My family lost our Altadena home in the Eaton Fire on Jan. 7, 2025. I wrote about my experience of that tragedy and its aftermath with a series of posts in the first half of last year. The anniversary is this week, so I’m adding one post as an update. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled “music, books, music books” programming later this week. —Steve

My family went glamping north of Santa Barbara the weekend before the Eaton Fire destroyed most of Altadena one year ago this week.

The annual trip is a tradition we share with some of our closest friends. It’s one of the places our children grew up together riding bikes, on the beach, petting baby lambs and goats at the nearby farm, and consuming countless s’mores while their acoustic guitar-slinging parents gleefully belted out our favorite songs around the campfire.

Like the many other seasonal gatherings we attended over the past month—the Christmas Tree Lane lighting ceremony, holiday singalongs, tree-trimming parties, a yearly trip to visit family in northern California, New Year’s Eve parties—that weekend getaway was a solemn reminder of the life we had before the fire and an unwanted mile marker for how far we’ve come (and haven’t) since last January.

We started 2026 in the same idyllic location, but we’re not the same people.

Last year the campsite was dry, this year it was soaking wet. The usually burbling creek was raging thanks to pouring rain that mostly kept us inside our cabins.

Two other families in that tight-knit group were also directly impacted by the Eaton Fire. At one point, a couple of us discussed our rebuilding plans and wished out loud that the new year would be better than the last. I nodded to the grey sky, noting that there was something poetic about the stormy weather: “water’s the opposite of fire.”

That earned a few nods, but immediately became a riddle in my own mind as I wandered over to the rustic market in search of a hot cup of coffee and a game of Scrabble. Those words continued to rattle around my head for the rest of the weekend, like the boulders shifting and grinding in the rushing creek.

What exactly is the opposite of fire?

Our grown children do a lot of the guitar strumming and campfire singing now.

We started this annual tradition when many of them were still in preschool and kindergarten. These days those “kids” range in age from 15 to 23—some arriving with significant others for the first time (although they still tend to act like kids whenever they’re around their “chosen cousins.”)

We still played and sang many go-to favorites—including rousing versions of “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Wagon Wheel”—but a few newer tracks snuck in as the night stretched on. I was off admiring the cloudy full moon while the younger generation broke into a joyful version of “Man Or Muppet” in the background.

One of my oldest friends and earliest musical collaborators traditionally leads these campfire hootenannies, but I returned to find him gleefully playing along with whatever song was suggested by his oldest son and assembled chorus. It felt for all the world like a baton had been passed, a pebble had been snatched. It was beautiful.

I sat staring at the fire ring for the rest of the night, watching as the flames consumed piles of logs and silently wondered if there was any amount of water that could have saved our old Altadena home.

Rain pelted our cabin throughout our last night there.

I tossed and turned, my anxiety brain coming back online after a couple weeks of holiday respite. Aside from work and school, there are a million new things we have to worry about this year—insurance and mortgage negotiations, contractors, permits, inspections, budgets, and loans (not to mention our mental and emotional health).

And that’s just the rebuild-related headaches. As anyone who has been through a natural disaster will tell you, life keeps coming at you despite what you’ve been through. Doctor and dentist appointments need to be scheduled, taxes are due, employers expect you to show up with your A game, your kids need to eat and get to school, the holidays arrive on schedule—the world keeps spinning, as it should.

That was the kind of stuff keeping me up in the middle of night during a relaxing family vacation. (For the record: I’ve long been an insomniac, but the trauma and stress certainly aren’t helping.) I considered reaching for my Kindle in an effort to read myself back to sleep, but laid there staring at the ceiling instead.

The rain provided a staccato backbeat to the deluge of thoughts that sloshed around my sleep-deprived head. I tried to remember what that trip felt like the year before. My biggest problem 12 months ago was finding a new job after getting laid off from my longtime corporate marketing gig. I eventually pivoted to a slightly different career path and some interesting new challenges that I really enjoy.

My old job thankfully feels like a distant (mostly pleasant) memory these days. I wondered if I would ever feel the same about our old home once the new one is built.

That last thought—imagining a world where we’re on the other side of the rebuild process—finally loosened the knot occupying my brain.

I decided then that, for me, the opposite of fire is hope.

The wildfire that consumed our community was nothing more or less than a voracious appetite in search of fuel. The same 80-100 mph winds that kept water-dropping helicopters grounded after the fire first erupted under high-tension power lines near Eaton Canyon also helped to quickly spread the flames and embers.

It was a perfect shitstorm sparked by staggering negligence—and it was all completely out of my control.

No amount of wishing on my part will ever undo the resulting death and destruction that our devastated community deals with daily. The only way I’ve managed to keep it together is by pointedly noticing (and doing my best to be thankful for) the many small glimmers of hope dotting the long, winding road to recovery and renewal.

The outpouring of support from family, friends, and strangers in the first few months after the fire was the first sign. The incredible clean up effort from the Army Corps of Engineers was another. Since then, I’ve been continually amazed by the many meaningful ways the local community has rallied together. I’m encouraged by the new construction I see all around the neighborhood each time I visit our property.

I stopped by again after we got home from Santa Barbara on Sunday.

The recent rains have turned our fire-ravaged lot into a lush green landscape. Mixed in among the various weeds, a handful of our carefully curated native plants are also returning. The magical avocado tree that we mourned one year ago is sprouting back to life on its own. The mighty oak in our front yard still presides over all of it.

I see those things—along with the peacocks, coyotes, and doorbell camera footage of bears wandering desolate Altadena streets—and it gives me hope. Nature bounces back, and so will we and anybody else who chooses to stay and help rebuild Altadena.

None of that will bring our old house, our old neighborhood, or our former life back—and it definitely won’t make this frustrating, exhausting, insomnia-inducing process any easier—but it gives me the fuel I personally need to keep moving forward.

Fire delivered destruction to Altadena, but that’s the past. Hope will deliver the future.

On that note: It looks like we’ll be breaking ground this month. Wish us luck.

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Here’s where the Vodka Sauce series started…

Earlier this year I wrote about a few albums that were part of a 1,000+ vinyl collection destroyed by the Eaton Fire. This is a follow up about 10 more albums I’ve wanted to reach for in recent months. You can read the first Melted Wax essay HERE.

Substack tells me this post is too long, so be sure to click thru to read the whole thing.

I recently caught a show at a Pasadena vinyl shop/venue.

My friend and I browsed the Healing Force of the Universe bins while waiting for the Uni Boys to go on. A display copy of The Replacements’ Hootenany caught our eye, prompting a conversation about all the vinyl each of us lost in the Eaton Fire.

We’d both been collecting on and off since our teens, lugging our collections around from various apartments to rehearsal rooms, garages, storage spaces, and finally to the homes we bought to raise our families in Altadena.

Neither of us has seriously started collecting again since the fire, aside from the few albums generously gifted or donated to us.

I’ll occasionally pop into a record shop and flip through the bins, but the thrill is still mostly gone.

