Anxious by nature, Matthew Willems has always been a planner. Founder of the electronic music label Perfect Driver and an engineer, DJ and producer who makes music as Matthew Anthony, Willems spent much of Monday, Jan. 6 at his apartment window. There he observed the strong, strange wind howling through Altadena, the eastern Los Angeles neighborhood where he and his girlfriend, Nicole Perkins, had lived for years.
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Between the wind and lack of rain, Willems was uneasy. By 4 p.m. on Tuesday, he and Perkins packed go-bags with items including birth certificates, laptops and USB drives containing the source files for every track he’s ever produced and positioned them at the door of their one-bedroom apartment. At 6:50 p.m., they got the update Willems had been fearing.
“My friend who lives a mile down the hill said, ‘Dude, get out of your house immediately. The sky above it is red. I can see flames,’” he recalls.
A minute later, the couple and their dog, a pittie mix named Honey, were driving away. On the road they passed six fire trucks heading into the neighborhood, the sirens and wind creating an urgent duet. An hour later, they’d made it to a friend’s house across town in Venice, at which point their phones blasted the emergency alert to evacuate Altadena. By the next morning, their entire neighborhood — the hardware store, the dive bar, the restaurants and houses, including their own — was destroyed.
“It was like a plane crashed, or a bomb went off, or like we were attacked in an active war zone,” Willems says of the scene he witnessed after he crossed police barricades and went to assess the damage on the evening of Jan. 8. As he left that night, he saw the president’s motorcade entering his neighborhood to tour the devastation.
Willems, like so many others in Los Angeles this month, lost everything: clothing, keepsakes and all his studio equipment. At the same time, thousands of residents of Pacific Palisades and Malibu were fleeing their own homes as another monster inferno devoured city blocks. And his story is an all-too-familiar one across the city, as the fires continue raging into their second week with definite end, much less a timeline to repair the damage or rebuild.
On Jan. 11, California Governor Gavin Newsom told Meet the Press that these fires will likely be considered one of the worst natural disasters in United States history. At least 27 people and countless animals died and approximately 12,300 structures were damaged or destroyed, to the cost of an estimated $250 billion so far. These numbers are stunning. They also do little to fully relay the feelings of panic, shock and devastation permeating Los Angeles during a week when ash rained even on parts of the city that weren’t actively aflame.
Like many other groups in Los Angeles, the city’s music community has been hit hard, and is suffering. A widely circulated spreadsheet of music industry professionals who have lost their homes contains more than 360 names — of musicians, publicists, engineers, studio techs, podcast hosts, photographers, record executives and more, along with numbers tallying respective spouses, children and pets. The list includes legendary producer Bob Clearmountain, Griffin Goldsmith of the band Dawes, the musician Poolside and many others, both well-known and rank-and-file industry members; many entries include GoFundMe links, as people search for ways to try to rebuild at least some semblance of the lives they led before the flames.
“Every piece of gear. Every guitar. Every flier I saved. Every record I dug for years and years. It’s all gone in an instant,” Poolside, whose real name is Jeffrey Paradise, wrote on Instagram while sharing videos of his smoldering home.
Some are finding solace in a determination to be helpful to those in need, and both the music community and the general population have taken quick action to support survivors. Within hours of the first fires, a dizzying number of volunteer opportunities were created to provide shelter, food, clothing and other support. The operators of Zebulon, an independent venue in the city’s Frogtown neighborhood, have transformed the space into a donation hub where volunteers have spent days accepting and sorting clothing, diapers, sleeping bags and other necessities. Guitar Center’s non-profit Music Foundation is helping musicians replace lost instruments, while We Are Moving the Needle is offering micro-grants to early and mid-career creators.
Outside of official organizations, a quick scroll through Instagram after the fires first broke out found individuals offering services ranging from free acupuncture to sketches of the homes people lost.
