“I never thought that my house would burn down. And I really never thought that my whole town would burn down,” says Los Angeles native and longtime Altadena resident Brandon Jay flatly, sitting in his temporary month-to-month rental home and he speaks via zoom with Musicians for Fire Relief. “It’s crazy. I know more people whose houses have burned down than people that haven’t.”

Jay and his wife Gwendolyn Sanford, renowned screen music composers who have worked on Weeds, Orange Is the New Black, The Midnighters, and 40 Watts From Nowhere, lost their home in the Eaton Fire, along with their music studio and all but two of their instruments. But almost immediately after this tragedy, Jay sprang into action, founding the organization Altadena Musicians, which helps replace musical equipment and record collections lost in any of the fires that devastated L.A. this past January.

Jay describes Altadena Musicians — as well as an app, Instrumental Giving, that launches this week — as working like “a wedding registry, where you list everything that you lost, from the smallest shaker to the biggest grand piano. … Basically, you prove that you’re impacted, and then you get signed up on with the app and you create a profile and you log everything as you think of it, adding more instruments as you remember what you lost.”

Additionally, anyone who wants to help can sign up and list instruments they have available for donation. “The great thing about musical instruments and musicians, it’s like, we all have extra stuff,” Jay chuckles. “So, if we reach out to those people and just connect them with people that lost everything, we get their stuff back. … And it’s a great way for the community just to connect with each other, both the donors and the recipients. We’re all about them meeting each other and talking about the story of the instrument that you lost and the story of the instrument that you’re getting, so that it helps heal that process and you can continue that story.”

Jay came up with the Altadena Musicians concept — a sort of a “BuyNothing type of experience for instruments” — after he and Sanford decided to play a show at the second annual Pasadena Neighbor Day just one week after the Eaton Fire, despite having no equipment and nowhere to rehearse. “Our heads were spinning just from everything going on, but we decided that we would go on with the show and it was a good opportunity for our friends and family to see each other,” Jay recalls. “People showed up, and they started bringing instruments. They knew that we’d lost ours, and a lot of them were exactly instruments that I lost in the fire — super-specific, random stuff.”

Jay realizes that some instruments can never truly be replaced, because “it’s not necessarily the monetary value — it’s how it comes into your possession, who gave it to you or how you saved it up for it.” He’s still “mourning the loss” of a “super-sentimental” pair of castanets gifted to him by late Muffs frontwoman Kim Shattuck, for instance. “But people were giving me the exact same kind of things, and so it just helped with the healing process. Like, I lost that stylophone that my friend Linda gave me, but my friend Theresa gave me one. It’s not exactly the same, but it just helps.”

Now Jay is paying it forward. After Altadena Musicians launched, the first instrument donation came from a good Samaritan who gave up his acoustic Martin guitar — his very first guitar, which he’d saved up for as a kid — to help someone who’d lost a similar childhood guitar to the fires. Another victim whose grandmother’s 1932 Steinway piano had burned received a replacement 100-year-old Steinway. Word of the new organization spread quickly after Jay’s old Silver Lake scene pals Weezer posted about it, and Jay smilingly recalls using $1,000 from the organization’s first week of cash donations to buy an Amoeba Music gift certificate for a local family that had lost their prized record collection, and also buying them albums by artists who’d been affected by the fires, like Dawes, Poolside, and the Postal Service.

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That family, whose guitars were also replaced, later sent a “beautiful message” to Jay. “They’re in an Airbnb. [The mom] is like, ‘It’s made such a shift in our home. We didn’t realize how much we were missing our instruments.’ And now that we have them back and they’re playing, it’s just changed the dynamic of our situation.’ And their kids are more interested in music now because of the few items that they actually own and that they got their own guitars back. And so, it’s super-cool. And then in turn she was like, ‘Hey, I’d like to help what you guys are doing.’ And now she’s doing our social media!”

