In the weeks since the wildfires that swept Los Angeles in January, perhaps no local artist has become the face and voice of this tragedy more than Dawes. Singer/guitarist Taylor Goldsmith lost his Altadena recording studio and most of the band’s equipment in the Eaton Fire, while Taylor’s brother/bandmate/neighbor, drummer and percussionist Griffin Goldsmith, lost his home. The brothers’ parents lost their own home as well, and the Malibu house where the Goldsmiths grew up also burned down in the Palisades Fire.
Amid all of this devastation, however, Griffin has experienced some incredible highs, both personally and professionally. He became a father when his wife Kit gave birth to their first child just two weeks after fires (their son was born a month early, presumably due to stress, but is doing very well), and in February, Dawes found themselves playing the star-studded Fire Aid benefit in Inglewood and even opening this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony.
With all of this going on, Griffin has barely had “a moment to stop and just process,” so I was honored and thankful that he took the time to speak with me, at such length and so candidly and eloquently, for Musicians for Fire Relief, a March 6 livestream fundraiser benefiting the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. And I was greatly impressed by his optimism and resilience.
Watch and read Griffin’s full, extended Musicians for Fire Relief conversation about his experience in the video above and Q&A below, and visit musiciansforfirerelief.com to rewatch the entire broadcast, donate, purchase merch, and learn about other ways that you can help.
MUSICIANS FOR FIRE RELIEF: First of all, I want to thank you profusely for making the time to do this interview. I know you and your brother’s lives have been turned upside down by the Eaton Fire, and I know you’ve been very busy. So, it means a lot that you wanted to do this.
GRIFFIN GOLDSMITH: My pleasure. I’m happy to contribute.
You lost your home in the Eaton Fire entirely, and your brother lost the studio where you guys do most of your work. So, I’m just going to start with the question of… how are you holding up?
I think we’re OK. I mean, it was obviously so traumatizing and devastating, but my wife was 34 weeks pregnant at the time, and the kid was supposed to come. My son was supposed to come two days ago, three days ago [at the time of this interview]. He came a month early because of.. I mean, who knows? Presumably because of the stress. But he came a month early, and so he’s been here for a month. He’s healthy. My wife’s healthy.
He came after the fire?
Two weeks after.
That’s crazy.
Super-crazy. So, there hasn’t really been a moment to stop and just process. I mean, I’ve just been processing as I go. It’s been nonstop. We thought we were going to have a month to get this house that we’re renting together, and we had about six days and then he came. Luckily family on both sides were amazing and came in and pretty much transformed this house. We just didn’t have any time for the nursery or anything like that while we were in the hospital — they did that. So, that was incredibly helpful. But yeah, I guess I’m OK. After something like this, you really do value what’s alive and it’s distinction between what is important and what’s not is made for you. I think it’s that idea of everything’s impermanent. These are just things. It resonates with a lot of us, but it is not until you’re slapped in the face with it that you’re actually forced to embrace it in a very real way. And it certainly is true, but it’s certainly not easy.
We’re getting back on our feet, and time is our friend here. It’s just been a lot. Every day is 16 hours or more of just going, going, going, going. In a certain way, I think I thrive when you feel like you’re in a pressure-cooker. So, the upside would be there’s so much going on that there hasn’t been a whole lot of time to sit with it, and my mind has just been on so many things that it’s been OK. I have other things to focus on, such as getting my family situated, raising this kid, making sure my parents [are OK] — they lost their house too. … There’s just been a lot to handle on the other side of it, so that’s been keeping me occupied. I guess the downside of that would be I haven’t really properly stopped to maybe process in the way that I should. I think everybody does this differently, and obviously I’m devastated and was so sad, but I didn’t really have the opportunity to take a beat and process it. I just had to keep moving.
There have been some other positives. I hate to sound so Pollyanna-ish, but besides the fact that became a dad, Dawes have had some amazing opportunities. The music community has really rallied for people who were affected by the fires, and they’ve really rallied around Dawes in particular. Is it fair to say that you’ve been welcomed into some spaces and events that Dawes usually didn’t get to do?