“The response has been immediate,” says Alejandro Cohen, director of music content at the city’s globally influential NPR affiliate, KCRW. “It’s been heartwarming to see the outpouring of support in the form of something as simple as saying, ‘I’m here thinking of you,’ to financial donations, to material donations in the form of instruments or in the form of saying, ‘I have a recording studio. Do you want to come and finish the job you were working on?’ Any form of support you can imagine, everyone is offering it up.”
The station itself is serving the community by quickly building a robust online resource hub for how to get and give support, along with, Cohen says, just “sharing the music that provides comfort, companionship and sometimes even just a way to escape for a moment.”
The fires have upended the city’s event schedule and rippled through the music industry at large. The Weeknd cancelled his Jan. 25 show at the Rose Bowl and postponed the release of a new album, while Beyoncé postponed an announcement scheduled for Jan. 14. Many shows have been cancelled or postponed, with others shifting gears to become fundraisers. Meanwhile many large and small-scale benefits by a genre-spanning collection of artists and promoters will happen throughout the city in the coming weeks.
On Jan. 13, while firefighters were still working to contain the Palisades and Eaton Canyon fires, the Recording Academy announced the Grammy Awards ceremony will still happen on Feb. 2 at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena, along with myriad related events such as the annual MusiCares fundraiser, which will raise funds for relief efforts. (Amid some backlash, the statement by the Academy stressed that all of the events “will have a fundraising element.”) MusiCares tells Billboard that it has already received more than 2,000 requests for assistance from music professionals affected by the fires, with the volume of need exceeding $4 million.
Universal, BMG, Sony and Warner, among other music companies including Billboard, subsequently cancelled their parties and events around the ceremony, with some of the money used to host these parties being diverted to fire aid support. Meanwhile, artists including Metallica, the Eagles, Doja Cat and Beyoncé have pledged millions to help support victims, as have corporations like Amazon, YouTube, Netflix and more.
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But so far, Willems says the only immediate assistance he’s received has been from his GoFundMe. The day after his home was destroyed, he spent three hours on the phone with FEMA trying to access a $770 grant the organization is offering to fire victims; FEMA’s support team ultimately wasn’t able to provide the money. Willems says his email to MusiCares has not yet been answered, given the sheer volume of requests for assistance.
“Our team is working tirelessly to process these requests with the utmost care and urgency,” says Laura Segura, executive director of MusiCares. “Each individual’s request is carefully reviewed to ensure effective and equitable support is provided. For those with more significant needs — such as individuals experiencing medical challenges, the loss of essential music equipment, or longer-term displacement — we are conducting additional follow-ups to offer tailored assistance.”
“The minute I heard the apartment was gone I wrote copy [for my GoFundMe], found a compelling image then emailed the fundraiser to my music friends,” says Willems. “That’s the real community backing me up.” Willems has thus far been offered help by headliner level DJs he’s never spoken to before, along with many fellow artists and industry professionals who are sending money, helping him and his girlfriend find a new place to live and just checking in daily to make sure they’re okay.
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Among the many things Willems lost in the fire was a jacket he got while working at electronic digital download platform Beatport. “I was really proud of that coat,” he says. “The someone else who works there was like, ‘Hey man, you can have mine.’ So now I own one coat.”
He calls such acts of kindness stabilizing in a deeply stressful and uncertain moment, when he and others have lost their homes, all their belongings and the sense of safety created by these things. Many of these people have reported bumping into price gouging as they re-enter the city’s already expensive rental market. Willems, like many others, observed looters rooting through burned down homes in Altadena before the fire was even out. He says he and Perkins will not be returning to the neighborhood, largely due to concerns about air quality during the coming cleanup.
“It’s not a day, and it’s not a week,” says Willems. “This is a recovery that’s going to take us years. We haven’t stood in front of our apartment to have a good cry. We haven’t had a chance yet. We’re too busy trying to not get f–ked.”
For more information or to apply for support, contact MusiCares at MusiCaresRelief@musicares.org or call 1-800-687-4227. To donate, visit musicares.org/firerelief.