Help On The Way Benefit: A Buffalo Benefit for Musicians Displaced by the Los Angeles Fires
Monday, January 20, 2025 6pm at Sportsmens Tavern, Buffalo. $15.00
Feeling powerless and heartbroken watching this hellscape unfurl from the other side of the country, I wanted to put together a benefit for the people who have lost so much in the Los Angeles fires. I reached out to some of the very finest musicians and bands in the Buffalo area, who I’m blessed to call my friends, and asked if they’d be interested in donating their talents to this effort. All of them said yes, without hesitation. I reached out to Jason Hall at the Sportsmen’s Tavern to inquire about a last minute date. He offered me one in seconds flat.
This, in a nutshell, is what I love about Buffalo.
On Monday, January 20, beginning promptly at 6 pm at the Sportsmen’s Tavern, Help On the Way: A Buffalo Benefit for Musicians Displaced by the Los Angeles Fires, will feature performances by Organ Fairchild, the Damone Jackson Outcome, Miller & the Other Sinners, Critt’s Juke Joint and Tiger Chung Lee. The money raised will go to benefit MusiCares’ Los Angeles Fire Relief Fund, to support music professionals impacted by the crisis. MusiCares and the Recording Academy have made a combined pledge of $1 million to kickoff the fundraising effort. Now, we here in Buffalo will have the chance to offer our support.
This is personal, for me, and for so many in our region. My son Declan and his partner Hannah live in the heart of the area deeply impacted by the Eaton fires, in Altadena/Pasadena. They were able to evacuate. Buffalo’s own Zuri Appleby was able to evacuate too, and she’s safe. And so many Buffalo people are out there, many of them musicians and working members of the music industry. What’s left of their homes, their communities, their recording studios, and the tools of their trade remains an unknown at present.
The Pasadena - Altadena area is a beautiful multi-cultural and diverse community full of working families. These communities have been pretty much destroyed. They’re largely gone.
The same is true of the wealthier Pacific Palisades region, where the loss of homes and businesses and damage to the environment has been monumental.
It’s heartbreaking. And we need to do our part to help ease the suffering.
Please join us at the Sportsmen’s on January 20. And if you can’t, please donate directly to MusiCares’ Los Angeles Fire Relief Fund.
Thanks, and much love. JM