Talking it out with another fire-impacted crate digger, I realized that more than anything else it’s the origin stories that are stopping me from diving back in. My mind keeps telling me that I can replace the objects, but I won’t be able to replace those personal connections.

Then a friend of a friend mails me an album from England, my daughter’s bestie gives us a stack of her vinyl doubles, an artist offers to replace their albums for free, or Altadena Musicians puts together a vinyl library to help fire-impacted collectors start rebuilding their collections.

Suddenly I can imagine having new stories. Next thing you know I’m thinking about some of the albums I’ve been missing most…and wouldn’t mind replacing. Here are a few I’ve found myself wanting to reach for lately.

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Strange Man, Changed Man by Bram Tchaikovsky

No self-respecting power pop fan’s collection would be complete without this late ‘70s gem. Strange Man, Changed Man has been easy to find around LA in recent years for a few bucks, which is interesting for a band that isn’t exactly a household name in the US. That’s why I had a handful of copies (that I intended to give as gifts to a few uninitiated friends) when the fire struck and reduced the local surplus.

Transformer by Lou Reed

I remember the sense of awe I felt hearing “Satellite Of Love,” “Vicious,” and “Perfect Day” as a teen. I was already a budding Velvet Underground fan by then, but Transformer unlocked some other part of my psyche that I wasn’t aware of up to that point. I’d been carrying this worn copy around ever since. I gave it a lot of spins over the decades and it informed many mixed tapes in the ‘80s and mixed CDs in the ‘90s.

Globe Of Frogs by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians

I swore off vinyl for many years before getting lured back in. That was a decade or so ago when I stumbled upon a copy of this Robyn Hitchcock album. Like much of my ‘80s vinyl, the original copy went missing sometime in the ‘90s. So, I grabbed this replacement on a lark. I created a rule for myself after that—any time I came across a Robyn Hitchcock album, I would buy it (bank account permitting). I ended up with a pretty healthy stack, but this one always held special significance.

Scratch ‘N’ Sniff by The Whiffs

The Whiffs are a hooky rock band out of Kansas City, Missouri. I fell hard for their blend of Ramones energy and ‘70s power pop hooks, interviewing them for both Big Takeover and Remember The Lightning. I don’t buy a lot of new vinyl (and I have a self-imposed rule that I try not to accept free vinyl from indie labels or bands), but I couldn’t resist buying a copy of this incredible collection from 2023.

Horses by Patti Smith

Horses was—and, in my opinion, remains—required listening for anybody with a taste for punk rock. This album really opened my eyes to the art-damaged origins of that amorphous genre, connecting the dots between the hardcore bands that caught my attention in the early ‘80s and all of the ‘60s/’70s music that laid the groundwork for it. Plus: I grew up in Redondo Beach, so…

Always Comes Back by SVT

SVT was a late ‘70s/early ‘80s San Francisco band I’d mostly forgotten about until I read Bill Kopp’s excellent book, Disturbing the Peace: 415 Records and the Rise of New Wave. I was re-investigating bands featured in Kopp’s history of that famed indie label and found myself stuck on the track “Always Come Back” for weeks. The equally impressive double vinyl collection was a splurge worth every penny.

While You Were Out by Soul Asylum

The last installment in this series featured two legendary Minneapolis bands, The Replacements and Hüsker Dü, but Soul Asylum’s While You Were Out will always be one of my favorite albums from that era. The whole collection is great, but “Closer To The Stars” captures the band’s ferocious proto-alt rock peak while displaying the amazing songwriting that eventually led to their commercial success a few years later. Grant Young’s muscly drumming is fantastic throughout.

The Best Of… by The Specials

I really wanted the first two Specials releases on new vinyl, but could never justify the expense in those moments when I held them in my hands—so I settled on this “Best Of…” collection to tide me over. It scratched my itch for tracks such as “Gangsters,” “A Message To You Rudy,” and “Ghost Town” (and sounded great on the turntable), but it also meant I was probably still going to buy the first two albums as well. I still might.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco

Wilco was the main band I followed out of the ‘90s and into the early 2000s. I already loved A.M., Being There, and especially Summerteeth, but this album hit different. It’s hard for me not listen to the whole collection when “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” “Kamera,” “Jesus, Etc.,” and “Heavy Metal Drummer” come on. I’d only had this one on vinyl for a few years, but it got lots of spins.

Out Of Our Heads by The Rolling Stones

The tattered ‘60s mono version of this album was among the oldest in my collection. I got it from my next door neighbor’s mom as a tween, around the time she introduced her son and me to a lot of British Invasion music. “The Last Time” is still my favorite Stones track because of how I discovered it through this specific piece of vinyl.

Remind the Substack algorithm that RTL exists!

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My family lost our home in the Eaton Fire two months after I got laid off from my long time sales and marketing job.

To say it has been a challenging year would be a huge understatement. At times, it has felt more like being stuck on a grueling, non-stop obstacle course since the moment I hung up the phone on that fateful morning in early November.

Happy holidays, Steve! You better believe I rage watched It’s A Wonderful Life.

The countdown clock was loudly ticking away in my head, especially in the middle of the night when I should have been sleeping in the comfort of our house THAT I AM ABSOLUTELY GOING TO LOSE BECAUSE I’M JUST ANOTHER 55-YEAR-OLD IN A SEA OF OUT-OF-WORK GENXERS WHO ARE ALL LOOKING FOR WORK IN THE SAME COLLAPSING WHITE COLLAR JOB MARKET.

There were daunting new challenges around every corner:

• Barbed Wire Fences: “How the hell do I explain this to our kids?”

• Flaming Rope Bridges: “It costs how much to personally insure a family?”

• Shark-Infested Waters: “AI/machine learning has made the hiring process positively colds and inhuman—Guess I’ll let the LinkedIn Premium bot write a cover letter for me since I’m not fluent in heartless robotese!”

You get the idea. I’m a very lucky guy that, by most global and historical standards, has led a privileged life, but I’m also a fragile-ass human with bills to pay and an ego to feed. I’ve been working pretty much nonstop since starting a tween paper route, but this was the first time I remember getting the axe and it validated every feeling of self-doubt constantly swirling around my head.

Even with the support of friends, family, former co-workers, and mentors who all stepped up, it was hard to shake the dark clouds. I should have taken all of their advice and valuable words of encouragement as the first sign that things might possibly, eventually work out, but I couldn’t quite see it yet.

After a few promising interviews in early December (that led nowhere), I paused the job search for the holidays.

My family and I made it through Christmas by mostly hunkering down in our comfy little foothills home. We made tamales on Dec. 24, spent a week with my wife’s family along the Northern California coast, and enjoyed a relaxing New Year’s party at a friend’s house around the corner from ours in Altadena.

In the interim, I made use of my experience, time, and ample nervous energy by joining the board of an LA-based food equity non-profit. I also took on some consulting work with a production company, and later an indie publishing house. Through it all I remained compulsively committed to this Substack.