Totally. It’s certainly not lost on us that Fire Aids or the Grammys have literally the biggest, artists in the world — and then Dawes. We’ve had an awesome career and I’m very proud of it, but we’ve never been in the conversation with the Grammys, or I’ve never been onstage with Graham Nash and Stephen Stills or Joni Mitchell. And so, to be experiencing these very low lows and then simultaneously getting these calls and being embraced by the music community and propped up, it’s bittersweet. The whole experience, that part of it’s just awesome. It’s a trip. It’s like, OK, I’m trying to figure out what the next six months looks like, and then we’re getting calls being asked to go form a supergroup and open the Grammys. It’s like, what is happening? This is all so surreal.
I was at the Grammys and very pleasantly surprised when I saw how it opened. But the first time when you went back out and performed after this tragedy was Jimmy Kimmel Live. And I think that Jimmy Kimmel’s first show back on the air after the fires. Only a few days had passed.
It wasn’t very long. So, we bounced around night of the fires. We were in Chino Hills, just at a hotel. After that, we moved to Palm Springs because my wife was pregnant. We just wanted to get out of town and be like, “We know our place has gone, and as awful as this continues to be, we know where we’re at with this. We’ve lost everything. Let’s not turn the news on. Let’s keep the temperature low so that she doesn’t go into labor early.”
Were there medical concerns about her being that pregnant and evacuating the house?
Totally. In terms of evacuating, it happened so fast that I wasn’t thinking about the long-term of it, but yeah, once it happened, we were like, “We need to make sure you’re not breathing this air and that you’re not”… I mean, it was impossible for her to not be stressed, obviously, but that we’re not just living in this with CNN on or KCAL 24 hours a day. So yeah, in full disclosure, the night, so the morning of the 8th, I think we found out our house was gone, and we ended up in Palm Springs that night after kind of a hectic day as you could imagine. And then when we got to Palm Springs, she started having pretty serious contractions. She was 34 weeks pregnant at this point. And we were like, “Oh man… this is the kind of incident that could induce a birth early.” We were cognizant of it. There were concerns about that for sure. And then the contractions really brought that home, and that didn’t happen, luckily. That day was two weeks later. So yeah, there was concerns about that. There were concerns about the air. At this point, really all I can do is make sure that my wife and my baby and are as safe as we can be right now, and not just facing this reality 24 hours a day. Watching the videos and all that, this brings it back in such a real way. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid the harsh reality or the events that just transpired, but I need to make sure that she’s as relaxed as she can be, taking a bath or whatever. Just trying to keep things as mellow as they could be because ultimately at that point, what could we do? The place was gone and all we could do is just try to take care of her and the unborn child.
And everything is OK now?
Everything’s great. He came two weeks later, so he was a month early, and I have to believe that’s stress-induced. But the birth was totally fine. Baby is great. He’s healthy as a horse, and my wife is doing really well. And so, I mean, we’re first-time parents, so it’s absolute chaos over here, but it’s amazing. It’s the best thing. He couldn’t have come at a better or worse time. I mean, obviously the timing is laughable. You couldn’t even write this shit! But on the other hand, it reframed the situation in such a way where it’s like, “OK, I’m in a bed. I’m in an unfamiliar bed with my unborn child, and really I’m feeling like I could be anywhere with him and her and we’ll be OK.” It’s like, now this is obviously so much more important to me than my collection of instruments.
So, in the middle of all this, the Jimmy Kimmel performance happened.
Yes, two days or maybe the day before, we were asked if we could come back to L.A. and do that. And we were like, “Of course!” We love Jimmy and that whole operation over there, and they’d been so good to us. Obviously they were trying to highlight the artists that were affected, and we had just been on a few months before. So, the version of that song, we knew that we shouldn’t play it the way we normally do. It’s just like an upbeat rock song.
What was the song, for people who don’t know?
“Time Spent in Los Angeles” is what it’s called. My brother wrote it when he was kid on our second record, and it’s about being gone and not really having a home and feeling lost and identifying with that. It’s a testament to Taylor’s gifts, but this song means something completely different in the context of these fires. And so, we knew that we had to treat it musically that way as well. The arrangement we played on Kimmel, for anybody that would know, is totally different than the record. We didn’t really have time to work it out, so we just kind of got to Kimmel and we texted a little bit before and we were like, “I think we should maybe play it in halftime.” And he’s got this riff, and so we maybe ran it three times before we filmed and that was it. That was just kind of how it came together. It very wasn’t premeditated. That was just us trying to do this new sentiment justice.
It must have been very emotional for you.
