Then along came Milton.
They found themselves among the 5.5 million Florida residents who were ordered to evacuate in advance of the advancing storm. As they prepared to leave their house on the coast, Tight took to Hymn for Her's Facebook page to share the news in a video.
"It's just beginning, and we are leaving our house to go five miles in," Tight said. "This is a hard goodbye; this has been our only real home. We lived in an Airstream before this, and before that, we lived in a van. Our daughter grew up here, and there's a lot of love in this house. I'm just hoping that it will still be standing."
When the family moved to Sarasota from Philadelphia a few years back, they thought they'd be relocating to paradise. But with the second hurricane in less than a month bearing down on Florida's west coast, Tight sounded weary when New Times reached her by phone.
"We are considering it," Tight replies when asked whether the one-two punch of Helene and Milton has the family rethinking Florida as a home base, period. "Packing up our whole house, it feels like — I don't know. Are the storms coming more and more? Are they getting worse? It feels like that."
She says they are contemplating relocating to Maine but that the decision — like Hurricane Milton — is still up in the air.
"Hopefully, we are going to get through this and get back and have a day of clean up and help some neighbors clean up, and then load up the van, if it doesn't float away, and drive down to Miami," Tight says of the upcoming gig.
The family's home is only about a half-mile from Sarasota Bay, in an evacuation zone. Even if storm surge weren't a factor, it's an old house that hasn't seen the sorts of upgrades that would allow it to withstand a storm like Milton.
Evacuating out of state was on the table, but they wound up opting to drive a few miles inland to hunker down with the family of one of Diver's classmates.
Hurricane Fatigue
Tight concedes the family is suffering from hurricane fatigue. Helene is still fresh in their memories, and the threat before that one saw them drive all the way back to Philly, only to watch from afar as the storm caused only minimal damage.In the scant years since they moved to the Sunshine State, the family has seen Florida's west coast threatened time and time again, most seriously by Ian in 2022 and Helene last month. Their home sustained minimal damage from Helene, but Tight sounds less optimistic that it will weather Milton unscathed.
"It looks like our house is basically five or six miles from where it's supposed to hit. I get nauseous when I think about it," she says.
Still, her heart goes out to all the communities that have recently endured Mother Nature's destructive power.
"I know many people in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia have just been through so much lately and are on the collective consciousness of the world with what's going on with the climate. Everybody's trying to hang in there," she says.
If you want to support Hymn for Her, you can stream the band's latest album, Bloodier Than Blood, released earlier this year.
And if all goes well, you can see them perform live on Saturday night.
Hymn for Her. 9 p.m. Saturday, October 12, at Lagniappe, 3425 NE Second Ave., Miami; 305-576-0108; lagniappehouse.com. Admission is free.
