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\n\tBut I kick myself for that moment and not understanding the severity of it in real time. I have a 15-passenger van that I use for my solo tour stuff and instead of grabbing all of our family photos and keepsakes, I just threw a couple of surfboards and wetsuits in the back. And I did the dishes! I left home around 2 o\u2019clock and traffic was already batshit. It was smoky and hazy. I remember my oldest asking me, \u201cDo you think we might lose our house?\u201d I was like, \u201cNo.\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe next morning in Santa Barbara, I looked at the fire map, and it didn\u2019t show it getting into our part of town. I thought we were OK. Then I called my neighbor. He said, \u201cThe whole neighborhood is gone, man,\u201d and sent me a video of our street on fire. I saw my house.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe lost everything. It\u2019s forever changed my understanding of, whatever it is, wildfire, flood, hurricane, war \u2014 we all live through that imagery a lot, and you look at it, like, \u201cHow horrible.\u201d But until you experience it yourself, it\u2019s hard to understand how connected you are to your home. A day and a half after our neighborhood burned, I rode a bike up into the Palisades from Santa Monica. Everything was still smoldering. Totally post-apocalyptic. In the weeks that followed, I dug through the rubble but was only able to pull out a handful of charred ceramics. Nothing survived. It\u2019s still hard to talk about without getting emotional. I feel like I\u2019ve lost control of my emotions much of the time. I\u2019m not sure when that\u2019s going to go away.<\/p>\n
\t\tDarryl \u201cJMD\u201d Moore, 66, Freestyle Fellowship Drummer-Engineer, Altadena\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe wind had already blown my fence over by the time the fire started in Eaton Canyon. I could see the glow in the sky and flashes as transformers blew. The gusts were blowing east, so I thought we were safe. Eventually, the sky was just orange. It looked like a sea of fire over our heads, and we were in the curl of the wave. I remember staring at the transformer outside our house like it was a bomb.<\/p>\n
\n\tI tried to put some water on my roof, but the stream would go up four feet and turn sideways in the wind. Around 3:30 a.m., the sheriff rolled by on a bullhorn. When I saw the terror on my wife\u2019s face, we got in our cars.<\/p>\n
\t\tDarryl Moore\u2019s Home\t<\/p>\n
\n\tMy son\u2019s friend got video of our house burning the next morning. The intensity was crazy. I lost the 1965 Rogers Holiday drum kit I used to record \u201cInner City Boundaries\u201d with Freestyle Fellowship, and all of the tapes I made with those kids. Our whole archives burned to dust. I had reels and reels of DATs covering the beginning of the 1990s hip-hop scene at the Good Life Cafe in Crenshaw and Project Blowed in Leimert Park. I lost the coffee table that saved my mom\u2019s life when it stopped a bullet that randomly blasted through my grandmother\u2019s front door. My wife is a costumer and lost her archive.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe faced some racism trying to find a place to rent. Not all the time, but enough. We found an apartment in Mid-City and lived like college students for months. Now, we\u2019re renting in Altadena.<\/p>\n
\n\tOur insurance is only paying $600,000 to rebuild our house. There\u2019s no way we can replace what we had for that. Every builder says we need $1.2 million minimum. We have lawyers representing us against Southern California Edison, but that could take years. We jumped through all of the hoops for a $500,000 SBA loan, thinking we could pay it off early with a settlement, but the fine print said we\u2019d still be on the hook for an extra $244,000 in interest. It\u2019s predatory.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tMoore in front of where his house used to be.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNancy Dillon for Rolling Stone<\/p>\n
\n\tI can\u2019t explain the emotional stress from everything. It\u2019s soul-sucking. We moved here in 1996, and it became my home. We raised four kids here. There was a wealth of jazz cats living nearby. I used to have coffee with Bennie Maupin, who played with Miles Davis. I would sit in on Bobby Bradford\u2019s classes at Pasadena City College. They lost their homes, too.<\/p>\n