Altadena Musicians also arranged for a group of affected kids from Altadena’s Odyssey Charter School to see their favorite band, TV Girl, and meet Nick Valensi, a member of their other favorite band, the Strokes. “Nick came over and showed up at their rehearsal and blew up their minds and they all jammed with him. … Him just showing up and doing that made a huge difference in their lives and in this healing process,” says Jay. “People are just being so generous and helpful, and it’s hard for some people to ask for help in this situation, but really, it’s OK. Because when someone helps, when they give you an instrument or they show up and play guitar because they’re well-known, it gives them something to do. It helps them by helping you heal the situation.”

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People wanting to help, or seeking help, can go to altadenamusicians.org and sign up for the registry, while the Instrumental Giving app will launch with an upcoming in-person “beautiful event” where people can bring donated instruments and records as well as get an app tutorial. “This is a strong community,” says Jay proudly. “It was a really strong community and neighbors that were thoughtful and from all walks of life prior to this, but now it’s ironclad, because we’re sharing this community traumatic experience.”

Excerpts from Brandon Jay’s interview originally aired as part of the Musicians for Fire Relief livestream benefit on March 6. Watch a replay of that entire show below, and donate or buy Musicians for Fire Relief merch here.

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.

In early January, former Sugarcult guitarist and self-described pack-rat Marko DeSantis filmed a Cameo video giving a mini-tour of his collection of his rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, a collection so impressive and museum-like that he was in talks to have his own show or podcast about it tentatively titled “Marko’s Garage Sale.” But just 30 hours later, DeSantis’s Altadena home — a “monument” his “teenage dream that came true,” because he’d bought it with the money from his rock band’s major-label deal — burned down in the Eaton Fire, along with all of his irreplaceable archives.

But DeSantis’s cherished memories remain. And he is making new memories, as the music community rallies around him and his similarly affected peers: His old friends Green Day invited him to perform with them at a fire benefit, and he got to walk the Grammy Awards’ red carpet as an invited special guest. I was honored and thankful that amid all of this chaos, he took the time to speak with me about his experience, with such surprisingly unflappable optimism, for Musicians for Fire Relief, a March 6 livestream fundraiser benefiting the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. Watch and read his inspiring conversation 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 you can help.

MUSICIANS FOR FIRE RELIEF: I’m here with the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Marko DeSantis. It’s always lovely to chat with you, Marko. I do wish it was under less sad circumstances, though.

MARKO DESANTIS: Yeah, I know. It’s good to see you too. And I’m really appreciating your pink room there in your house! … When this happens to you, you start to really become attuned to houses. Like, when I see someone else’s living space, it makes me really nostalgic for ours that we unfortunately lost last month. But it also is in a way kind of soothing, because it’s like you miss your stuff, but when you see someone else’s stuff, you sort of get a contact high off of it.

I am so sorry that you lost your Altadena home in the Eaton Fire. I know you’ve been in L.A. a long time and have deep roots here.

I’ve been living in L.A. for a long time. I’m actually originally from Santa Barbara. But as a kid growing up, only 93 miles from L.A., when you have the stars in your eyes of just being addicted to rock ‘n’ roll, you quickly find out that there’s this place where it’s not only the sort of incubator for rock ‘n’ roll, and you’ve got the music industry here, but also we found out that there were all these little places where you could find the bands that would in a few years become the bands that everybody else in the mainstream would know about. So, we kind of almost made a sport out just coming down to L.A. all the time and sneaking into clubs and just checking it all out. And that was so inspiring to me. It really took the cape off the superhero and showed me that it was possible, rather than just something you could see on MTV and dream about. … When Sugarcult got a record deal in 2001, I quit my job. I was working part-time at a record store — that’s what a four-year degree from UCSB got me! But I did it on purpose. I basically just wanted to continue being a teenager. So, I filed for an extension on my teenage years and moved to L.A. in actually February of 2001. So, fucking 24 years ago. … I’ve pretty much tried to find a way to be a teenager my whole life. I’m not adult-averse, it’s just I try not to throw out the inner child with a bathwater.

I think that’s why despite all the horrific stuff that you have had to deal with in the past month or so, that you still are exuding so much positivity. But you did eventually grow up a little bit. You got married, you had a family, and you settled in Altadena, which I know is an amazing community that is rallying together now.

