Tim Hayn Brings a Song of Remembrance to Canyon Square Jan. 7
By Laurel Busby
News & Information Editor
Fire and music may not seem naturally entwined, but, for musician Tim Hayn, they are.
When flames engulfed Pacific Palisades last Jan. 7, Hayn, then 38, began fighting to save his father and brother’s Canyon home. A few days later, during a respite from hosing down spot fires and combatting looters, he sat at a neighbor’s piano and a melody came to him. His father, Michael, then 78, his younger brother, Sean, then 32, and three fellow firefighting friends were in the same room watching the news and listening to the emerging composition.
Tim Hayn Photo: Andrew Macpherson
“They got to watch me write the song, and they gave me immediate feedback,” Tim recalled. “They said, ‘This is beautiful.’ … I wrote the entire song in 20-to-30 minutes. I got so inspired.”
A few weeks later, after the emergency ended, one neighbor, whose home the brothers had saved, gifted Hayn an orchestral arrangement of violins, violas, and a cello, which he quickly incorporated into his song. Then another grateful neighbor, who has a 15-foot pipe organ, offered to let him record the song at his spacious house. Hayn, who plays guitar, bass, piano, trumpet, horns, percussion, and drums, layered the musical sections together along with vocals to create a piece with the richness of a movie score, he said.
“It feels so cinematic,” Hayn said. “It’s an enormous production and the most important thing I’ve ever done. I’m so proud of this work. I want the world to hear it.”
A year after the Palisades Fire, the song will be released at the same time as the fire’s outbreak--10:30 a.m. on Jan. 7 on all streaming platforms. Later that day, Hayn and his band will perform the song as part of a Canyon Square concert from 5-6:30 p.m.
Hayn said the lyrics of “Home” encapsulate some of the feelings that he and his brother experienced as they worked almost around the clock for three days to save their father’s Mesa Road home, which their grandparents bought in 1957. As 88 mph winds brought smoke into the area, their neighbors had understandably fled, but many also left their hoses out and gates unlocked so that the brothers could enter their properties and fight the fire.
“I have an insane amount of energy, and for the first time in my life, I got to unleash that energy in a purposeful way,” Tim said. “My brother is standing on the roof of our house and shooting embers down with a hose, and I am expanding our wet perimeter, hopping fences, running and putting out fires.”
There were no firefighters or police for those initial days as the brothers hosed down neighboring homes and kept the fire from racing through the Canyon. On a quick motorcycle expedition to see how the fire was progressing in other parts of the Palisades, the brothers ran into a fire that they could have extinguished nearer Sunset, but the hoses alongside the houses weren’t putting out any water, Hayn said. Luckily, the Canyon hoses continued to work throughout the ordeal.
“We saved an entire neighborhood from burning down in those first three days,” Hayn said.
Over the next few days, the brothers began to encounter a few other hardy residents who had stayed to protect their homes and the Canyon. Over the following days, they kept in contact with each other and began to work as a unit to combat both the fire and the looters who followed in its wake. Hayn dubbed the group the “Canyon Survival Crew,” and the members eventually included their cousin Cedar Barnes and Canyon residents Blair Jahncke, Kevin Keim, Bryan Clark, and Jonathon Koharik.
(From left to right) The Canyon Survival Crew—Cedar Barnes, Jonathon Koharik, Kevin Keim, Bryan Clark, Tim Hayn, Sean Hayn, and Blair Jahncke. Photo: Courtesy of Cedar Barnes
The crew sought to not only address problems they encountered, but also to respond to the requests of neighbors who were locked out of the area and worried about their pets and homes. These evacuated neighbors also rallied around the crew. Hayn said they sent his family a radio, water bottles, and cases of food, since without electricity or fuel for their generator, everything in the Hayns’ refrigerator had rotted.
Unfortunately, as the days passed, looters became the most pressing problem.
“It was the Wild West,” Hayn said. “There was no law. There was no authority. We were our own fire department, and then we were our own police department.”
Hayn’s song captures slices of the stress that both the crew and the evacuees endured, but it ends with a hopeful refrain and the certainty that the community will find its “way back home.” His goal with releasing “Home” on the anniversary of the fire is to have the song remind listeners that the Palisades still needs their assistance.
“This is on ongoing tragedy,” he said. “There are still families displaced. There is still cleanup happening…. We all have to have each other’s backs here.”