I secretly hoped one of those purpose-driven/arts/hobby situations would magically lead to full-time employment (maybe I can be the of power pop!), but it was just a complicated series of self-deceiving pipe dreams. The kind of magical thinking that has always soothed my rattled brain.

I was back on the job hunt with renewed vigor on that first Monday of 2025.

Our house burned down in the Eaton Fire that erupted on Tuesday, January 7.

That tiny “farmhouse in the foothills”—the place where our two kids did most of their growing up, creating so many wonderful memories—was among 9,000 structures destroyed in Altadena and the surrounding communities. At the same time, an equally devastating disaster was happening across LA in Pacific Palisades.

Our house was a fixer-upper when we moved there in December 2013, but we always saw its potential. We continually worked on improvements for the 12 years that we owned the place including repiping, new windows, two bathroom remodels, fully native landscaping, a deck, writing studio/office, and an all new custom kitchen that was just repainted the last week of December.

All that time, effort and money went up in flames along with most of our possessions and the countless irreplaceable mementos we’d accumulated over a lifetime. Family photos? Ash. Vinyl collection? Melted. Musical instruments? Rubble.

That cherished copy of Oh! The Places You’ll Go given to me by a mentor? Smoke.

It was all gone in the blink of an eye.

I put my job search on hold again.

Our days filled up attending countless donation events, navigating insurance claims and mortgage forbearance, consulting with lawyers, weighing (and endlessly reconsidering) our rebuild options, and otherwise becoming experts in the very thing that had devastated our community and traumatized our family.

We’ve been in a long-term rental since mid-March after moving eight times in those first two months after the fire. It still doesn’t feel like “home,” but we’re also not living out of suitcases any longer. I’m constantly telling myself to celebrate the small victories these days, while remaining aware of our relative comfort and safety. It’s all a great reminder that homeownership is a privilege.

I suppose this is what the sage philosopher Dr. Seuss called the “The Waiting Place” in Oh! The Places You’ll Go:

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Nice as this apartment is, and despite our efforts to remain thankful, we’re really just waiting for our new house to get built. But that’s an extremely involved journey with many potential twists and turns along the way, one that we’ve really only just begun. Truth is, like many of our neighbors, we’re still unsure if we can truly afford to rebuild.

Uncertainty rules most days, but that hasn’t stopped us from getting surveys done, speaking with contractors and engineers, working closely with an architect on countless tiny tweaks, holding floor plans in our hands, and staking off the shape of the proposed new structure on the empty lot. It’s exciting in those moments, but beneath it all is the grief-riddled reality that when and if we do finally move in—most likely a couple of years from now—it will still be a new house and not our old one.

I got a job offer in early April and started later that month.

It’s with a public media group I’ve had my eye on for a few years now. (I’m being vague on purpose because this is about my personal journey and not the specific places I have worked.) This new gig is related to my previous experience but it’s still a mid-career pivot, so there’s a learning curve. I’m enjoying the challenges so far, and welcome the day-to-day distractions from everything else going on in my life.

One side benefit of the new job, despite currently living on the outskirts of LA, is that I can take the Metro to work some days. I’ve been careening down SoCal freeways since my teens, but my tolerance for slow moving traffic has turned dark in recent years. Sitting on a train checking my email, snapping pictures, or editing my next Substack post instead of white-knuckling my steering wheel is a small silver lining.

I even started collaging again, something I’ve done as a hobby on and off for many years (I got started making gig flyers for my high school/college bands). The few pieces I held onto over the years were consumed by flames. The first new collage I completed is an homage to our old house (the header image for this post).

Music is also slowly creeping back in.

After dithering about whether or not I should replace some portion of the drum gear I lost in the Eaton Fire, I’ve slowly amassed the basic necessary elements to start playing again (I even booked an August show for my ‘90s band Ridel High).

An old acquaintance from the neighborhood where I grew up generously offered me a drum set in the weeks after the fire, but I still needed to gather all the Erector Set stuff (hardware, cymbals, etc.). I did that through friends and an incredible new music instrument non-profit called Altadena Musicians. (Our youngest has also benefitted from Altadena Musicians, and another incredible non-profit called Altadena Girls.)

Altadena Musicians was started by Brandon Jay, an old Hollywood rocker friend of mine whose family also lost everything in the fires. I’ve volunteered with that organization and benefitted from their generosity. It is a shining example of the human kindness I have witnessed in many different ways over these last few months.

Here’s another example: I recently received a package in the mail from the UK. It was a vinyl copy of 2nd Grade’s Hit to Hit, a replacement for one of the many albums I lost in the fire. I’d never directly interacted with the person who sent it to me before they reached out on Instagram. The package also contained a very touching, hand-written letter that reminded me how lucky I am to be part of the global music community.

The list of kind acts of all shapes and sizes is too long to detail here, but I am humbled and forever thankful for the support and love my family has received.

So, here I am. And here we are.

In many ways, I personally feel like the full impact of the trauma from all of this is still lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce. Until that happens—I’ve lived long enough to know it will happen—I’m just going to keep trying the best I can.

I really wanted this to be a “turning the corner on that part of my life” post, but I’ve realized this isn’t the kind of thing you move on from. Much as I don’t want it to be true, this is part of me now—a bleak chapter in my personal narrative.

The dark clouds may pass, if we remain lucky, but it forever changes who we are. My heart goes out to the thousands of neighbors and fellow Angelenos dealing with similar, life-altering challenges.

With that, I’m closing out the Vodka Sauce series.

These posts have been extremely cathartic for me, but Remember The Lightning was never meant to be a wildfire recovery blog. I sincerely appreciate all of the support readers and subscribers—old and new—have given me as I chronicled these trying circumstances over that last few months.

Now it’s time to get back to our regularly scheduled “Music. Books. Music Books.” programming.

I hope some new subscribers stick around, but I get it if you aren’t here for endless love letters to Big Star, The Nerves, The Go-Go’s, The Replacements, Teenage Fanclub, Fountains of Wayne, The Whiffs, The Speedways, Ryan Allen, Kate Clover, The Beths, Hurry, Strange Magic, Best Bets, Young Guv, 2nd Grade, and many others.

If you still want to keep track of our Eaton Fire recovery, connect with the non-pen name me on Instagram.

I got laid off. Our house burned down. And then I…

Just kept moving forward, one step at a time. Along the way I’ve tripped, stumbled, stubbed my toe, (insert other foot-based metaphor here), but we’re making progress in this game of inches. Sometimes that’s the best we can do.

Here’s what that looks like for me: focusing on my family; trying to remain patient and present; accepting help from friends and strangers; reading and writing; doing meaningful (to me) public media and non-profit work; playing, discovering and supporting music; making art—and otherwise trying to remain hopeful.

All of it reminds me that, despite the many challenges we all face, life still has the potential to be a wonderful adventure. Or, as Dr. Seuss so eloquently sums it up:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

So be sure when you step, step with care and great tact.
And remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed? Yes! You, will indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

Thank you all for the kindness, generosity, encouragement, and support. Onward…

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S.W. Lauden is my pen name. The person behind it is Steve Coulter.