It’s an incredible place. … When Sugarcult really started to kind of take off, I bought this house. It was the first house I ever bought and we bought it in, gosh, 2006. We lived there for 18 years and we had a one-year-old when we moved into that house and had another kid a couple months later. And so, those kids just grew up in that house. For me, on an emotional level, it’s not just a house… as a kid who grew up in a relatively kind of laid-back town like Santa Barbara and then had this kind of absurd dream/ambition of being in a rock ‘n’ roll band and making a life of that. Most people grow out of that by the time they get to maybe age 17. For me, I just was stubbornly hanging onto it and kept on at it and it worked out for me and for a lot of my friends that we grew up together. … Moving to L.A. getting a record deal, going out and touring around the world and having songs on the radio, just basically living the dream. Being able to buy a house is such a weird thing; it’s something where you think, “If I buy a house, it means I have to quit music and go get a real job.” But to do it through rock ‘n’ roll is a real point of something to really feel proud of. And so that house was more than just a house; it was a monument to my sort of teenage dream that came true and the accomplishment of being able to have a band and get it off the ground and make it happen. … And then I was always the guy in every one of my bands, from when I was 14 and I had my first band, where I was probably a borderline pack-rat. I saved everything. I had archives.

You recently posted something on Instagram that was a sort of a guide to some of your memorabilia and things.. And you had filmed that right before the fires happened.

Yeah, so I’m on Cameo. And this guy just kind of ordered a Cameo from me and didn’t really give me much of a direction. So, I was like, “Well, I’m going to kind of let him into my world, as if he was at my house in my studio right now,” and I just kind of showed him some stuff. I kind of riffed on it for extra, much longer than I would normally do a Cameo for. … I was basically showing a bunch of the stuff in my office. I was like, “I’m going to use this as a show-and-tell.” And full disclosure now that it’s probably not going to happen, I had just met with a few people about this. I was trying to think of how can I do a show, like a YouTube show or a podcast that would not just be another random dude with a podcast… had this idea to basically do “Marko’s Garage Sale” or something like that… where I could turn it into a show where I’m just like, “Hey, this is the water bottle that I got when I went on tour with so-and-so “and explain the story behind it and then maybe put it on a companion website and auction it off maybe for charity.

It wasn’t just a museum of my stuff; it was also just I’m such a fan and so interested in all subsets of pop culture. Even in the ‘90s when I’d come down [to L.A.], I’d come down to shop on Melrose and I would obsessively collect all those colorful rave flyers that they used to have in all those stores. And I never actually, I think I went to one rave in my life and it wasn’t like my jam really, but I was just so enamored of it, like, “Wow, this is such a cool thing, these are going to be artifacts someday,” and I would just save them. I actually had a whole wall in my teenage bedroom that was covered with them. I’d also collect punk rock flyers before that I would collect flyers from the bands that were playing English Acid. I’ve always been a real pop-culture in enthusiast and just geek about it all and just thinking this is somehow going to matter. … I wanted to share this stuff with people. And so, I thought at a certain point in my life, “Keeping this in my own possession is actually kind of selfish. I want to put this on display, not so I can brag that I have it, but to share it with other people. Let someone else hold it for a little while and maybe turn it into a book or maybe turn it into a website or just something where I can show it to the world.” And so that’s the hardest part about this — not the selfish “woe is me, I lost my stuff.” It’s more about how I was carrying this stuff for a long time so that I could share it with somebody, and now I don’t get to share it with anybody. That’s the selfless part of it that makes you even more sad in a way. Not just my loss. It’s the world’s loss. Most people didn’t save this shit and most people don’t even know this stuff exists.

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Obviously this is all very traumatic, but it seems like you’re holding up OK. It seems like you have a positive attitude. How are you getting through this?

