The Thomas Fire in December, 2017 burned 281,893 acres near Santa Barbara and Ojai, destroyed 1,063 structures, and caused the death of one civilian and one firefighter.
One of those structures was the music studio of singer-songwriter Rain Perry. Many of her neighbors lost their homes.
Yesterday marked the premiere of a music video by Ms. Perry for her song “Vapor,” from her new album Let’s Be Brave, filmed at the burned ruins of the Ojai, CA landmark Amestoy House. The video features a dozen neighbors who lost homes and studios in the Thomas Fire.
“Vapor” is a song about survival and hope:
“What lasts is metal, glass and clay
The rest becomes vapor and burns away
We’re here for a minute, so what will it be?
I’ll matter to you – you matter to me”
Directed by Micah Van Hove (Shadow of a Gun, Menthol), the video captures the resilience of everyday folks, who each brought to the shoot an object from their home that survived the fire: from a ceramic angel to a wrench to a bicycle.
Ms. Perry’s home, thankfully, survived, but she lost all her instruments, career memorabilia and older recordings that had not been digitized.
Like the burned chaparral around her home, though, Rain’s artistic drive resprouted with a passion, and she wrote and recorded Let’s Be Brave, her fourth album with multi-instrumentalist and Grammy-nominated producer Mark Hallman at the Congress House in Austin, Texas.
With a cover photo by Patricia Houghton Clarke of Rain lying on the burned foundation of her studio, and featuring cameos by Chuck Prophet (“St. Julie of Iowa”) and Jon Dee Graham (Bruce Springsteen’s “Rocky Ground”), with a kickass backup choir by Noelle Hampton, Jaimee Harris, Daisy O’Connor, Shawnee Kilgore and Emily Shirley, “Let’s Be Brave” is a celebration of bravery of all kinds.
A CD Release Celebration is scheduled for April 27th in Ojai– a benefit for the California Community Foundation Wildfire Relief Fund.
For more information, visit http://rainperry.com.
Good for you!