It has been almost a year since the Eaton fire on January 7, 2025, caused severe damage in Altadena, CA. Homes and businesses were destroyed, ruining an idyllic way of life for inhabitants of the Los Angeles County community. On the anniversary of the tragedy, A Concert For Altadena will raise funds for Altadena Builds Back Foundation to continue the efforts to revitalize the community and support those impacted. The event will include live performances by Dawes & Friends at the Pasadena Civic Center in Pasadena, Calif., on January 7, 2026.
Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith, the brothers who founded the Los Angeles-based band Dawes in 2009, lost homes and a recording studio. They have gathered a formidable list of friends who were also harmed by the disaster to play at the show. Performers will include Stephen Stills, Jackson Browne, Brad Paisley, Eric Krasno, Aloe Blacc, Judith Hill, Brandon Flowers of The Killers, Jenny Lewis, and Mandy Moore (Taylor Goldsmith’s wife), as well as special performances by Everclear and Ozomatli.
Taylor Goldsmith told us, “This town has a long way to go to get back to good, so we’ve just been trying to come up with ways to keep the awareness alive, raise some money, and hopefully help reshape what this day on the calendar will come to mean. We didn’t want this anniversary of the fire to come along and simply lay everybody low, reminding everyone of the trauma. Hopefully, this show can help keep everyone motivated, inspired, and hopeful, while also continuing to process the heartache of it all, too.”
Stephen Stills, the legendary Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, has had homes in Los Angeles since the 1960s. He performed at FireAid along with former bandmate Graham Nash, Dawes, and other musicians just weeks after the Eaton fire. Now, nearly a year later he will perform at A Concert for Altadena. Stills told us, “I was deeply concerned for my community and, especially, for my children. Concerns around fire control and the safety of our firefighters are always top of mind, and they deserve our utmost support and care, which is why participating in this event is important to me.”
Eric Krasno, the Grammy-winning guitarist from Soulive and most recently The Heavyweights, is a resident of Pasadena on the border of Altadena. He also performed at FireAid and is heavily involved with A Concert For Altadena, both as a performer and a producer. Kraz said, “I had become friends with the band Dawes, who live in my neighborhood. Taylor’s son and my son are best buddies from school. My son’s school and a lot of our community were burned in the Eaton fire. We had started making some music together last year before the fires. About six months ago, Taylor reached out to me about putting this concert together. We all felt like the community deserved a night to get together, gather, and enjoy a night of music while raising money to help build back Altadena.”
Goldsmith also told us about Altadena Builds Back Foundation and the Pasadena Community Foundation. “PCF has been around for a while, so when the fire happened, they had the resources, relationships, and channels to raise and redistribute 14 million dollars for fire relief and recovery efforts for the Eaton Fire. They seem to have an incredible understanding of who needs it most and how to get it to them.”
“PCF is a wider net, and ABBF was created as a supporting organization of PCF that focuses strictly on long-term residential recovery from the fire. They’re all about keeping Altadena folks in Altadena and not letting some of these folks’ misfortunes turn into a financial opportunity for some group of developers or something. They work with expert nonprofit organizations that are on the ground and specialize in case management and distribution.”
The concert on January 7 will be unique, and there are no plans to sell an audio or video recording. Audience members will enjoy performances by a variety of musicians who rarely, if ever, perform together. Goldsmith said, “The guests included is obviously a wild list of all-time greats. Not only are we gonna be featuring them and their respective super powers, but also hoping to put these together onstage (in some cases for the first time ever) to really help make it a “had to be there” type of night.”
The show is almost sold out, but some tickets are still available through Ticketmaster.