Yeah, the footage in the back that they were playing, I mean, we didn’t expect that. I think I was seeing houses that I recognized from my neighborhood, so yeah, it was very heavy and the whole vibe on set was very heavy. Everybody was feeling it. And I think people there that worked at Kimmel had lost their homes. So yeah, it was heavy.
Did that lead to the Grammys? There was some talk before the before the Grammys, some people saying we shouldn’t have award shows, but I think the Grammys did a wonderful job, and you guys set the tone with your supergroup of Brad Paisley, St. Vincent, Brittany Howard, John Legend, Sheryl Crow, and Dawes all on the same stage. How did that come together?
So, that Kimmel video just made the rounds on the internet or wherever and got passed around. And I know it eventually made its way to the producers [at the Grammys]. … I’m not sure whose idea who conceived of this idea, but they were moved by the performance, presumably, and that kind of led to the phone call. I’m not sure it would’ve happened without the Kimmel performance. … And then as far as the supergroup they put together, they were super-helpful, but they wanted us to put the band together and we knew certain artists such as John Legend were on board for whatever was needed. And then we kind of just brainstormed internally and then with the producers to come up with that band. Brad’s a good friend of ours, and he’s close with Sheryl. Brittany, we go back with. John is a legend in everybody’s view. And so yeah, that was an interesting experience and obviously once in a lifetime. It’s unbelievable getting to play with those people. But yeah, we were able to actually handpick these musicians.
Obviously, I have to ask about the song you did, “I Love L.A.” by Randy Newman, which you’ve recorded you own version of to benefit MusiCares. That song is a classic, but of course there’ll be the people will be like, “It was meant to be sarcastic! It was meant to be making fun of L.A.!” But it’s taken on new meaning over the years, and especially now, it’s not an ironic song anymore. What made you choose that song?
They had that idea in mind. And we’re massive fans [of Randy Newman] and always have been. And as you mentioned, being Angelenos, it felt like that song has a whole other life that transcends what’s on the paper. Yeah, I guess it is satirical, but as a lot of his songs are. But unlike “Rednecks,” which is just straight satire, there is something in that song where he does love this city. And a lot of what he’s talking about, for anybody that’s from here or lives here, you know that yes, all the things people like to poke fun at are real. But it’s also part and parcel of what’s so amazing about this place. So, yeah, you have Erewhon where you walk in and you’re like, “This is the most ridiculously, expensive market I’ve ever in the world. Where am I?” But then you eat the stuff or whatever…
Yeah, you get the Hailey Bieber smoothie and you say, “Hey, this is pretty good!”
“This is the best thing I’ve ever had in my life!” So, it’s both things. At least from my eyes, that’s how that song was intended to be like, “Yeah, L.A.’s ridiculous, but it’s also L.A. We love it.”
People do like to crap all over L.A. and cite all the stereotypes you just mentioned, but since these tragic fires have happened, it seems like the whole country and world just has a lot of love for L.A. and is really rallying around the city, which gladdens my heart.
Totally. I think this is a rough experience for everyone. I don’t think anyone’s looking at this and thinking I can’t be touched. The Palisades is a perfect example of how money doesn’t insulate you from these natural catastrophes. Things are happening more and more frequently everywhere. … It’s like, man, if this stuff can happen here, it can happen anywhere. And I think there was something really beautiful about the catastrophe and how the response to it wasn’t political. I mean, obviously some people make it that, but to me it just felt like this is just human and people are responding to these human stories such as ours, where it’s like, this has nothing to do with what I believe in. This is just some awful shit that happened to me and my family. And unfortunately, we’re not the only ones; of course, there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of people that are dealing with a similar thing. And so yeah, in that respect, it was so heartening to think people are globally feeling for us right now, because this is awful. And it’s foreboding, unfortunately. You would hope that if this happens in Wisconsin, that the response would be similar. We just need to, as human beings, try to help each other out. And this is an opportunity to do that. And people did and it was really overwhelming.
You did Fire Aid, which you mentioned, three days before the Grammys. That may have been even more star-studded than the Grammy ceremony itself. Tell me about that experience.