\n\tFellow musicians Terrace Martin and Kamasi Washington organized a benefit that helped me buy a new computer, the literal heart of my studio. I\u2019ve only written one piece of music since the fire. It\u2019s not in me right now. The spark of creativity is dull.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhat I miss the most about my old house is practicing drums, looking out the window, and seeing my wife come through the door dancing. It was always the best feeling. That\u2019s the reason to rebuild, to get that back. We worked hard all our lives. I was a traveling aircraft mechanic. My wife works in TV. A short day for her is 14 hours. We want the house we had, the house we deserve. All these rich corporations are buying up homes to rent them. We have to protect this kooky, quirky town of Altadena that\u2019s full of artists and people with chickens and horses. We\u2019re never going to get everything back, but we want our house, debt-free, for our descendants. Our property is our legacy. It\u2019s for our children. I\u2019ll get a sign that says \u201cMooreland.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\tZachary Cole Smith, 41, DIIV Frontman, Altadena\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWe love Altadena. We moved there in 2022, and it\u2019s a tight-knit little zone. I don\u2019t think about the fires that much now; my wife was seven-months pregnant, and we had a two-year-old. I got a call from a friend, and he was like, \u201cHey, there\u2019s a fire in Eaton Canyon.\u201d It was our son\u2019s bedtime, so we decided to get a hotel somewhere. It was a tough night; we put our son to bed, and then I started getting really worried that the hotel room that I booked was closer to the fire than our house was. I kept checking the evacuation zones, and early the next morning, one of our neighbors sent us a video near the house, and she said, \u201cIt looks like it\u2019s snowing \u2014 the sky is orange.\u201d At that point, it was too late. Everything we owned was gone.<\/p>\n
\n\tThere\u2019s no one thing that everybody\u2019s experiencing. It\u2019s unleashed this maze of people trying to piece their lives back together. There\u2019s a lot of grief. It\u2019s more than the houses \u2014 these are whole entire ecosystems and livelihoods and communities. It\u2019s all been dismantled, and people have to piece it back together the best they can.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tSmith\u2019s burned-down home.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Zachary Cole Smith<\/p>\n
\n\tWe bounced around for a while. We went and stayed with my wife\u2019s mom, then we found a place that was nice \u2014 a small, temporary thing. Our son was born while we were living there. We\u2019re going to be rebuilding. We have a lot of love for Altadena, and I\u2019ve never really felt rooted in a place before. You know, New York feels so much bigger than you. We plan to die in Altadena.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHaving two kids puts your life into perspective, so I feel like I am taking music more seriously after the fires than I ever have. I really see this as my job and my livelihood. I think a lot of musicians, when they get a little bit older, start to think about \u201cWhat am I doing?\u201d And the thing that stuck for me was: Music was fun at a certain point, and when it\u2019s your job, you can start to forget that. And so that\u2019s a really big reminder that I\u2019ve been trying to enforce on myself and the band. Balancing that with this immediacy of taking it really seriously, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tI think about hope a lot. We made a record before the fire that I think dealt a lot with the idea of hope in the face of the world. Hope is this very personal thing, and you can find it anywhere. But for me, it\u2019s really my family. Even if you\u2019re completely black-pilled, which maybe I am, having kids in the face of that \u2026 there is hope and optimism there. Everything we do, it\u2019s for the family. The kids.<\/p>\n
\t\tChristophe Beck, 56, Film-Score Composer, Palisades\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI moved to the Palisades eight years before the fire. It was a bubble of peace inside greater L.A., with a real small-town feeling. Once my now-wife moved in, we started to grow roots.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn Jan. 7, I got a notification from a neighbor around 10:40 a.m. I walked outside and saw a concerning plume of smoke over the hill. Twenty minutes later, smoke filled a third of the sky. It was shocking how fast it grew. We started gathering essentials. It was confusing. On one hand, we were being cautious and expected to be home in two days. On the other hand, there was a looming feeling of catastrophe. That led to odd decisions in retrospect. I spent eight minutes carefully portioning out a week\u2019s worth of medication when I could have taken it all in seconds. I had instruments collected over 30 years and took just one microphone. We packed one suitcase, loaded our dogs in the car, and left for our house in the desert.