My family and I sadly lost our Altadena, CA home to the Eaton Fire. We are all safe, but the road ahead will no doubt be difficult.

These “Vodka Sauce” posts are more Coulter than Lauden, but I’m trying to spread them out between our regularly scheduled “music, books and music books” programming.

Our daughter Lucy texted to say she was flying to LA in early March to help her friend shoot a short film.

It’s the kind of project she and Tess Bellman have collaborated on many times since helping found a film club in high school. Tess spent her teen years living in the San Gabriel foothills with her family, but is now a sophomore Film and TV Production student at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

“The requirements for this assignment were actually very sparse,” Tess told me. “The course centered around a genre called New Media, which can just be summarized to include any media that is distributed on the internet. …Students were given the creative freedom to produce whatever they wanted, so long as it fell under that genre.”

Tess chose to make a music video inspired by Noah Kahan’s “The View Between Villages.” Kahan is an artist Tess and her friends have obsessed over since high school, but hearing this track a week after the fire gave her new perspective.

The song stopped Tess in her tracks while walking to class.

“It was the first time in days I just had to cry. I texted Lucy, telling her that, at her own risk, she needed to listen to the song with Altadena in mind,” Tess said.

“Lucy responded saying that she had already crossed this bridge, and sent me a draft of the X/Z Song Trader that she was finishing up. Her words echoed the same thoughts I had been having, giving life to the feelings I was struggling to materialize. The images of the music video were coming to mind for the very first time.”

Tess interviewed Lucy for the short film, as well as their close friend Taylor Hugens, a professional dancer whose family lost their home around the corner from ours, and me. All three of them spent a lot of time at our small Altadena house over the years, filling it with music, laughter and priceless memories.

The small crew—including producer Nathalie Grenyk and cinematographer Brandon Jaiyen—set up in our Monrovia Airbnb early that Saturday morning before heading off to other locations around LA, including the Hugens’ property. They seemed to work around the clock and that focus is reflected in the moving end result.

I saw the video for the first time on Monday and knew I had to share it as part of this series. My brief involvement aside, it’s a heart-wrenchingly beautiful short film that truly captures the grief and trauma of the Eaton Fire and its aftermath. I’m honored to be involved, but as a father I was really moved by the scripted scene of Lucy at a “college party,” and Taylor dancing in front of what was once her family’s home.

Tess’s family lives east of Altadena in an area thankfully spared by the fire, but her personal connections to our community shine through.

“The process of making this film has changed my perspective on the Eaton Fire and the experiences of my friends. Seeing their homes—homes that I had also come to love over the years—unrecognizable and flattened to the ground left a pit in my stomach,” Tess said.

“I also saw things I didn't expect. I walked past neighbors of the Coulter’s taping a sign onto a post advertising the free warm dinner they prepared down the street. I saw signs hung on the gates of houses narrowly missed by the fire that read ‘the rose will bloom again.’ I saw a woman pour clean water into a bowl for any stray animals or local wildlife that might have also had their home taken away. There were several times while filming in Altadena when we were stopped by neighbors coming by to offer their condolences to Taylor and Lucy, despite also standing in the ruins of their own homes.”

The View Between Villages—An Eaton Fire Film was only posted publicly this week, but early response from a USC screening and private links sent to family and friends has been overwhelmingly positive. There are currently no plans to screen the film or submit to festivals, but Tess says she’s open to the right opportunities.

“The copyright of the song prohibits me from doing much with it, so I guess it is time to pray that Noah Kahan grants me permission and usage rights. For now, YouTube is my film festival, so that is the public forum where it will live,” Tess said.

“The process was just meant to be cathartic for me and to be shared amongst my friends and family. However, seeing that several people felt moved or represented by the film, I would absolutely love to share it with a wider net.”

If You Enjoyed This Short Film, Help Spread The Word.

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More Writing And Conversations About The Eaton Fire

What Am I Making

WAIM Podcast #083 - S.W. Lauden On Losing His Home In The LA Fires

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a year ago · 8 likes · 3 comments · Matty C and S.W. Lauden

S.W. Lauden is my pen name. The person behind it is Steve Coulter.

My family and I sadly lost our Altadena, CA home to the Eaton Fire. We are all safe, but the road ahead will no doubt be difficult.

These “Vodka Sauce” posts are more Coulter than Lauden, but I’m trying to spread them out between our regularly scheduled “music, books and music books” programming.

Earlier this week I watched the Army Corps of Engineers clear the fire debris from our lot in Altadena.

The chimney, which became a towering tombstone in my mind, was already gone by the time I arrived mid-morning. I took that as a sign that things were moving forward, but regretted missing its symbolic destruction. I needed some sense of closure and felt I had let an opportunity slip through my fingers like ashes through a sifter.

I’m full of these momentary regrets lately, constantly waiting for the next shoe to drop, another tragedy to arrive. I try to keep busy, but trauma is patient.

I was greeted by a couple of friendly subcontractors as I walked up. They explained the process, answered my questions about foundation and tree removal, and listened as I reminisced about our destroyed home and neighborhood. Both expressed their sincere condolences and wished us luck in the rebuilding process.

Wandering over to a familiar spot under our sturdy oak—the only tree on our lot not marked for removal—I watched as the remains were diligently scraped into massive mounds. I was hypnotized by the fluid motion of the excavator’s arm which swung buckets full of wreckage into a line of waiting dump trucks while a Bobcat loader buzzed around in the background like a Tonka toy come to life.

Half of our house’s footprint was already cleared by the time I left a while later. Anything that hadn’t already been hauled away was amassed where our garage once stood. The twisted remains of bed frames, metal shelves, kitchen appliances, mountain bikes, camping gear, and the charred metal rims of my drums jutted out from the peaked piles of rubble that used to be our home.

I said my thank yous and headed for the car, numbed by the finality of it all.

It was late afternoon by the time I returned.

I waited as the Army Corps and various subcontractors did their final inspections, efficiently loaded the heavy equipment onto a massive semi truck that filled our narrow foothills street, and packed up all their tools. A neighborhood friend drove by and we chatted as the last of the crew waved and headed off to the next Altadena lot.

He and I discussed the many things that occupy our minds these days: insurance payouts and SBA loans; architects and contractors; building codes, plan checks and permits, and how different our community will look in 2-3 years. He eventually drove off too and I was soon standing by myself on an uneven patch of disturbed earth.

We used to sit out on our lovely backyard deck, craning to see the stunning SoCal sunsets over the neighbors’ houses and through the many tall trees that surrounded our property. It was no problem watching day turn to night as I occupied the fleeting space between the recent past and whatever the future holds.

I’m not sure how I expected to feel standing there in the eerie silence of our erased neighborhood, but what arose inside of me is best described as homesickness. I’d finally accepted that there was no home to go back to, not until we build the new house and finally put this entire unwanted chapter of our lives behind us.

It may take years, but we’ll get there.

