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One evening near the beginning of a four-month mystery journey that began after Hurricane Katrina swallowed their home, Russ Broussard put his feeling of rootlessness into words for his wife, singer Susan Cowsill. "I feel like a kite without a string," Broussard said. The songwriter in Cowsill knew a good image when she heard it. She grabbed her phone to record it, and it became the first line in "Crescent City Sneaux," the first song she wrote on a disc where Cowsill tries to process the aftereffects of the 2005 storm.
She was left temporarily homeless at the same time she was searching for her brother Barry, who died under mysterious circumstances in New Orleans after the hurricane. Getting back to work wasn't easy. The disc, "Lighthouse," come nearly five years after Katrina. She hopes the results are a tonic. "It is like medicine to our souls and, for sure, medicine to our friends and family, neighbors and community," she said. Cowsill, 51, banged on a tambourine in the late 1960s when her family's band The Cowsills was making hits like "The Rain, The Park and Other Things." Brothers Barry, Bill, Bob, John and Paul were the heart of the group, and mom joined the act, too.
It was the real-life model for television's "The Partridge Family." Bill died at age 58 less than two months after Barry's body was discovered. Despite the tragedy, the Cowsills as a musical act have reformed. Bob, Paul and Susan, two of her nephews, Russ and other musicians frequently perform the old hits.
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