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe were up all night watching the news. Around 6 a.m., we watched an ABC reporter strolling through our neighborhood. It was house after house flattened. Then the camera swung to our street corner. We freaked out, trying to catch a glimpse of our house. Our neighbor\u2019s house was in the way, but immediately behind it, we could see flames. We were watching our home burn live on the news.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tBeck sifting through the rubble.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Christophe Beck<\/p>\n
\n\tAs soon as the neighborhood opened to residents, we were back. I spent a lot of time on the site just crying. We didn\u2019t find anything of value, but sitting and grieving there felt important. The frame of my piano was visible, and I sat in the middle to process the loss. We lost the guest book from our wedding. We both had bins and bins of old family photos. Every musical instrument we owned was gone. I lost a modular synth with hundreds of individual components that had been evolving for years. Losing that in one night was tough. Good luck trying to explain the value of that to an insurance company.<\/p>\n
\n\tEven as you\u2019re trying to process the loss, the most giant pain-in-the-ass administrative project lands in your lap. We looked for a rental, but it was out of control. Every listing had hundreds of applicants. We\u2019re very fortunate that we were able to put together a plan to purchase something. We found something we love in Silver Lake and have been making it our home. The whole experience has been a practice in surrender, every different flavor of surrender.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe\u2019re not rebuilding yet. It\u2019s unclear what our neighborhood will look and feel like going forward. If it\u2019s anything like it was before, rebuilding is definitely something we\u2019d consider. But if a lot of developers come in, it could become very different.<\/p>\n
\n\tThere\u2019s also PTSD from the actual fire. I was around a campfire in the desert a couple of months later. From a logical perspective, it was a normal campfire, but to me, it just felt huge. It brought up\u00a0a lot of fear that I hadn\u2019t quite processed. Recovery requires patience, and we\u2019re working on it. That house in the Palisades truly felt like home. My wife and I travel often for work, and returning there always felt safe and welcoming. I love our new home, but I\u2019m still searching for that feeling.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe landed on our feet, but we\u2019re still waking up and remembering something else we lost. We\u2019re in a much better place, emotionally, but I don\u2019t think the sadness will ever go away completely. The waves are less frequent, but a part of my heart was lost that day.<\/p>\n
\t\tTony \u201cFat Tony\u201d Obi, 37, Rapper, Altadena\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI thought my Altadena house would be my forever home. I could see the mountains from my living room, parrots in the trees, and stars at night. My friend Stephanie Ward lived across the street. We worked together on\u00a0Thrift Haul With Fat Tony, our 2018 series for Super Deluxe. My friend\u00a0Kathleen Hanna and her husband, Adam, organized a nearby softball hang. Rancho Bar was the perfect dive. Everything I needed was within two miles.<\/p>\n
\n\tI\u2019d lived there for a year and was just settling in when the fire happened. It was the first house that felt fully mine, with my taste and energy. The holidays were great. My girlfriend and I spent many nights by the fireplace and cooked amazing meals. I was looking forward to 2025.<\/p>\n
\n\tI\u2019ve lived in Los Angeles most of my adult life and seen wildfires, but usually near Malibu. On Jan. 7, the news said the power might be shut off, so I went to stay with my girlfriend. I didn\u2019t think I was about to lose everything. I only grabbed my laptop. I saw distant flames but wasn\u2019t in a mandatory-evacuation zone. I live west of Lake Avenue, and we never got a warning.<\/p>\n
\n\tFifteen minutes later, the sky was blood red. Fire trucks were everywhere. On the freeway, I could see the whole canyon on fire. It looked like an action movie. I was scared for everyone in its path. We watched the news all night, and the fire maps still showed flames mostly east of Lake. The next day, we learned my entire street had burned down.<\/p>\n