My daughter Lucy wrote a touching piece about her experience being away from home during this stressful period for our X/Z Song Trader series.

She framed her perspective around Noah Kahan’s “The View Between Villages.” I have long found it easier and more comfortable to process my emotions and major life events through music, so it was interesting as a parent to see Lucy use it as a coping mechanism in a similar way.

Nature? Nurture? Hard to say, but I’ve been listening to that song a lot since reading her essay, including that night as I drove away from our empty property. The algorithm latched onto Kahan’s catalog and eventually delivered his song “Homesick” as I made my way down the hill to our latest Airbnb.

The universe can be like that sometimes. I laughed and cranked up the volume.

That got me thinking about other songs that explore similar themes. Since this is first and foremost a music-focused newsletter, I decided to create a quick playlist, but my scattered brain only came up with a handful tracks that felt appropriate for a soundtrack to rebuilding and recovery.

Here’s what I have so far: “Sloop John B” by The Beach Boys, “What Are We Doing Here?” by John Entwistle, “This Must Be The Place” by Talking Heads, “Subterranean Homesick Alien” by Radiohead, “Home” by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, “Coming Home Soon” by The Television Personalities, and (of course) “Home Sweet Home” by Mötley f’ing Crüe.

I decided it would be more fun to crowdsource the playlist, so please leave your song suggestions in the comments and I’ll share the results with everybody very soon.

Until then, I wanted to thank you all for the incredible support over the last couple of months (including Alina’s beautiful drawing). Yes, it has been that long already, but we have a long way to go before we finally get to go home again.

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My recovered wedding ring in a gloved and ash-covered hand.

S.W. Lauden is my pen name. The person behind it is Steve Coulter.

My family and I sadly lost our Altadena, CA home to the Eaton Fire. We are all safe, but the road ahead will no doubt be difficult.

These “Vodka Sauce” posts are more Coulter than Lauden, but I’m trying to spread them out between our regularly scheduled “music, books and music books” programming.

It was the second time I’d been to our burnt out property to dig through the rubble and ashes.

I was there—covered head-to-toe in PPE and armed with a shovel, trowel and hand rake—to retrieve a few indestructible objects from of our old life. The Eaton Fire had taken so much from us, so quickly, but I was determined to have the last word.

I surveyed the devastation that stretched out for blocks and blocks in every direction, feeling for all the world like a space traveler come to explore the ruins of a distant planet—cold, detached, a man on a mission—slowly transforming into a ghost as I heaped debris into the makeshift sifter; wandering between rooms that no longer existed, searching for proof of a past irrevocably severed from the future.

Pacing off the wall of our old living room, I dropped to my knees about where the entertainment center used to stand. There was a glass cabinet in the upper left corner where we proudly displayed our daughters’ clay and ceramic art, precious family treasures shaped and adorned by little hands. I quickly struck a vein, my ragged breath echoing inside the N95 mask as I uncovered the cracked and crumbly artifacts.

I moved to the master bedroom, carefully walking the distance from the missing window to where my nightstand should have been. In the race to evacuate on that fateful Tuesday night, I’d left my platinum wedding ring sitting there beside our bed. I dug and raked, widening the search area inch by inch until it suddenly appeared.

Spotting the ring in the sifter among the bits of drywall and bent nails was like being called up from the audience to take part in an elaborate magic trick; waking up on Christmas morning when I was a little kid; the moment Charlie Bucket peels back the foil chocolate wrapper to reveal a Golden Ticket.

I held it up in my gloved hand to let it catch the sunlight poking through rainclouds that arrived a week too late, and was instantly crushed by a wave of sadness.

This 360-degree view would have been houses in every direction before Jan. 7.

It’s hard to justify feeling sorry for myself when so many others have suffered the same tragedy—much easier to feel sorry for our kids who had their childhood go up in flames—but those self-pitying thoughts do appear.

Why me? My exhausted brain asks as I wait (and wait…) for our insurance adjuster to answer our endless questions. How did this happen to my family? Loops through my brain in the middle of the night when I desperately need to sleep. When will it get better? I wonder as we meet with another architect to discuss rebuilding a house projected to take 2-3 years, and likely to cost much more than we have to spend.

There is no real answer to any of those questions, of course. Even the bleak pearls of wisdom handed down by our forebears (“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering,” “Bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you,” etc.) fall short of providing any real solace in those moments.

I’ve found it’s best to just breathe and let the thoughts pass, however long it takes. Or get outside for some exercise, sunshine, and fresh air whenever possible.

Some of the local wildlife I’ve spotted around our Altadena neighborhood over the years.

One of the many amazing things about the house we lost was that I could walk out the front door and be on a beautiful waterfall trail in less than 20 minutes.

I’d often encounter peacocks and coyotes along the way, and occasionally spot a rattlesnake, deer, bobcat or bear on my hike. And I’d always see a few friendly neighbors gardening, pushing their kids/grandkids in strollers, walking dogs, riding bikes, or otherwise enjoying everything that a truly magical place like Altadena offers.

These days I find myself exploring foreign foothill streets instead, receiving suspicious glances from strangers who don’t know how I ended up in their neighborhood. I look at the charming houses lining those suburban sidewalks and wonder if the people inside have any idea how quickly it can all be taken away. I certainly didn’t before it happened to me and my family. I’m starting to now.

It used to be that I’d come home from those many hikes and sit on my deck with a cup of hot coffee, listening to the birds while typing on my laptop. Now I fumble with the lock of our latest AirBnB and try to make myself comfortable in somebody else’s home until our long-term apartment is finally ready in March.

I reluctantly check my email (still no response from our adjuster…), look into furniture rentals, consult with lawyers, doom scroll prefab house floor plans, and read countless articles about debris removal and soil toxicity.

Lucy checking out the remains of our house for the first time on a visit home from college.

And once the debris is removed, the place where our little home used to stand will just be a lot—a blank slate, an empty canvas, a healing wound.

Conventional wisdom says that this is how large scale disaster recoveries shake out:

• A third of people will immediately sell their land and move on.

• A third will eventually sell after trying and failing to rebuild.

• A final third will successfully rebuild.

A 33% success rate isn’t exactly promising—especially when hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and equity are on the line—but I suppose the odds of finding my wedding ring in the remains of our home were even slimmer.

So, we’re moving forward the best we can with the help of family, friends, neighbors and an expanding network that reaches around the globe.

For that we’ll be eternally grateful. It means more than you can possibly imagine.

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Some of the charred metal drum remains from the rubble of our garage.

S.W. Lauden is my pen name. The person behind it is Steve Coulter.

My family and I sadly lost our Altadena, CA home to the Eaton Fire. We are all safe, but the road ahead will no doubt be difficult.

These “Vodka Sauce” posts are more Coulter than Lauden, but I’m trying to spread them out between our regularly scheduled “music, books and music books” programming.

The rafters and shelves of our Altadena garage were stuffed with drums when the Eaton Fire burned it all down.

