In a city ravaged by wildfires, rock band Dawes quickly became the face of the devastation many in the Los Angeles music community are enduring.
Lead singer Taylor Goldsmith lost his home studio and much of the band’s musical equipment, and his brother Griffin, the band’s drummer, lost his entire home in Altadena.
This past week, Dawes participated in the massive FireAid benefit concert on January 30. A few days later on February 2 they made a surprise appearance as the opener for the 67th Grammys. Backed by an all-star band including Sheryl Crow, Brittany Howard, Brad Paisley and St. Vincent, they delivered an inspiring rendition of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.”
Backstage in the press room, the brothers reflected on their Grammy debut amid unthinkable circumstances.
“In moments like these, it’s very easy for me and I imagine for a lot of musicians.. we sort of feel helpless not knowing what we can do to try to help the rebuild initiative,” Taylor Goldsmith said. “So to be asked to do FireAid and to be asked to do the Grammys, where we could help bring a lot of awareness, raise some money, put a smile on someone’s face—it means the world to us. These are our communities, and any possible way we can help, even if it’s just grabbing a hammer and nails for our friends’ houses and starting to rebuild. So this really was a very proud moment for us.”
Noting the devastation is “immense,” Griffin Goldsmith shared “it’s hard to tell from the pictures were seeing online how massive the toll is.”
The Grammy performance came together quickly and energetically. “When we were asked it was, ‘We’re going to put the band together, you’re going to be in rehearsals next week and this is going to happen,’” Taylor Goldsmith said.
“We’ve never been nominated; we’ve never been here. So for us it’s such a whirlwind of thinking, ‘Oh maybe that’s never going to be part of our journey’ to, ‘You’re going to open the show. It’s wild to think about how our childhood dreams could meet up with a way to help our community at such a tragic moment. So it’s been a very meaningful time for us with all the lowest lows but also some of the highest highs.”
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