On the scene at A Concert for Altadena, featuring fire victims Dawes and many other acts to mark the anniversary of the Eaton fire.
When Liz Wilson saw the Eaton fire advancing, from her home in Pasadena last year, she knew that life would never be the same in her corner of Southern California. On Wednesday, the one-year anniversary of the disaster, A Concert for Altadena felt like the most optimistic place to be.
“People didn’t just lose their homes, they lost their community,” Wilson said, in the lobby of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium where scores of local acts had gathered for the benefit show. Organizers booked it to raise funds for the Altadena Builds Back Foundation, and to give locals something hopeful to attend on the painful day of Jan. 7.
“This is not just a fundraiser, but a way to reconnect and show support for community that’s surviving,” she said. “Altadena was and is an arts community, that’s a big part of it. We have so many friends and neighbors continuing to figure out if they’re coming back, if they’re able to rebuild. The more distant you get from it, you may forget. But we haven’t.”
The anniversary of the Eaton and Palisades fires, beginning one of the city’s most difficult years in recent history, was largely marked by quieter reflections on the loss and how much work still laid ahead. But Altadena in particular was a historic community for musicians and artists. For them, getting together for a show felt like a natural way to honor the occasion and look ahead.
Kevin Lyman, the Vans Warped Tour founder and USC music industry professor, is a two-decade Altadena resident who was displaced from his home for four months after the Eaton fire. He organized the concert for the community to use the day to reconnect, and keep focus on the work left to do.
“In this business, I’ve got to be an optimist, and every day I see more trucks coming into Altadena with lumber and workers. You go away for a few days and see a frame of a new home. But then you go to the next block, and there are five empty lots,” he said.
“One of the hardest parts is that if you’re living up there, you can go two miles away and life just goes on,” he added. “You’ve got to remind people that we’re still here, people still can still use help. Artists that survived and reestablished themselves are here supporting artists that haven’t been.”
Altadena resident and actor John C. Reilly hosted the night, noting the resilience of rebuilding efforts and tossing barbs at the utility company Southern California Edison, whose equipment ignited the fire: “A company that prioritized profits for shareholders over improving infrastructure,” as he put it. He pilloried President Trump’s reactions to the blaze: “He told us to go rake leaves? Go f— yourself, dude.”
The night highlighted ground-level activism from organizers like Heavenly Hughes of My Tribe Rise, who led the crowd in a raucous chant of “Altadena’s not for sale.” But the live performances found poignancy in the city’s spirit as a music town. L.A. Latin rock group Ozomatli started the night with a jubilant jam down the aisles, while Everclear’s Art Alexakis noted between riffs that after the Eaton fire displaced him, “I had to live in a hotel for five months, but I’m lucky.”
Travis Cooper drove down from Northern California for the show, moved by the ways Altadena held to its cultural identity after the Eaton fire. His parents lost a home in a fire in Redding a few years back, so “I can relate to how devastating that feels,” he said. “Even the threat of it growing up was horrific, so to have that actually happen was another level. But my parents had people donate clothes, places to stay, and that meant a lot to them, so we wanted to come support this community too.”
The headline act of the night was the Altadena folk-rock group Dawes, whose founders lost homes and gear in the Eaton fire. They’ve become emissaries for the neighborhood within the music industry, performing at last year’s Grammys just weeks after the fire.
At the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, they led a round robin of acts including Brad Paisley, the Killers’ Brandon Flowers, Aloe Blacc, Jenny Lewis and Rufus Wainwright. They were accompanied by vocal virtuosos Lucius and blues-rock rippers Judith Hill and Eric Krasno, each fixtures in the local music community trying to rebuild itself in the wake of the Eaton fire.
Altadena is a deeply intergenerational community, and the crowd felt the decades of L.A. music history in Stephen Stills coming out for Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” next to a younger act like Lord Huron covering the Kinks’ “Strangers.”
Dawes is a veteran L.A. act, and songs like “All Your Favorite Bands” had new texture in the light of how the fire upended the lives of so many artists. “I hope the world sees the same person that you always were to me,” Taylor Goldsmith sang. “May all your favorite bands stay together.”
For those bands still trying to stay together, the night was redemptive. Jeffrey Paradise, the Poolside frontman who lost his home in the Palisades fire, DJed the concert’s official after-party. He’s since relocated to Glassell Park, and acknowledged that the fires are still a challenging topic, for him and for friends trying to support those displaced.
“It’s hard to talk about because so many things are mixed up in it,” he said. “It was the worst year of my life, but also great and heartwarming to see support from people. It’s so hard to answer how you’re doing because I don’t have an easy answer,” he said.
A concert like this was one way to acknowledge the gravity of last year’s loss, but also to raise money to help everyone get back to the land, people and music they love.
“It’s a disaster, and we’re getting through a disaster. I want to be resilient and help others, and do what I can to move forward,” he said. “It forces you to reinvent who you are and redefine what matters. I don’t have an option not to.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