I’ve played in punk and rock bands since high school, getting active again in recent years with The Brothers Steve and a reunited Ridel High, but nowhere near enough to justify the small drum shop worth of gear I’d accumulated.

The last inventory found five drum sets, four snare drums, 10 cymbals, 25 stands, several cases, and more tambourines, maracas, and rhythm eggs than you could shake a stick at. There were too many personal memories attached to a lot of that gear to ever imagine letting it go—including the custom Pork Pie drum set I used in Tsar, still in the spray painted cases we hauled all around America in the early 2000s.

Our daughter Lucy bashing away on my sparkly red, white and blue Tsar drums at a rehearsal space in 2011. This video is a great reminder that losing those drums was about a lot more than playing in a glam punk band.

Reckoning with that was the furthest thing from my mind in those first few days, but a friend immediately reached out to offer me a drum kit.

I was too dazed to process his kindness until our family was on the sullen drive from my mom’s house to a series of post-fire AirBnBs in the foothills. I suddenly blurted out: “This is the first time I haven’t owned a drum set since I was twelve!”

The fact that I was drumless felt like a startling realization in that moment.

Sadly, I’m not alone. Based on conversations with local friends and social media posts I’ve seen, a lot of personal musical history went up in flames when our town burned down (including the keyboard both of our daughters took piano lessons on).

The latest reporting says that a staggering 6,000+ homes, multi-family dwellings, and businesses burned down in the Eaton Fire. Another 1,000+ dwellings, businesses, and structures were damaged.

It sounds like many of those buildings were home to musical instruments.

A blackened drum key and molten, fused hi-hat cymbals found in the ashes of our garage.

Situated on the wild outskirts of LA’s urban sprawl, Altadena was paradise for semi-feral musicians looking to put down roots.

A sad and timely post in the Beautiful Altadena Facebook group really sums up the artistic spirit of this community: “My FEMA reservist called today for a follow up and made a point of saying ‘Almost everyone (he has) talked to in Altadena had some kind of musical instrument or some type of art that they lost. This must have been the most amazing and talented community and I’m so sorry for your loss.’”

It’s totally true. I count can’t the number of times I was introduced to other musician neighbors at school events or backyard barbecues. From rock, pop and soul, to jazz, country and beyond, these foothills reverberated with the sounds of local music.

And, of course, there are the many old rocker pals who lived nearby.

That includes Jeff Solomon, my longtime bass counterpart in Tsar, Ken Layne & The Corvids, and The Brothers Steve. He and his family lost their beautiful old home just to the east of ours, along with most of Jeff’s music equipment.

“I dug for a while trying to find a tuning peg—or anything—but no luck,” Jeff told me after visiting the remains of their house for the first time earlier this week.

Bass players and drummers often develop deep, personal bonds. I know that Jeff and I definitely did. So, picturing my old partner in crime sifting through the ashes of his home searching for bass fragments just about snapped my charred heart in two.

Jeff Whalen, Jeff Solomon and Steve Coulter (aka me) of Tsar in 1999. That black Fender P-Bass was one of many instruments lost in the Eaton Fire. My totally cool cowboy hat and mirrored shades are gone too, along with all of my Tsar memorabilia. Photo by Piper Ferguson.

A little further west, Marko DeSantis of Sugarcult, Bad Astronaut and, more recently, the Ridel High reunion line up, also lost most of his lovingly curated equipment when his family’s home burned down.

Just two nights before the fire, Marko remembers telling a friend how he still had the yellow plastic string winder and old wire cutters he got along with his first guitar as a teenager. Those two precious tools of the trade traveled with him around the globe and across decades…until they were finally destroyed in early January.

“I was out of town and didn’t want to burden my wife and daughter with trying to sort through my gear, so I lost everything except these two guitars I had loaned to two of my friends with recording studios a while back and (luckily!) never bothered to retrieve,” DeSantis told me.

Marko and I had a Ridel High show booked in Santa Barbara with our buddies in Nerf Herder on January 18th.

The line up for that gig included our friend Justin Fisher, another displaced Altadenan. His family’s home is thankfully still standing but unlivable due to toxic smoke damage. We canceled our slot when we realized that 3/5s of the band had been directly impacted by the fires—and that Marko and I no longer had gear to use.

“I lost a red (335) semi-hollow body, my main guitar for Sugarcult’s peak era in the early 2000s. It’s featured in a few of our music videos, when we did Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and I played it on arena tours we did with Green Day in America and Blink 182 in Europe, as well as countless other shows, festivals, TV appearances,” he said. “Also, my trusty black ‘73 Fender Precision bass. I bought it back in the early ‘90s and it was a mainstay throughout my Popsicko era.”

Marko with Sugarcult in the early 2000s playing his red (335) semi-hollow body; Slinging his ‘73 Fender Precision bass with Popsicko in the early ‘90s; The back of the P-Bass that Marko carved the night he found out Popsicko’s frontman Keith Brown died in 1995.

A couple of days ago I got an unexpected call from Brandon Jay (aka Quazar), another musician friend from the ‘90s.

He and his wife/talented musical collaborator, Gwendolyn Sanford, lost their Altadena home, recording studio, and all their gear in the Eaton Fire. I first met Brandon when he was a fixture on the Silverlake music scene, playing in bands like Lutefisk, The 88 and, for many years now, fronting Quazar and the Bamboozled.

Brandon was calling to tell me about an epiphany he had after sitting in on percussion with his friend’s band Generic Clapton at a Sierra Madre bar on January 18th, and a performance by the Bamboozled as part of the Pasadena Neighbor Day concert at the Wild Parrot Brewing Company the following afternoon.

“Tonight I got on stage for the first time since the fire that destroyed my home,” Brandon wrote on Facebook in the wee hours of Jan. 19th.

Quazar and the Bamboozled perform the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down The House” at Pasadena Neighbor Day on Jan. 19th: “I mean no offense by this. Please, this is me—in my anger and angst—needing to get this out of my body.”

He said the experience was “incredibly joyful, emotional and cathartic.”

“A batch of friends let me borrow or gave me percussion to use at the gig. As I was picking through a bin of foreign instruments deciding what to play on each song, I started thinking about the instruments that my wife and I lost. What gave most of them great value was the stories behind them and how they came into our possession.”

Brandon listed several pieces of equipment along with personal memories: an acoustic Ibanez guitar his uncle gave him as a teenager; castanets from Kim Shattuck of The Muffs; the Baldwin piano he and Gwendolyn got on Craigslist and on which both of their children took lessons, among many other touching tales.

The realization he had after playing those shows—coupled with the overwhelming response to his Facebook request for friends to donate instruments and give him new stories—was quickly snowballing into a new non-profit organization.

“We’re working on a website so that you can list all the gear that you lost and other people can donate and get as much of it back to you as possible,” Brandon texted Jeff Solomon and I to explain the simple vision for Altadena Musicians. (The website is still a work in progress, but they will have an official launch soon.)

