Hurricane

"Hurricane Ida, one of the most powerful and rapidly intensifying storms to hit the United States, delivered days of misery and destruction — from the time it made landfall in Louisiana on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina to the torrential rains that pummeled the Northeast."

(Sevil Omer / worldvision.org, September 22, 2021)

A hurricane is commonly referred to as a tropical storm with winds that have reached a constant speed of 74 miles per hour or more. Purely based on this dry definition however, it is hard to imagine its potential power of desctruction, steadily increasing by categories. While the majority of the world population will luckily never have to face such an event, for certain regions in the Caribbean and USA it is becoming a reoccurring nightmare with ever increasing regularity. 

When in Decemeber of 2014 a totally unknown young songwriter by the name of Luke Combs was working together with  Thomas Archer und Taylor Phillips on a song about the unexpected encounter with an ex-lover, they fell back on the imagery of such a storm, in order to describe the emotional chaos resulting from it: "You wrecked my whole world when you came and hit me like a hurricane."

In the fall of 2016 the song born from this writing session became the first single for newcomer Luke Combs, aptly titled 'Hurricane. It reached the top of the Radio (Billboard Country Airplay) Charts in May of 2017 and became the foundation of an unprecedented streak of success which is still unbroken to date.

But it is far from the only song that has made clever use of the hurricane metaphor. In commemoration of the first anniversary of Hurricane Ida from last year - and on top of current Hurricane Ian - Will Dempsey dug out a much older 'Hurricane' and went in the studio to re-record it.

The song originally resulted from a 1980 co-writing by 3 renowned songwriters named Stewart Harris, Thom Schuyler und Keith Stegall, who actually did not resort to the imagery of a hurricane, but instead let the songs' main character face an actual storm.

Fittingly the scene described in the song is set in New Orleans, the city on Lake Pontchartrain. There the reoccurring hurricane becomes a symbol for standing one's ground in defiance of natures' meanest threats. So the old man in the song knows no fear when he says:

I was born on the rain of the Ponchatrain
Beneath the Louisiana moon
Don't mind the strain of the hurricane
She come's around every June

And high black water
She's the devil's daughter
She's hard and she's cold and she's mean
Nobody's taught her
That it takes a lot of water to wash away New Orleans. 

(Hurricane / Keith Stegall, Thom Schuyler, Stewart Harris)

It is a view from another time. A time before the slowly onsetting awareness about the effects of climate change. A time before Hurricane Katrina and before Hurricane Ida, the latter of which is respectfully remembered in the video to the song by Will Dempsey. It becomes a forceful companion to the powerful rock-influenced dynamics of the newly recorded version.

A song which was first recorded in 1980 as an album cut by The Bands' Levon Helm, before Leon Everette made it a number one hit on the Billboard Hot Country Songs Charts and the biggest hit of his career.

Almost 4 decades later rock band Band of Heathens took it to number 18 on the Billboard Hot Rock & Alternative Songs Charts in 2018. Now that same song is becoming another stormy vital sign from Louisiana-born Will Dempsey.