There were so many artists, and to be totally honest, my son was like four days old. So, once we did our thing, I went home because I needed to. But Anderson .Paak and Dr. Dre were right before Joni Mitchell, so we sang some backgrounds with Joni before doing our own song, and then a few others, one with Stephen Stills and then one with Graham Nash and Stephen Stills. So, I’m onstage and the stage rotated around, and they were doing “California” off of The Chronic. It was such a trip to be standing there with Joni waiting to be rolled around and to go from that dynamically — that tune was so heavy and amazing and hitting, and everyone’s freaking out — to then turn around and go really quiet in the other direction into “Both Sides Now.” And people were so in it! Dynamically, it was one of the most wild transitions I’ve ever seen. And then we did our thing, and I didn’t know this until two days later that that was the first time Graham and Stephen had been together since the band broke up in 2015. … We were there when they said hug each other and said hi. And then we posted this on our Instagram, but backstage there’s rehearsal of us singing “Teach Your Children” with them doing the Crosby stuff. And it was just so surreal. Like I sang “Helplessly Hoping” at a fucking talent show in high school. This is insane. This is stuff of dreams. So yeah, that was another really surreal, unbelievable experience.
Other areas of L.A. were affected by these fires, of course, but Altadena seems to be home to a lot of musicians, creatives, artists, and entertainment industry people. I know your home there held many memories.
Yeah, and my other dwelling was a garage that had an office built into it before I bought the house. In 2020 we were making our eighth record, Misadventures of Doomscroller, and it was my 30th birthday. And Wylie [Gelber], our bass player at the time and the founding member of our band, he said, “Give me $1,300 and leave town for five days and I’m going to build you the sickest 30th birthday gift imaginable.” At that point, the other three-quarters of the garage were just all of my drums and recording gear, all just on the ground. There was no organization at all. So, he went in as I was gone and he built out this room… he essentially just hooked up this room. He put pegboard everywhere. I had 300-plus pieces of percussion I’d been collecting for the last 20 years, and he hung all of it. He put the mic stands off the walls, he hid the wiring, he had it dialed. He racked up all my gear. That was a really amazing; what he did was such a gift. And I then figured I have to match his level of organization, so I racked everything in the garage and got that really dialed in. And that was a lot of all my session drums and just my collection at large. … There’s so much history there for me. That space was my dojo. I spent days of my life in there. It was such an inspiring place for me. And then obviously the studio was built three years later, and that became my home base for Dawes. I was just there every day, just learning things and working, and that was really getting lived-in, which is what it needed to get the requisite vibe. And I really feel like we were getting there.
We had a session the day of the fire, and we left at 3:30. We had our friend Mike Viola, who helped us produce our last record, just an endlessly talented dude, the perfect guy to come into a space that’s not his own and make it amazing. And so, he had come in for the first time and worked with us there, and it was all happening. It felt like, “Oh, this is coming to life in exactly the way that I envisioned. It’s finally getting that thing. We’re working in here all day every week, and it’s collecting the vibe from everybody, and it’s now becoming the space that we always wanted it to become, slowly but surely.” And then a day later, it’s gone.
Wow. When you evacuated that day, did you have any idea how serious things were?
No, certainly not to that extent. This is a pretty insane anecdote I’m about to tell you. So, I left and I was going up to my house to grab gear to go load into a studio around here in the Valley, because I was starting production rehearsals the next day for a week with Bright Eyes. I was going to go out and do two weeks of shows with them. … Then I’m getting a text from my mom. My wife and I have been fostering our 15-year-old niece, and my mom had taken her dog, this little chihuahua. And my mom’s texting me: “The dog got out! I’m freaking out!” So, I cancel my session, I get in my truck, and I’m driving around Altadena to find this dog. Eventually my niece and my wife end up in the car with me, and then an hour and a half, two hours into it, we get a call: “We found your dog. It’s been hit by a car and caused a three-car accident and the dog’s dead.” I mean, it’s unbelievable. Literally, if you wrote this in a script, producers would be like, “This is way too extreme.” So, we got this dead dog off the street, took it to the vet to get cremated, and then after that, my niece is such a trooper, such an amazing human being, but she’s feeling it, of course. So, we go to my mom’s house. My mom’s also sad. She feels horrible. She feels so guilty. We go there to just try to reconcile and calm her down. And when we get there, it’s about 5:30 or 6, maybe. And my dad had the news on, and I knew there was a Palisades fire, but that’s all I knew. At that point I’m like, “Oh my God, this is very extreme.” I’m texting friends whose parents still live there, and I’m getting videos of PCH, and I’m like, “This is so, so bad.”