A Ridel High reunion show in 2024 (L-to-R): Matt Fuller, Steve Coulter (aka Lauden), Kevin Ridel, Marko DeSantis and Justin Fisher. Photo by Steve Rood.

I feel ambivalent about replacing my gear.

Struggling with the loss is one thing, but the thought of the time and energy it would take to find similar drums, stands and cymbals feels exhausting. Not to mention the emotional connection I had with all of the equipment I’d acquired since the ‘80s.

I’ve seen the generous offers of help from organizations like the Guitar Center Foundation and MusiCares, but haven’t felt motivated to sign up. The insurance paperwork, legal consultations, long-term rental applications, contractor/architect conversations, and my ongoing job search have all kept me plenty busy. It’s a lot.

I quickly discovered I’m not alone in those complicated feelings after connecting with my musician pals, but that’s just a small group of impacted people I felt comfortable reaching out to. There are many others around Altadena with similarly tragic stories.

“It hurts twice to lose instruments—once for the residue of memories they co-piloted imbued in them over time, another for their unique sonic nuances and characteristics,” Marko said.

“There’s no way to fully ‘replace’ such sentimental gear, but I’ll never stop playing music, so I’m sure I’ll get my hands on some gear sooner or later. I already broke strings on both of the cheap, decorative guitars they have hanging on the wall of the bar in the lobby of the hotel where we’re staying for now…so I’m gonna have to figure something out!”

I think we all will. Thankfully, there are people like Brandon—with his expanding network of non-profit partners—trying to make it happen sooner rather than later.

It’s starting to sound like I won’t be drumless for very long.

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S.W. Lauden is my pen name. The person behind it is Steve Coulter.

My family and I sadly lost our Altadena, CA home to the Eaton Fire. We are all safe, but the road ahead will no doubt be difficult.

These “Vodka Sauce” posts are more Coulter than Lauden, but I’m trying to spread them out between our regularly scheduled “music, books and music books” programming.

I’ve been stubbornly lugging crates of vinyl around since I first moved out of my parents house at 19.

Many were shuffled through various apartments, storage spaces, garages and rehearsal studios over the decades before landing at our house in Altadena twelve years ago. They all went up in flames, along with my wife’s and kids’ collections, when we lost our home in the Eaton Fire.

I was never the most serious collector, but I ended up with a lot of vinyl. Many of the oldest records dated back to my tweens and teens. I knew every crackle, pop and hiss, the reason for cover blemishes, and—in many cases—how I originally acquired them.

All those little imperfections were like secret scars that the albums and I shared.

Like so much else about this experience, it’s making me really think about my relationship with objects.

I’d already gone fully digital with my modern reading, but for some reason I kept acquiring physical music media. Nostalgia had a lot to do with it. There’s romance and ritual to carefully placing the platter on the turntable, dropping the needle, studying an album cover while listening.

Flipping it over and starting again.

Time will tell if I eventually start rebuilding my collection—it’s an expensive hobby and this recent loss is pretty heartbreaking—but for now I wanted to write about a few albums that have been on my mind this past week. This is not a list of favorites, just a few that randomly popped into my head as I slowly process all of this loss.

One Way Ticket by The Nerves

This career-defining collection is a top contender for the vinyl album I’ve listened to the most. Which is saying a lot since I didn’t even acquire a copy until about 4-5 years ago. I meant to bring it with me when I went to see The Nerves’ drummer/songwriter (and King of Power Pop!) Paul Collins live in December, but forgot. Then again, losing a signed copy would probably make this situation even harder than it already is.

Simple Dreams by Linda Ronstadt

Linda Ronstadt was always a bit of a guilty pleasure for me growing up. I developed a residual crush on her as a pre-tween thanks to a poster on my older brother’s bedroom wall, but really fell for her music in my teens and 20s. My wife and I spent many days singing and dancing to this album in our Altadena living room when our kids were little. Those are memories I will cherish for the rest of my days.

Alien Lanes by Guided By Voices

This will always be my favorite Guided By Voices album. I splurged and bought this brand new when I first dipped my toe back into vinyl about a decade ago. “Motor Away” is an important song for my wife and me dating back to the earliest days of our relationship, so it was pretty magical to spend many afternoons listening to that track and others favorites like “My Valuable Hunting Knife” and “Closer You Are” with my youngest daughter when she was a tot. I almost turned her into a lifelong fan…almost.

The Records by The Records

I was driving by a well-known Silverlake record store one day and decided to pop in on a whim. I had a specific album in mind and decided they would have it. I walked through the door, went straight to the “R” section and, incredibly, there it was—a U.S. pressing of The Records’ debut album, including a promotional poster. It’s a fantastic collection, but my beloved copy was special because I conjured it like a vinyl wizard.

Too Fast For Love by Mötley Crüe

I was at the Licorice Pizza near my childhood home to buy a friend’s birthday gift. While we were there, I convinced my mom to let me get something for myself as well (perks of being the youngest). For obvious reasons, the cover of the first Mötley Crüe album drew my hungry tween eyes. I’d never heard of this band with the weird name, but I was instantly sold on the umlauts. Devilish metal? Yes, but rough around the edges in a way that borders on punk. The copy that went up in flames last week was the one I bought in the early ‘80s and kept with me for decades. Well played, Satan.

New Day Rising by Hüsker Dü

More umlauts! My SoCal high school bandmates and I fell hard for three Minneapolis bands—The Replacements, Soul Asylum, and, of course, the mighty Hüsker Dü. I was already a fan of their Metal Circus EP and stuck with them for their entire run in the ‘80s. I love all of their albums for various reasons, but New Day Rising has long been my favorite. “Celebrated Summer” feels like my personal anthem from those heady days. The copy I lost in the fire originally belonged to my best friend Keith Brown, retrieved from his family storage space as a personal memento after he died in 1995.

Welcome Interstate Managers by Fountains Of Wayne

I was reluctant to include this one here because I wrote and spoke so much about it around the 20th anniversary in 2023 (here’s an RTL example). I even developed some pretty out there fan theories (I’m better now). If all you know about this band or album is “Stacy’s Mom,” I strongly suggest you check out “Mexican Wine,” “Hackensack,” “Hey Julie” and “Bright Future In Sales.” This flawed pressing ruffled some feathers with the band and fans, but I always loved holding it in my hands while I listened.

Hit To Hit by 2nd Grade

If any band convinced me to start writing about modern music again, it was Philadelphia’s 2nd Grade. I discovered them through the combined video for “Velodrome”/“My Bike,” instantly falling for their lo-fi power pop chops. My vinyl acquisitions up to that point had mostly been focused on older releases, but that all changed for the better when I ordered a copy of Hit To Hit on Easter yellow vinyl. I hope the wax melted into an egg shape, waiting for me to find it in the ashes.

Bleed Your Heart Out by Kate Clover

This is one of my favorite albums to come out of LA in recent years. Interestingly, I first discovered Kate Clover’s music thanks to a streaming algorithm. Her high-energy songs mix the attack of first wave LA punk with timeless pop hooks to create something that’s hard to ignore. This is also an artist that I bonded over with my daughters. I believe we lost two copies of Bleed Your Heart Out in the fire—the one I ordered for myself and another my oldest daughter bought at one of Clover’s shows.

