks off from memory. "The second year we got 70, the third year we got 115 and the fourth year we got 200 on the nose."

Richter, a drummer, says from the driver's seat, "A lot of people talk about doing stuff like this, but not many actually do it, and on such a large scale and so consistently. It's one thing to drop change into a bucket, and I'm not saying that's bad, but it's a lot easier to do than to put on nine of these shows like Kenn has done."

Rowell, 34, a music-publishing royalties administrator at EMI, came up with Blank-Fest in the shower one morning almost 10 years ago. "It hit me," he says. "I'm a musician. My friends are musicians. We could do a benefit, but instead of charging admissions, we'll ask for a blanket. Everybody's got a spare blanket."

He adds, "Everyone does what they're capable of doing. It makes sense for a single guy like me to do it. I can stay out until 2 a.m. I don't have a wife and kids at home."

At the last Blank-Fest, 23 bands performed, including the rock group Rowell has led for the past 13 years, the Baghdaddios. The band's name combines Baghdad and daddio, and many of the group's songs and album titles involve wordplay, like its latest album, "Autopsy-Turvy."

So how did a goateed guitarist/vocalist with a small earring in each ear get involved with the homeless?

"It's just an immediate reaction from walking around and seeing people in the street," Rowell says. "I always thought since high school, when I would visit New York, that it was unjust that we were the richest city in the world, but I'd get off the subway or off the bus in the Port Authority and step over people. Most people outside the city are so insulated, homelessness to them is a TV 'Movie of the Week' cliche."

While a homeless person may end up in that situation because of mental illness, addiction or unemployment, Rowell doesn't interrogate the recipients of his largess to find out their stories. "I figure, as long as you help people out, it doesn't really matter," he says. "I can figure the psychology out later. My family always taught me that I had a duty to help the less fortunate."

Sometimes, Rowell says, cynics tell him that he is wasting his time. "There are people who told me that maybe there are people faking [homelessness]," he says. "My reaction is, if they're laying on the ground at 3 a.m. on Christmas Eve, they're not faking anything. And for every one you find [who might be a fraud], you find hundreds who are really in trouble. You don't hurt everyone because of the one."

Each Christmas Eve, after Rowell and other volunteers give out the blankets, Rowell heads to his parents' house in Nyack, wraps a few gifts and drifts off to sleep. But there are often blankets left over after the holiday, which is why the rocker seeks out volunteers on cold nights in January, February and March to take to the streets.

On a recent night, it takes him and Richter an hour to find someone in need. Then, crawling east on Fourth St. near the Bowery, they spot a short Asian woman with a striped wool hat, large brown overcoat and yellow cane who is looking through garbage bags. Rowell steps out of the car with a donated green-and-white New York Jets blanket.

He asks the woman if she would like a blanket. Her eyes immediately light up.

"Really?" she says in a high voice, seeming incredulous. She puts her hands together and bows to him twice. "Thank you."

Once the woman has the blanket, she heads to a shadowy stoop, puts her bags down for a moment and pushes the blanket into a shopping bag as Rowell returns to the car.

"I think she wanted a Cowboys blanket instead," Rowell quips to Richter, adding, "I'm going to hell for that comment."

The car starts up again and Rowell talks about other reactions he's gotten when he's approached people on the street. Some people have been offended because they weren't actually homeless, but others have been thrilled.

"One year," he says, "I went to the Port Authority and I helped a woman fix the wheel on her cart. There was a bad wheel on the back, and I put the metal strip back on and gave her a blanket. She said, 'You must be an angel.' I said, 'No, I'm just a mailman's son.'"

Rowell stops on 23rd St. because he knows from experience that there may be homeless people sleeping in the No.6 subway station. Sure enough, two men downstairs are on the floor under piles of blankets. But they are both grateful to get an additional layer.

"Yeah, throw it up there," manages a scraggly-haired man in an old white comforter. Getting back in the car, Rowell says, "I keep thinking to myself, 'Wow, it's cold out there, man.' Can you imagine being in that 24/7 with no relief? And this isn't even the coldest night of the year."

The musician is careful to point out that many people have been involved in this charity effort, not just him. "I'm only the loudmouth," he says.

But Richter is quick to praise Rowell's initiative. "A lot of people want to help and don't know what to do," the drummer says. "And the results [from Blank-Fest] are immediate. You can see tangible results."

The night ends with Rowell, Richter and Richter's girlfriend, Dawn Wheeler, pulling into the Bowery Mission. Rowell and Wheeler hand 75 blankets to shelter worker Hubert Rivas.

It's 2 a.m., and Rowell is happy to head home so he can drift off to sleep — under a big warm blanket that his parents gave him when he went away to college.

For more information on Blank-Fest, visit www.blankfest.com.

March 30, 2006 - Daily News

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