Inside the L.A. Charity That’s Helping Musicians Who Lost Their Instruments in the Wildfires

W
hen the Eaton Fire first swept across Altadena, California, in January, reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble and ash, Brandon Jay figured his house, a few blocks south of Altadena Drive, would survive. He was more concerned about damage from the violent winds than from fire. “We’re used to fires in the mountains,” says Jay, a music composer and drummer who, with his wife, Gwendolyn Sanford, has scored TV shows like Orange Is the New Black and Weeds. “It just happens.” 

So, while evacuating in the middle of the night with his wife and two kids, Jay grabbed just a few pieces of essential gear to tide him over until he could return, plus a laptop and hard drives from his home studio. “Basically, I grabbed my wife’s Martin acoustic guitar and my Telecaster and that was it,” Jay recalls. “Everything else pretty much perished in the fire. We lost hundreds of instruments, a whole recording space.” 

The house, which they had owned for 13 years, was destroyed, along with Jay’s studio and everything in it. The family crashed temporarily with a friend in Ventura. But life, and music, carried on. About two weeks after the fire, he and Sanford were performing with their respective bands at a local community event in Pasadena, called Pasadena Neighbor Day. Jay was using percussion that had been donated by his friend Pierre de Reeder, of Rilo Kiley. People kept showing up — acquaintances, friends, people Jay hadn’t seen since before the disaster. And some came bearing gifts. Specifically, they brought musical instruments.

“Many of the instruments were exact ones that we lost in the fire,” says Jay. “Once people started bringing me instruments, I said, ‘Well, I just need to do the same thing.’”

Jay drew inspiration from that experience, and from his local “Buy Nothing” group, through which he’s traded household objects with countless eccentric neighbors over the years. In January, he posted in the Facebook group to ask if anyone had lost an instrument. “All these people started chiming in and letting me know what they’d lost,” he says. “I started connecting them with people that were donating [instruments]. It’s basically that model of, if you have something to give, or if you need something, you just let it be known and someone pops up and can get it to you… This is just like ‘Buy Nothing,’ but let’s do it on a big scale — a citywide scale.”

After the idea took hold in Jay’s mind, he moved fast. At the end of January, he launched Altadena Musicians, a kind of DIY instrument registry intended to help Los Angeles-area musicians who lost beloved gear in the wildfires. (The name is a nod to Altadena Girls, a group that a teenage girl began this year to help others who lost homes and belongings.) Launched with a fiscal sponsorship from the Creative Visions Foundation — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which means donations are tax-deductible — the registry serves to connect musicians who lost instruments or gear in the wildfires with people who have instruments to donate. 

Anyone who lost an instrument can apply. You don’t have to be a professional musician, or even a talented one. Those with extra gear to donate, meanwhile, can search by instrument they want to give — say, a Gibson SG — and the database will show people who lost one. They can read those people’s profiles and, if it’s a match, send a direct message offering to meet up and hand over the goods, no money exchanged.

“It works like a wedding registry,” Jay explains. “You set up an account. You prove that you were impacted. And then you list everything you lost, from the smallest shaker to the biggest grand piano.” In March, the organization launched a mobile app to streamline this process.

Need a rare instrument that’s not easily found in stores? No problem. “It’s such a diverse musical community, and people are stepping up,” Jay says. “A friend of mine reached out to me like, ‘Hey, I have an extra Marxophone. I know you had one of those.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ They’re rare. You don’t see them very often.”

Friends have been impressed, if not surprised, by the force of Jay’s advocacy. “He’s just a small tornado of energy and compassion,” says Everclear frontman Art Alexakis, who got to know Jay after their respective daughters became school friends. “That’s how I would describe him. He can’t stop. He’s one of those guys that everybody likes, because he’s always doing good stuff for people.” 

“It’s Just Changed the Dynamic in our House” 

Musical instruments may not seem like the most pressing casualties of the wildfires. But they’re crucial tools for working musicians to tour or maintain a livelihood, and they often hold deep sentimental value for players who’ve had them for years or even decades.

Just ask Justin Smith, drummer for the psychedelic rock band Howlin Rain, who lost four vintage drum kits, an Epiphone bass, a guitar, and a piano when his Altadena home burned down. When he returned to the neighborhood after the fire, “it was like someone dropped a bomb on it,” Smith says. He could see the garage that once held his drum sets, and it was “just gray ash. Everything was destroyed.”

Those drum sets all held memories and stories for Smith. There was the 1960s Gretsch kit with white marine pearl that he used while touring with Howlin Rain and a reunited lineup of the Seeds. “That was the kit I always loved to play the most,” Smith says. “It’s like putting on your favorite jacket.” There was his beloved Camco late ’60s kit, which he’d also toured with a few times, and a 1967 Ludwig kit, and a sunburnt mid-’60s Premier kit he found just before the pandemic. 