\n\tI lost everything: memorabilia, analog music, first-edition books, vintage magazines, journals, photos, and clothes I\u2019d collected since my teens. I lost VHS tapes of my first and third birthdays, which devastated me.<\/p>\n
\n\tI was renting, and for a while, I didn\u2019t want to live there again. It felt like my Altadena dream was dead. But on Dec. 3, my girlfriend and I went to the 105th anniversary of Altadena\u2019s Christmas Tree Lane, a street of giant trees that somehow didn\u2019t burn. It reminded me how random the fire was.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tTony Obi in his new neighborhood, Lincoln Heights.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSandy Honig<\/p>\n
\n\tI now live in Lincoln Heights in an 1890 Victorian, which I love. When I was back in Altadena on Dec. 3, I ran into old neighbors excited about rebuilding. It was sweet hearing them talk about the homes they loved. I\u2019m feeling more positive about Altadena again.<\/p>\n
\n\tMy therapist says I was grieving, partly because of a past fire. When I was 11, a fire started in our attic, and my bedroom was destroyed. I could have been hurt, but I\u2019d fallen asleep in my grandmother\u2019s room. I\u2019m scared of fires now, but there are other natural disasters, too.<\/p>\n
\n\tGoing back to Altadena is still TBD. I\u2019m optimistic, but it\u2019s not in my current plans. Maybe it can be home again someday. Even though I lived there only a year, that house set the blueprint for what I want my home to be moving forward.<\/p>\n
\t\tDiana Baron, Music Publicist, Palisades\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI moved to the Palisades 32 years ago, when my son was little, so he could attend the great public schools. I\u2019d evacuated before, but never like this, never with flames visible from my neighbor\u2019s driveway. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon when I started throwing things in my car to leave. I remember staring at a suitcase, debating what to take. \u201cI\u2019ll get it tomorrow,\u201d I thought. It didn\u2019t register there might not be a tomorrow for my house.<\/p>\n
\n\tI grabbed my dog, a Rolling Stone cover of me that the ad department made when I was ad director at Warner Bros. in the 1970s, and a signed Keith Haring lithograph for A Very Special Christmas.<\/p>\n
\n\tI drove to my brother\u2019s house near Century City. I had just installed a new fire-alarm system, and the alerts kept pinging: \u201cSmoke. Smoke. Smoke.\u201d I called the company to confirm it was only smoke. In reality, that was probably when everything was burning.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tBaron and Al Green, who sang at her son\u2019s christening.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Diana Baron<\/p>\n
\n\tThe next morning, a neighbor biked up the hill and sent video. Only my chimney was still standing. The impossible had happened. Everything was gone: a Beatles program book signed to me when I was a teenager, a drawing Leonard Cohen made for me, a video of Al Green at my son\u2019s christening in the backyard, playing a guitar, singing, and lifting him in the air.<\/p>\n
\n\tI was devastated. In my work, we\u2019re always managing what we say. This time, I couldn\u2019t manage anything. When I called my son, I broke down crying. He didn\u2019t want me to see the ruins alone. The next day, we parked in Santa Monica and walked two miles because police were turning people back. At Sunset Boulevard and Drummond Street, almost nothing was recognizable. Landmarks were gone. Flames were still burning in my neighbor\u2019s yard. I tried to dig through the debris, but I couldn\u2019t even identify the rooms. Everything was blackened except a small rubber duck and a statue of our Labrador, Romeo, that my son made when he was six.<\/p>\n
\n\tPeople stepped in immediately. Laura Swanson, who leads marketing and press at Warner, found me the Mar Vista house where I\u2019m staying. Jeff Gold, formerly head of creative services at Warner, helped me find an adjuster so I wouldn\u2019t have to negotiate with the insurance company alone. John Vlautin from A&M gave me an Eames chair, my first piece of furniture.<\/p>\n
\n\tMy neighbors across the street aren\u2019t returning. They\u2019ve moved to Laguna. But I couldn\u2019t walk away. Every day, I remember something else that\u2019s gone, my dad\u2019s gold watch that he gave to my son on the day he died, my grandmother\u2019s antique bronze lamps from China, all my signed first editions. They\u2019re irreplaceable. Still, I try to focus on what\u2019s ahead.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tBaron\u2019s new home and tattoo commemorating resilience.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Diana Baron<\/p>\n