Well, thank you. To be totally real, there’s probably a certain amount of adrenaline that this just brings up in a person. When you have such a trauma, it’s like a certain amount of adrenaline and shock. So, I may very well be running on that. I may see you out at a club or something in a year and just unceremoniously fall down and start crying. I’m prepared for that. There’s just no playbook for this. We’re all prepared to deal with a certain amount of loss. I’ve had dear friends pass away, have lost family members and things like that, and it’s never not sad, but eventually there’s an acceptance to knowing that, well, people are born and then they live and then they pass away. But we’re not hardwired for this. … We really don’t have the idea of losing all of our things and losing our shelter and losing our possessions. We don’t have that hardwired in us.

So, it’s almost like disbelief. But I’m kind of thinking about this out loud, so hopefully this isn’t tedious: I’m thinking that maybe all of my years, I’ve spent the better part of 20 years living out of a suitcase on the road. … I was able to just learn to live in a tour bus, live in a hotel room, live in a small space with a bunch of people and be on the run and adapt to new dressing rooms, new stages, new monitor mixes all over the world, for years and years and years. … We’ve now just settled into a rental house that will be our temporary house for the time being and so maybe it’s going to hit me now, but when we were in the hotel [after evacuating], I still felt like maybe I’m on vacation or maybe I’m on tour. The hotel just tells your brain that your home still exists somewhere, and you’re just in a little outpost of it. But now when I’m moving out of the hotel, I’m realizing, “Oh my God, all this stuff that I’m bringing with me to the next place is literally everything that I still have!” Which is wild.

And I keep saying maybe to your previous question, “How am I getting through this?” I keep telling myself and reminding myself that up until this day, I knew about two people who’d had a house fire in their life. And now I know 35 people, including probably five of my dear, dear, dear, close, close, close friends that I’ve known for years. So ,I imagine everybody is connected to this. Everybody knows somebody who’s directly or indirectly affected by this. So, it’s really been incredible to see the outpouring of love and support and generosity and kindness. I keep saying that this didn’t happen to me — this happened to L.A., and I happened to live in one of the parts of L.A. where this happened. I don’t know if that makes it easier or to stay positive, but you don’t have that victim complex.

I love how you’re talking about how everyone’s been rallying. Your old buddies Green Day did a benefit right at the Troubadour after the fires and brought you up onstage. That must have been a cool moment for you.

Yeah, the fire was barely out. … [Green Day] had a gig in South Africa and I think somewhere in the Middle East, and then they had literally 10 days off, this little, tiny chance to come home and catch their breath. And they took that time and not only did Fire Aid, but then their cover band, a side project called the Coverups, played the show at the Troubadour and gave all the money to Altadena Boys and Altadena Girls, which is like a teen-run fund to help fire victims and mental health resources and all that kind of stuff, which is amazing. And so, I heard they were doing that, and I got in touch with them, and I thought they were going to just invite me to the show. But they were like, “Here’s a list of 20 songs. Pick a couple that you might be comfortable with.” I was freaking out. … I got to pick easy Ramone songs. I don’t have a guitar anymore; my gear was gone. My Ramones record that was signed by every Ramone who’s now all dead, I’ll never get that back. But anyways, I got to have it for a long time. I have the memory of it. I’m OK. It’s going to be OK.

And you got to honor that memory by doing a Ramones song.

Yes, I did “Rockaway Beach.” We were literally at this hotel, and the hotel had these decorative guitars hanging on the wall of the hotel bar, and I went down there at 2 in the morning and pulled one off that wall, and I broke a string on it right away. And I never break strings! Then I took the other one and I was trying to play it. It was so out of tune and I was trying to learn it. I kind of fudged my way through “Rockaway Beach,” and then suddenly I’m at the Troubadour and it’s sold-out, and they’re like, “We’re going to bring Marko up.” And I just come up there and Billie Joe takes his guitar off and hands it to me. So, that was super-fun. Also, it was aside from the fact that it felt really good to participate in something that was helping fire victims, Billie Joe gave me a chance to talk on the mic and sort of say my thing, which was really helpful. And then just playing a song, even though it’s like a two-minute song, that just was so therapeutic. It really gave me a chance to just be myself and connect to something that’s such a big part of me, which is just being a rock ‘n’ roll musician. You realize in that moment that someone can hand you a guitar and you can get onstage with some people and play a song, and you just feel like things are going to be OK.

