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Vaunted Nashville session musician, songwriter and singer Pat McLaughlin is as much a staple of Nashville as he is of rock-leaning country scenes in Austin, Boston, San Francisco and New Orleans.
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"Hurricane Katrina? Yes, I had a few friends who needed some help and were in a rough spot, so they stayed with me for a few weeks," McLaughlin said. "It was bad."
In the storm's aftermath, he opened his Franklin home to Susan Cowsill, the vocalist of the legendary 1960s pop act The Cowsills, her husband, Russ Broussard, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation's Scott Aiges, and his wife and daughter.
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In a pair of 2010 interviews, Susan Cowsill recalled the tragic era following Hurricane Katrina and briefly relocating to Nashville's suburbs.
Barry Cowsill, her brother, went missing after the storm. His death was not confirmed for four months.
Back then, Cowsill had just married New Orleans-based percussionist Russ Broussard. To Wood and Steel Magazine, Cowsill recalled that the pair were booked for a Nashville performance in early September to support her first solo, self-released indie album, "Just Believe It."
In 2010, Cowsill, to The Bluegrass Special, recalled flying into Nashville 24 hours before the hurricane's August 29 landfall. Conditions were so bad in New Orleans that she didn't regain cellular telephone service to the area until three days later.
The newlywed couple's home was submerged in six feet of water that covered their performance and recording equipment, as well as her tour merchandise.
Personal effects and 40-year-old memorabilia was also destroyed.
"In 2005, (Barry Cowsill) had finally come to a place in his life where it was time for him to get his act together - for myriad reasons. He was scheduled on that Monday to take a plane to L.A., be picked up by my brother Bob, and he was going into a MusiCares rehab facility (in New Orleans)," she told Wood and Steel.
"The storm came, and I was out of town. His buddy said, 'We gotta get outta here. I'm going to Florida. Let's go.' Barry was like, 'I've got a ticket out of here for Monday. If we go to Florida, I'm looking at changing flights. And, in general, these things just come and go.' Because they'd never had the big, big one."
Susan recalled frantically attempting to reach her brother, who relied on a pay phone across the street from where he was staying in New Orleans' Warehouse District, while staying with McLaughlin.
"The last message from him said, 'I'll call you in the morning.' I never heard from him again," she said. "He ended up drowned in the Mississippi."
On Jan. 7, 2006, the New York Times reported that Barry Cowsill, 51, had been identified as among the dead nearly four months after he disappeared when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans.
His body was recovered a week prior from the Chartres Street Wharf and was identified with dental records. The cause of death has not been determined.
Another Cowsill brother, Bill, died one month later, in Calgary, from an emphysema-related illness.
Reflecting on the multiple layers of tragedy Hurricane Katrina caused her and her family, in 2010, Susan Cowsill said: "I'm older, wiser, more familiar with the deepest level of heartbreak that can exist than I ever was before. I'm more resilient, less resilient, more grateful."
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