\n\tAbout two months ago, when the second story began rising, I invited friends to see the construction. I could finally picture where everything would go. Now, when I visit, I don\u2019t want to leave. I go alone on weekends and sit in the empty rooms. We planted 16 ficus trees and will add a sycamore, grounding the space again. I think I\u2019ll be back living at home by the Fourth of July.<\/p>\n
\n\tA couple of weeks after the fire, my son asked if I would get a tattoo with him. I got a migrating\u00a0mallard. It\u2019s from an old Japanese woodcut. It\u2019s my nature to just keep going, no matter what. Even though I still feel sad sometimes, I keep going. I am the migrating\u00a0mallard. I can\u2019t give up.<\/p>\n
\t\tStephanie Weiss, 41, Music Publicist, Palisades\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWe lived with our two young daughters, way up Palisades Drive in\u00a0the Highlands\u00a0area\u00a0where it was more affordable. We were\u00a0very\u00a0close to where the original Lachman Fire started on Jan. 1. At the time, I thought that was the scariest thing ever. A week later, it reignited and became the Palisades Fire. I was out running errands that morning. As I drove back, I saw the smoke. They wouldn\u2019t let me up my street,\u00a0and they wouldn\u2019t let anyone leave. My husband was home with our 19-month-old daughter, Florence. They were trapped, and I was freaking out, panicking.<\/p>\n
\n\tI picked up our older daughter\u00a0from preschool and went to my mom\u2019s house to watch the news. My husband and I were talking by phone, but it was so chaotic we didn\u2019t know what to do. They had to wait to be escorted by firefighters through the\u00a0flames on both sides of Palisades Drive. We\u00a0finally reunited at a hotel that night. My husband was so shaken \u2014 he didn\u2019t want to talk about how terrifying the drive had been. He only said Florence was singing as she held his hand.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe next day, we learned our\u00a036-unit complex\u00a0had burned. We lost everything \u2014 old photos, record collections, our kids\u2019 first artwork, three\u00a0deep freezers full of breast milk. I\u00a0had\u00a0worked so hard to pump so I could get\u00a0Florence\u00a0to two years. My husband, a musician known as 505 Palisades, lost all of his vintage synthesizers, drum machines, and recording gear. It was all gone. But he had grabbed a bag off my desk, and inside was an old ring from my\u00a0grandmother.\u00a0The girls must have randomly tucked it in there while playing in my closet. It feels incredibly special now.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe saved for a decade to buy that townhouse.\u00a0Unfortunately, our insurance was bad because the area was high-risk. Everything was underinsured.\u00a0I almost wish we could just walk away, but we still have HOA dues, property taxes, and a mortgage. Those don\u2019t go away, and now we\u2019re also paying rent\u00a0and eventually rebuilding costs.\u00a0It\u2019s all so expensive and constant. It\u2019s a lot of pressure.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t(Left) Stephanie with her daughter Florence. Jeanette (right) in front of the townhouse.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Stephanie Weiss<\/p>\n
\n\tIt feels like a grieving process, shocking and hard to handle, but you have to be there for the kids. Staying busy helps. Focusing on my work as\u00a0an independent\u00a0music publicist\u00a0and owner of my company,\u00a0Sweiss PR,<\/a>\u00a0has made me feel better.\u00a0I\u2019m thankful to have supportive long-time\u00a0clients and colleagues.\u00a0I never stopped working.\u00a0I also never went back to the site. I still haven\u2019t been. They invited us to go collecting, but I didn\u2019t want to see everything in ash. I think about my old life, and I don\u2019t want to see it destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\tI\u2019m not sure if we\u2019ll ever move back. Rebuilding makes sense, so that\u2019s the plan. What else can you do? It was a really nice place, but I know it will look different. They haven\u2019t even started reconstruction. Maybe once they do, I\u2019ll go back. I don\u2019t know how it will feel. I\u2019ve never been through anything like this.<\/p>\n
\n\tThere\u2019s still financial stress, but we\u2019re doing better. Our daughter is happy in her new school. MusiCares gave out Walmart gift cards for the holidays, which was very kind. We\u2019ve built a replacement life. We\u2019re OK. We\u2019re still here. I just have to be grateful everyone survived and is healthy. It sounds so clich\u00e9, but it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n
