One of the best things about going out on the road, musicians will tell you, is coming home. But New Orleans soul queen Irma Thomas couldn't do that after performing Sunday at Antone's and an unscheduled appearance Tuesday at Threadgill's.

Thomas is among the thousands who lost their homes to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. "Irma's a strong person," said Marcia Ball, who sang two songs with Thomas at Tuesday's Piano-rama show. "She's resigned to the fact that probably all she has left is what she packed, but she feels blessed that she and her family were able to get out."

This week was a time for all of us in Austin to count our blessings.

The birthplace of jazz, the incubator of rock 'n' roll, is uninhabitable and could be for months. "You feel so helpless," says Jon Foose, the Austin-based co-author of "Up From the Cradle of Jazz," which chronicles the massive impact New Orleans has had on popular music. "I keep thinking about musicians — Fats Domino lives in the flooded Ninth Ward — then there's Gatemouth Brown, Walter Washington, so many greats. Are they safe? I feel like I should go to New Orleans to help, but then I look at the TV and go 'no way.' "

Fox News reported Thursday that Domino, 77, has not been heard from since Monday.

The home of musical gumbo, of acts such as the Neville Brothers and the Meters who are able to blend so many different styles, the Crescent City has become a big bowl of death and despair. Those who had nothing, not even a car to drive 40 miles out of town, have lost everything, and the Big Easy is now a city of no food, no drinking water and little hope of returning to its past glory.

Jerry Jeff Walker, who owned a house in the French Quarter until recently, says, "it's always been the worst-case scenario that New Orleans would be flooded. Well, the worst-case scenario has happened, but I still wasn't ready for the extent of devastation."

His son, Django Walker, had been scheduled to play Tipitina's, a New Orleans club favored by Ball and other Austin musicians, Wednesday night.

Jerry Jeff Walker says his friend, 81-year-old photographer Johnny Donnels, who has lived in New Orleans his whole life, might never return. "He's been evacuated three times in the past year," Walker says. "He's up in Fort Worth, and he may stay there."

Ball, who was born in Louisiana, says Austin is a spiritual sister city and might end up housing displaced New Orleans musicians. "We'll do everything we can to help," she says. "I watch the TV and my heart breaks. "We have so many musician friends, family friends, that we're worried about."

New Orleans blues belter Leigh "Little Queenie" Harris had planned to spend a few days in Austin visiting friends, but is now stranded. "It looks pretty dire right now, but I bet the throngs will be dancing in the street by Mardi Gras 2006. It'll take more than a tempest to bring New Orleans down."

While Harris plans to eventually return home, some artists are expected to relocate here during the next few months as New Orleans is pumped dry, cleaned up and rebuilt.

"New Orleans is in a constant state of recycling," says Jay Pennington, whose New Orleans-based Crooks and Nannies group, which also plays in a different configuration as A Particularly Vicious Rumor, is booked at the Carousel Lounge on Wednesday. "The people are incredibly resilient. Don't count out New Orleans coming back."

Pennington and six friends fled the city Sunday and drove to his mother's house in Houston. There was no room for instruments, so they were left behind in the Ninth Ward house that Pennington says has water up to the second floor.

"We were lucky; we insured our instruments before the tour," he says. "But we're also terrified that some of our neighbors, poor black families that couldn't afford to evacuate, may be dead."

For the past three days, Pennington has watched TV constantly. It's horrible what's happened to the city he's loved since moving there from Austin 12 years ago. He can't stop watching.

"The other night we went to a show in Houston and asked the band if we could play a couple songs," he says. "We just had two accordions, all the instruments we could fit in the minivan. When we started playing I had this intense connection with New Orleans, the city of music. It was just so emotional, and I realized that every time I play, from now on, I'll think of New Orleans."

With no place to go home to, the band plans to stretch a four-week tour into five months.

The tour's name applies to what's been going on, Pennington says. "They were interviewing some woman before the hurricane hit and she said she wasn't leaving town. 'I'd rather die in New Orleans than live in Dallas,' she said and we went, 'There's the name of the tour.'

Ball ended Tuesday's show at Threadgill's with a rendition of Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927." A somber mood fell over the crowd as she sang, "The river rose all day, the river rose all night/ Some people got lost in the flood, some people got away alright" and then into the chorus, "Louisiana, Louisiana, they're trying to wash us away, they're trying to wash us away."

New Orleans aficionado Foose just shakes his head when he sees the footage of water up to the roofs and watches Americans become refugees. "All the pictures, all the mementos. It's such a shame. So much musical history is going to be lost forever."

mcorcoran@statesman.com; 445-3652