“They’re drum sets that I really and truly loved, and really and truly meant a lot to me,” Smith says. “But at the same time, so much more was lost.”

Though Smith’s exact rig may never be replicable, Altadena Musicians helped him begin the process of rebuilding. “I had gigs on the books that were coming up in the immediate aftermath of the fire,” Smith says. “I needed to fill the gaps as I cobbled together a kit. Altadena Musicians helped do that by donating a snare drum.” (Smith used that snare for a period, until he was able to source and buy a replica of his Ludwig kit.) 

The registry has also brought relief to more casual music lovers, like Sogol Moshfegh, its very first recipient. Until the fires, Moshfegh loved living in Altadena with her husband (a guitarist), their two young sons, and an eclectic assortment of instruments: guitars, ukuleles, Chinese flutes, a djembe, some Orba sound machines. “We’re trying to get them to be musicians,” Moshfegh says of her kids. “This was part of our plan — before our house burned down.”

After the fire, Moshfegh connected with Jay via the “Buy Nothing” group. She made a list of some of the instruments her family had lost, and, in early February, Jay provided the family with some donated replacements that included a Martin acoustic for Moshfegh’s husband, electric guitars for the kids, a travel amp, and a regular amp. He also gifted the family free vinyl from artists impacted by the fires, like the Postal Service (whose Jimmy Tamborello lost his home), and a gift card to Amoeba Music. 

To Moshfegh’s surprise, the instruments transformed the dynamic in their new rental. 

“We didn’t realize that having these instruments back in our lives would be as meaningful as it was, and it’s actually been really amazing and healing,” Moshfegh says. “It’s just changed the dynamic in our house. It didn’t seem like it was the most necessary of things to have, because there are so many other things that we lost. But actually, it was so integral to our spirits.”

I Will Buy You a New Bass… Yes, I Will

Since launching Altadena Musicians several months ago, Brandon Jay has been working the phones seemingly nonstop, calling celebrity friends and music industry contacts to acquire instrument donations and boost the organization’s profile. He recruited Fender as a sponsor — providing a steady flow of guitar donations — and recruited industry veterans like talent buyer Elizabeth Garo and artist manager Laurel Stearns to serve on the foundation’s loosely defined board, helping get everything up and running. 

Jay buzzes with names of famous musicians who’ve gotten involved some way or another. He convinced Weezer to alert their fans to the registry (he’s buddies with their “fifth member,” Karl Koch), convinced Everclear’s Alexakis to personally hand over some instruments from his studio, and convinced the producer Cut Chemist to donate some gear, too. 

“I’ve been part of the community and I just told ’em, ‘I got a bunch of stuff, come down and pick some [instruments] out,’” says Alexakis, whose own northern Pasadena home survived the Eaton Fire with severe damage (he and his family have been living in a hotel while their home is repaired). “I have friends that lost their houses in Palisades and Malibu. The music industry as a whole has really come to help a lot of people.” 

Altadena Musicians has also begun hosting events. On April 27, the org will collaborate with Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner on a “gear drive” at the local venue Zebulon, with a DJ set from the band Automatic. Zinner is reaching out to friends to solicit donations of guitar pedals and recording gear (“all the things we’re deficient in,” as Jay puts it). 

“To me, there’s a big difference between buying something new and getting something used that has a story and some kind of spirit in it,” Zinner says.

Coincidentally, Zinner had begun planning the event on his own before learning about Jay’s organization. “I was thinking, I can’t be the only musician in L.A. with gear that they’re not using that could otherwise go to someone who needs it,” he says. “Altadena Musicians got in touch about essentially doing the same thing. It was kind of a no-brainer to work together.”

Meanwhile, everywhere he goes, Jay meets more Angelenos whose instruments are gone. He’s like a musical matchmaker for a burned-out metropolis. In February, while moving furniture into his family’s new month-to-month apartment in Duarte, California, he met a new neighbor, a 62-year-old man who had also lost his home. Jay asked if he lost any instruments, and the man said, “Yeah, I lost some guitars!”

That same month, Jay got word from Luxxtone Guitars, a custom shop in Arcadia, that the shop had a batch of guitars that had recently been donated. One of the guitars had previously belonged to Elliot Ingber, an early member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. 

“He played on [1966’s] Freak Out!, and he passed away recently and gave some guitars,” Jay says with a sense of awe. “I’m like, ‘Great, I’m giving this guitar to my buddy Jim who lives in my apartment building and who I’d never met before!’ It’s really extraordinary.”