#1 by The Brothers Steve

The frenzy to get out of our house on the fateful Tuesday night entailed many snap decisions. It didn’t help that one of our cars was in the shop, which meant we had extremely limited space. I made a last minute sweep through my office minutes before we left and grabbed framed copies of other Big Stir Records releases I was part of—including Popsicko and Generation Blue—but sadly left my band’s debut album behind. I’m sure I could get a copy from our label, but this one had a lot of sentimental value.

That specific piece of vinyl is gone, like so many other objects that populated my life, but the music and memories live on.

Flipping it over and starting again…

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S.W. Lauden is my pen name. The person behind it is Steve Coulter.

Earlier this week, my family and I sadly lost our Altadena, CA home to the Eaton Fire. We are all safe, but the road ahead will no doubt be difficult.

This post is more Coulter than Lauden. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled “music, books and music books” programming soon, hopefully with the help of a few contributors.

My daughter wrote out our favorite pasta recipe by hand and hung it on the refrigerator door before she went back to college after the holidays.

She discovered it on Tik Tok and whipped up a batch for us over the summer, adding several personal touches (lots of basil, crushed tomatoes, etc.). It was an instant hit with the whole family, especially her younger sister. My wife and I don’t claim to have mastered the recipe, but we’ve both attempted it several times.

A picture of the results is added to our family text group whenever I make it, always met with supportive hearts of approval. It’s so hard to know when you’re doing things right as a parent, but the bonds we’ve created with our children around cooking at home is something I cherish.

Today we traded photos and videos of the smoking rubble that was once our beloved home in Altadena, CA.

We’re all safe—having evacuated before the Eaton Fire swept through our beautiful foothills neighborhood—but our hearts are broken for everything we lost: our newly painted cabinets; pots and pans stained from years of overuse; chipped coffee mugs and mismatched silverware worn down by loving hands; shelves full of knick knacks and family heirlooms…and a handwritten recipe that hung on our refrigerator.

We bought our home a dozen years ago, after dreaming of the day we would find an affordable place in this specific neighborhood. It was the most beat up little house on the block when we moved in, but we worked away at the improvements as we filled those rooms with memories.

Now that neighborhood looks like a scene from the end of World War 2. Our beautiful little home was reduced to wreckage like block after block of houses in every direction, sturdy chimneys hovering above the remains like towering headstones.

So many friends and neighbors—and countless Angelenos from the mountains to the ocean—are living through similar tragedies. My heart goes out to everybody impacted by this devastation.

I’m typing this in the living room of the house where I grew up in Redondo Beach, thankfully still a safe haven for me 50 years after my family first moved in.

Our SUV was stuffed with as many personal effects as we could fit when we arrived, but only a small fraction of what we lost to the flames. We really hoped it would only amount to a couple uncomfortable nights on a friend’s floor in Eagle Rock, but by dawn the next morning we were confronted with the terrible truth. We retreated further south when those friends received an evacuation notice of their own.

After we got settled, I wandered my mom’s kitchen looking for wherever the hell she keeps the glasses these days. I opened and closed cabinets, flashes of ancient memories passing through my mind: holiday meals prepared with endless laughter; Sunday soup seasoned and stirred by my long gone father; my two young children learning an Old World recipe from my German mother.

I stared at her refrigerator door, wishing hard that I had taken that handwritten Vodka Sauce recipe with me in the rush to get out of our house for the last time.

I went to the Trader Joe’s near my mom’s house to grab a few familiar foods in hopes of comforting our youngest.

I briefly worked at this specific location in high school, back when Trader Joe’s was still a mostly local phenomenon. It was my third job after a tween paper route and an early high school gig stocking shelves at the liquor store across the street from TJ’s.

At 15 I often worked the register, selling cigarettes and booze long before I was legally able to purchase them myself—although I was already consuming plenty of both. When people say the ‘80s were a different time, believe them.

I followed that particular self-destructive path straight through from my early teens until my mid-30s, raging behind a drum set for most of it. That’s when the wheels finally spun off and the prolonged joyride came to a less-than-graceful halt.

Sobriety thankfully stuck after a few false starts and I’ve been on the straight and narrow ever since (aside from addictions to sugar, caffeine, bubbly water and writing).

The thing about Vodka Sauce? The recipe actually calls for three tablespoons of Vodka.

I learned this when my daughter texted me to ask if I’d pick some up on my way home. I’ve been sober long enough that buying alcohol personally doesn’t bother me, so I added it to the grocery list.

Of course, most grocery stores only sell big bottles of booze—not the little airline minis I hoped to acquire. So I grabbed the cheapest fifth I could find on the lowest shelf and brought that home with a few other missing ingredients for dinner.

The Vodka Sauce was delicious as always that night.

My daughter was back at college and I was home alone the next time I attempted the recipe on my own.

I followed her directions carefully, doing my best to recreate the addictive concoction. And when it called for those three tablespoons of vodka, I absentmindedly reached for the still-full bottle.

This was only a week after being laid off from my longtime job—the first time I remember leaving a position on somebody else’s terms. Suffice to say, my defenses were weakened as I stirred the sauce that evening. I twisted the cap and the scent of vodka hit my nostrils like a genie snaking upward from a rediscovered magic lantern. Out of nowhere, for the first time in many years, I had a strong urge to take a gulp.

This happens in sobriety, no matter how long you go without a drink. In my personal experience, the trick is developing tools to help it pass without acting. I was very lucky to have a lot of support in filling my toolbox in those first few years.

That moment stopped me in my tracks for a split-second, only long enough for the image of a stop sign to form in my mind—a simple trick taught to me by an amazing therapist who helped me get sober.

I put the bottle away without taking a drink and served dinner that night without saying a word about the momentary temptation. And it thankfully didn’t return…until I found out our house had burned down.

This time it was less of an urge to drink and more of a lamentation that drinking my problems away wasn’t an option. Because completely checking out sounds pretty good right about now—even though I’m absolutely certain that my drinking would soon spread like the flames that eventually consumed my house.

There isn’t anything even slightly good about losing your home, the possessions that filled it, and the many memories attached to it—but a few times today I have pictured that particular vodka bottle exploding in slow motion as the flames engulfed our world, and it brought me a small sense of relief.

I’m definitely adding that image to the toolbox.

My family will get through all of this. Together.

And I will get through it sober. For that, and all it allows, I’m eternally thankful.

Wherever we land next and however long it takes to get there, I already have the first family meal planned. I know the recipe by heart.

A heartfelt thank you to everybody who has reached out to me and my family, offered resources, contributed to the GoFundMe set up by a former co-worker, become a paid subscriber to this newsletter, or otherwise been there for us in this uncertain moment. We are overwhelmed by the love and support of our extended community.

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The Collaborative Music Writing Series With My Oldest Daughter