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And then you got invited to the Grammys that week!

Yeah, this guy John Loken, who was originally the A&R person that signed Sugarcult, he reached out to me out of the blue when the fire happened and was like, “Dude, I’m so sorry. I want to cheer you guys up. I work with the Grammys now. I’m going to try and hook you up for the Grammys.” I thought we were just going to have tickets, but we get there and our Uber goes through is suddenly behind all these Escalades and limousine and drops us off. And I’m on the red carpet standing right next to Olivia Rodrigo and Cardi B.

I know you didn’t really have many clothes anymore, so what did you wear?

I literally walked into a Goodwill and just rifled through some stuff and found a black suit jacket for $6. It was one of those days where they were having half off; it has a yellow tag. I got that jacket, and I just had this plain black T-shirt on underneath it. I found this scarf that I had managed to stuff in the glove compartment of my car and forgot about a month ago, so I threw that on. And then we have this gay couple that we know, and they were out of town, but they gave me the code to their door and told me where their shoe room was. They had a whole shoe room! And I got to go through and every shoe either didn’t fit or it was so garish that I couldn’t pull it off. And then I finally found these pointy-toed St. Laurents, and I just squeezed into them and I wore ‘em on the red carpet.

I thought the Grammys handled the fire situation tastefully. There were people who didn’t want the Grammys to happen, who thought it would be in bad taste. But I feel we still have to do celebratory things.

We’re not canceling things. I keep saying, you can’t let this burn you down too. This can burn down your house, but it can’t burn down your spirit. It can’t burn down your joy. It can’t burn down your love of the things that make you stoked, like music or whatever. And it can’t burn down everybody else’s good time either. The whole world doesn’t have to sit there with a somber situation just because this happened. It’s like, I want to get a contact high off of other people’s happiness. … This might be sounding a little too woo-woo kumbaya California guy here, but I really think that in a weird way, somehow there’s going to be some kind of a net positive. Because the people this happened to are going to open up parts of themselves and their parts of their minds and their outlooks on life that they would never have volunteered for and possibly never had access to had this not happened. And the people who this didn’t happen to are possibly going to reappraise some of the things they maybe take for granted. … I think that maybe this will be the fertilizer that will grow something maybe beautiful in the future. We’re going to rebuild our house. Everyone, most people I know in Altadena in our neighborhood, are planning on rebuilding. And it won’t be the same as it was before, but nothing in life is ever going to be the same as it was before. You have to kind of move forward and embrace the future, I guess.

I’m glad you’re rebuilding your home, and I’m glad you’re keeping a positive attitude. And I think a lot of people who watch this interview will derive a lot of inspiration from your words.

I hope so. … I wrote about this the other day on my personal Facebook page, but I haven’t shared it with anybody in the bigger social sphere. There’s a certain type of tree where the pinecone can last for like 20, 30 years and hold the seeds inside it. And the only way it can be opened is by fire. It’s kind of a weird thing to think that in order for this specific tree to be able to grow new trees, it needs to have fire exposed to it so that the pinecone can release the seeds so that these things happen. So, in a weird way, that’s what I’ve been kind of going with that metaphor. This was not something any of us would’ve ever willingly signed up for, but because it happened to us, we can find a way to maybe reframe it that maybe it happened for us in a really weird way. Maybe there’s something we can learn about our attachment to things or our ability to be resilient that we didn’t know we had in us. Maybe this is something that’s just tested us in a way that if we can ride through it, this can take root and become a better version of yourselves that you never knew was possible. And again, I’m going to invite everybody into that, not just the people who lost their houses. The people whose friends lost their houses, the people who are watching this on the news and imagining what would it be like to lose your house — it doesn’t have to necessarily happen to you for you to be able to der some kind of a lesson out of it. So, that’s something I really want to share with everybody too.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Watch Marko DeSantis’s full conversation in the YouTube player above.