\t\tLarry LaLonde, 57, Primus Guitarist, Palisades\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s funny because now that it\u2019s been a year, you start to look back and it feels like it\u2019s been five years at the same time in different ways.<\/p>\n
\n\tLuckily, the kids were home because it was Christmas vacation. I told everybody, \u201cThere\u2019s a fire. Gather up whatever you want to take with you.\u201d And it started getting worse. I started going through, \u201cOK, what\u2019s the important stuff?\u201d Everyone in the street was looking up at the hill going, \u201cOh wow.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cWe\u2019re getting ready to get out of here.\u201d They\u2019re like, \u201cYou\u2019re leaving?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tA couple of days after the fire arrived, they were letting people go back up there. The cops drove me up, and it was looking worse and worse. The officer that drove me up, it was his first trip up, and by the time we got to the top of the hill, he was like, \u201cHoly shit.\u201d And the first thing we came across on our way to the house was a couple of other cops arresting looters.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen we turned onto our street, it looked like a bomb had gone off. It was just chimneys and smoke and smoldering. At our house, nothing was left. There was a chimney, and, surprisingly, I saw a lot of the backs of television sets that were still floating around. I was looking at the pile like, \u201cI wonder if there\u2019s anything left under this rubble?\u201d because there\u2019s a lot of guitars in my studio.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen we evacuated, the first thing I grabbed was this double-neck Gibson that Alex Lifeson from Rush had given me. It\u2019s like, \u201cWhat\u2019s the most important one?\u201d I think right now there are 58 guitars that are gone. There\u2019s one that I had since I was in high school that I used on all of the Primus records that didn\u2019t make it out, and there\u2019s a bunch of ones that Gibson had built for me custom that didn\u2019t make it.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe dumbest thing I did \u2014 the thing that will haunt me forever \u2014 is I had a giant hard drive on the desk that was just for this situation. I walked by it probably 20 times and forgot to grab it. It\u2019s like losing a life\u2019s work of stuff that you were smart enough to put on the hard drive, but not smart enough to take in an emergency.<\/p>\n
\t\tLarry LeLonde\t<\/p>\n
\n\tFirst, we went to a hotel, and after that, my manager called and said, \u201cCome to my house in Santa Monica.\u201d While we were there, Matt Stone, my friend from South Park called, and he\u2019s like, \u201cHey, man, I\u2019m out of town for a couple weeks. You can stay at our house.\u201d That was a lifesaver. And Les [Claypool] was awesome. He was like, \u201cWhat can I help you with?\u201d And just getting into the room with him, later, that meant the world, too. It was like, \u201cOK, I\u2019m back to normalcy,\u201d because that\u2019s definitely my extended family. He hooked me up with one of his super awesome basses, so that softened the blow using a few of the instruments.<\/p>\n
\n\tOur kids have been pretty stoic throughout the whole thing. I\u2019m sure that they\u2019ve been putting on a brave face. My wife\u2019s had a hard time because she lost so many family things that were from her grandmother. It\u2019s been really hard losing all of the sentimental things like that and just losing your home in general. Everyone\u2019s handled it very well, but I know it\u2019s been tough.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe government response feels nonexistent for the most part. There\u2019s an amazing councilwoman here, Traci Park, who seems to really care about it, but other than that, it feels a little bit abandoned. A lot of outsiders say \u201cOh, California sucks, and it\u2019s badly run.\u201d And you\u2019re like, \u201cCome on, man, here\u2019s your chance to prove these people wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWe\u2019re in a rental in Venice [California] now. We\u2019re actually getting ready to move to another one. We\u2019ll eventually move back to the Palisades. The finances dictate that. We have to rebuild our house because we can\u2019t, for lack of a better way of saying it, afford to sell the dirt lot. It would probably cost me more than I actually have. But we love the Palisades. It\u2019s a great place. I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s going to turn into, but our thought now is we have to rent until we can rebuild this thing.<\/p>\n