And so, I’m like, “All right, my niece and wife are going to go home up the street for a bit. My parents are here. I’m going to go get us some dinner around the corner, and then we’re going to come back here and we’re going to keep an eye on this fire.” And as I’m getting food, I got a text from an Altadena friends group [about the Eaton Fire]. eating fire. And I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s right here.” And I step up of the restaurant, I look, and it’s a mile and a half from me. It’s really gnarly, and it’s right there. And then I get a call from my brother-in-law’s mom, essentially our stepmother, and she’s like, “Hey, man, I don’t know where you are, but I just left your house and the power’s out, and it looks like your neighborhood’s about to go up in flames.” So, I get in my truck and start speeding home. I call my brother — no answer. I call my brother’s wife. I say, “Get the kids out.” I call my mom because my dad’s not well and he needs a second to get into the car and everything, so get him out and go. And then I got home and ran in and just was in full panic mode. I just got everything alive — my three dogs, my pregnant wife, my niece — and went. And that was it. I had no inkling, to answer your question, that that was where it was headed. But pretty soon thereafter, it was like, “This is crazy, and we need to go now.”
Your spirits seem surprisingly high, considering everything you’ve been through.
Yeah, I’ve gotten that a lot. I understand and I really empathize with people that are struggling to even put an email together, but I just didn’t have a choice. It just felt to me like, this is either going to destroy me, or it’s going to be an opportunity for me to see the light and be stronger and create something out of these ashes. I know that sounds like a cliché, but I just had to embrace it in that way. I also like to think that even though yes, the houses are gone, [we still have] the time we had and the memories we made that amazing paradise of the community that we had and with our family and friends all around us. Nothing has taken that away from me. We had those experiences and they’re very much a part of me, and they will always be.
When you say create something out of the ashes, has it galvanized your creativity, musically?
It’s been hard to actually work on anything because our studios are gone, so it’s like I don’t really even have a space to play right now. And as you know, I have a one-month-old baby, and I’m also trying to figure out what our long-term situation looks like. … I’m sure that the next record will reflect these experiences in the profound way, but as of now, it doesn’t feel like there’s been a second to do anything other than what’s required of us. … Unfortunately, I’m not really in a situation to be actively working on our own music at the moment. I will get back there certainly, but right now it’s family and it’s dealing with insurance and lawyers and all that, and I am working towards getting back to that place. And then there’s sessions and playing on other people’s records, but that’s almost more escapist. What I mean by that is I played on a Fitz and the Tantrums record a few days ago, and that felt like, “OK, I’m not in that space anymore of, how do we benefit the community?” I’m just helping them work on their music, and that feels great. I can fully take my mind off of what my reality is day-to-day right now for a few hours and try to get in the headspace of the artist and help them get to their achieved goal.
What advice would you have for other people who’ve been affected by those fires, who, as you said, might have trouble composing an email or getting out of bed? What can they do if they’re feeling very overwhelmed?
I think one thing that I’ve been experiencing is before this, so much of my identity, so I thought, as a musician was wrapped up with the gear that I had. … And I think there’s validity that, but I have to remind myself, I still have the goods. Yeah, my shit’s gone, but I’m still the one that makes the music. And so, I guess that there’s a larger lesson maybe to be extracted from that, which is you still have your family, you still hopefully have everything that matters in that way. I mean, obviously some people lost their lives in this fire, and so not everyone is fortunate in that sense, but it’s still, it’s like home is where the heart is. I know that there’s all these cliché shit that plays into this and it feels so stupid, but these things actually have a lot of meaning to me and these sayings. It’s like, I’m here with my family and we’re fine, and we just have to put one foot in front of the other and time heals all. And it’s getting easier, and it’s going to get easier. … If you need to live in it in order for yourself to heal, then do that. But there’s just so much. The future’s bright, and I think we just have to keep working towards it, because that’s all we can do.
And watching the community surround us has been so inspiring. Even talking to people that have watched our experience, that didn’t necessarily lose their homes and have watched that happen to us remotely, it’s inspiring to them. This is such a warm moment for humanity. It’s so overwhelming, the amount of support. And so, I think we have each other to just lean on. And don’t be afraid to lean on other people. I’ve always been allergic to asking anybody for anything, but we need each other. And it’s like now is a good time to lean on those that can help.
