Saturday, May 30, 2026

Altadena Musicians Holds Record Shop Event for Eaton Fire Survivors in Pasadena

The nonprofit has placed more than 1,500 instruments and 1,300 albums into the hands of wildfire survivors since January 2025

The nonprofit Altadena Musicians will hold a free Record Shop Open House and Record Drive on Saturday at 1 p.m. at its Pasadena venue, offering Eaton Fire survivors the chance to select vinyl records to replace collections destroyed when the January 2025 wildfire leveled more than 9,400 structures in Altadena.

The all-ages event at 1260 Lincoln Ave. #1300, Pasadena, CA 91103 features live music, food, vendors, and a record shopping session at the organization’s Backyard Party space, according to an announcement from the nonprofit. The organization has described the event as a “Record Shop Launch Party / Open House” on its Facebook page. NPR reported in January 2026 that a free record shop was already operating at the venue, suggesting Saturday’s event formalizes public access to that resource.

Altadena Musicians was founded by Brandon Jay, a music composer whose credits with wife Gwendolyn Sanford include “Weeds,” “Orange Is the New Black,” and “Romy and Michele: The Musical,” according to the organization’s website. Jay and Sanford lost their Altadena home, their recording studio, and all but two of their instruments in the Eaton Fire.

Since then, the organization has placed more than 1,500 instruments and more than 1,300 albums into the hands of survivors of both the Eaton and Palisades fires, according to the Altadena Musicians website.

“All of that stuff evaporated for thousands of people,” Jay said in a December 2025 interview with LAist. “Look at your own record collection and be like, ‘Wow, what if that whole thing disappeared?'”

Jay has said vinyl collections carry particular weight because they represent decades of personal accumulation.

“Because it’s something that you collect over, like, your whole lifetime, and, like, you start when you’re young with your first album that you saved up for or you got for Christmas or whatever,” Jay said in a January 2026 NPR interview.

The Backyard Party venue opened in September 2025 as a project of Altadena Musicians, according to the LA Times. Matt Chait and Sandra Denver run the space, which includes a stage, a room stocked with donated instruments, and the record shop, according to LAist.

The nonprofit also created the Instrumental Giving app, a registry where musicians can list gear lost in the fires and donors can help replace it, according to the organization’s website.

“I just want it to be, like, an ongoing situation,” Jay said in the NPR interview. “Because for so many people, they’re not ready yet.”

The event is free. For more information, contact publicist KC Mancebo at kcm@clamorhouse.com or 310-614-6036.

Jay said in an October 2025 interview that the recovery work is far from finished. “We still have a very long road ahead replacing what they lost in the Eaton Fire and getting the recording situations back up and running,” he said.