\t\tTaylor Goldsmith, 40, Dawes Singer-Guitarist, Altadena\t<\/p>\n
\n\tI lost my studio and my garage, but I didn\u2019t lose my house. I also have three kids \u2014 my youngest was three months old at the time of the fire \u2014 so I was blinded by fatherhood to really let too much of what happened take me down. Some of my friends, they stopped sleeping. I couldn\u2019t relate to that because I was in survival-kid mode.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter eight months, we\u2019re back in Altadena. We moved back in late August\/early September after all of the remediation was done. It\u2019s wild being back in our house because it looks the same, but every rug, chair, article of clothing was replaced. All the walls were torn up because all the insulation and ducting had to be replaced. We anticipated some serious emotional processing upon returning when we would drive through the neighborhood and see what beloved structures were gone, or know that Griffin\u2019s house up the street wasn\u2019t there. We expected that to knock us on our ass regularly, and it did, but it also very quickly became only nice to be back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tA lot of that is the goodwill around the community. I went on a run, and there were strangers in their cars leaning out with their fists in the air just saying hi. There\u2019s a lot more goodwill and determination. Some construction is being started, and everyone\u2019s having those conversations about how much of this is going to be developers or the banks that originally owned the property, and it\u2019s going to be a mixed bag. That\u2019s how neighborhoods work. There\u2019s going to be some sharks, and there\u2019s going to be some really benevolent people that are helping the right people get in there. But it feels good to be home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tTaylor Goldsmith in his studio<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of DAWES<\/p>\n
\n\tThe fire has really opened my eyes in a beautiful way to how we are much more members of Los Angeles than I thought. L.A. is not a town that seems to celebrate its hometown heroes in the same way a smaller city might. Every time we\u2019ve played hometown shows it never felt like there was ownership being declared, and I always wished for that. But now, whether it\u2019s Kimmel or the Grammys or all of the little fundraisers, it just feels like, \u201cWhoa, we are an L.A. band and always have been.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAs a writer, there\u2019s been one song I wrote about [the fire], but trying to tell the story feels useless. For me, it became more a song about the subtle ways I feel permanently changed, but not in a dark way. A lot of people would be like, \u201cI can\u2019t wait to hear the next batch of songs,\u201d after the fire, but I don\u2019t think there can be many songs about this. Rather than specific tunes, it\u2019s imbued other ideas and songs and given a layer to what the rest can be about.<\/p>\n
\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n
\n\tThe last record we put out, Oh Brother, there are songs like \u201cMister Los Angeles\u201d and \u201cHouse Parties\u201d; there\u2019s a little more levity. So far, the batch that I\u2019ve written, there hasn\u2019t been a lot of that. It\u2019s more about how it\u2019s affected my overall perspective, and you can sense the fire in that, again not in a way where we\u2019re not all of a sudden some depressive metal band. I wrote a song about my relationship with our dad, and I feel the fire in that song, even though it\u2019s definitely not about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tOverall, I\u2019ve realized I\u2019m not comfortable in this position of being a victim of something. When we were doing these fundraisers and people would give me this wide-eyed look of \u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d I\u2019d be like, \u201cWhoa, whoa, whoa, I don\u2019t wanna do that. I just want to get back to joking and talking about songs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"O ne year after wildfires fueled by hurricane-force winds roared through Los Angeles County, killing 31 people and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64704,3802,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-123717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-dawes","9":"tag-fire","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-headlines","12":"tag-la-news","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","15":"tag-los-angeles-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}