Singer-songwriters Lisa Simmons-Santa Cruz and her husband Francisco Carroll Santa Cruz have been going via a difficult time final March after they labored on Snoop Dogg’s 2025 gospel album, “Altar Name.”
“We have been truly writing all these songs in a resort, displaced,” Carroll Santa Cruz mentioned.
The couple, who’ve labored within the leisure business for greater than 29 years writing and producing music for artists like Kelly Rowland and tv reveals equivalent to “Determined Housewives,” had misplaced their Altadena dwelling within the Eaton hearth just a few months earlier.
Nonetheless, the platinum singer-songwriters didn’t need to move up the chance, which got here up in the course of the last week of their resort keep when Simmons-Santa Cruz and Carroll Santa Cruz have been launched to Snoop Dogg via artists Charlie Bereal and Level 5ve. Though Snoop Dogg had additionally arrange a donation heart for hearth victims, the couple selected to not share their very own displacement with him or anybody else within the music business.
“We wanted one thing the hearth couldn’t burn and that was our music,” Simmons-Santa Cruz mentioned. “At the moment, we would have liked one thing separate from the hearth — one thing that the hearth couldn’t contact, it was too traumatic to maintain revisiting what we’d misplaced, so our work grew to become our peace and our escape.”
Regardless of the lack of their dwelling studio and the restrictions of working from a resort room, they efficiently accomplished the undertaking in a brief period of time. Simmons-Santa Cruz later described the expertise as “divine intervention within the midst of tragedy,” saying the music gave them area to heal via religion whereas doing what they cherished most.
“It was comforting, we didn’t must concentrate on the hearth or what was misplaced, the music gave us a second to mirror on life, and it grew to become a saving grace,” she mentioned.
The couple had initially resided within the Altadena dwelling with Simmons-Santa Cruz’s 77-year-old mom, who first purchased the home in 1974. Within the aftermath of the fires, the couple was compelled to determine the place they have been going to stay as in addition they grappled with the immense paperwork, payments and insurance coverage claims that got here with the lack of their dwelling.
MusiCares, a well being and welfare charity for musicians based by the Recording Academy in 1989, provided them help.
“They have been like, the FEMA of the music business,” Simmons-Santa Cruz mentioned.
In line with Theresa Wolters, government director of MusiCares, the group helps the music neighborhood via direct monetary help for primary residing, medical, psychological well being and substance use wants, in addition to free preventive healthcare. One yr after the Los Angeles wildfires, MusiCares has directed greater than $15 million towards aid and restoration, reaching over 3,200 music professionals affected by the catastrophe.
When MusiCares stepped in to supply emergency funds for Simmons-Santa Cruz and her husband, it additionally provided to exchange an necessary instrument for her. Her father, who died seven years in the past, helped her decide her first guitar, however the guitar was left behind when the hearth broke out.
“That guitar was very sentimental for me,” she mentioned.
Nothing can ever exchange the private reminiscence tied to the guitar, however Simmons-Santa Cruz says that MusiCares provided her hope via this deed, and the brand new guitar represents that.
“I simply broke down, I simply began crying, as a result of I’m like, who replaces a guitar? … The very last thing that was on my thoughts was changing our tools as a result of we’re nonetheless in survival mode,” she mentioned.
Drummer Darryl “JMD” Moore” getting fitted for customized ear molds for his stay performances at MusiCares Altadena Well being and Wellness Clinic at Grammy Museum L.A. Dwell
(Rebecca Sapp/Getty Pictures for The Recording Academy)
The couple resides in a rental and persevering with to cope with the fallout of the fires, nonetheless unable to rebuild their home due to the monetary prices. For the reason that fires, many different music professionals have confronted related hardships, like music producer and drummer Darryl “JMD” Moore, who nonetheless has to pay the mortgage on the house he misplaced whereas rebuilding one other one “like for like” as mandated by the mortgage financial institution.
“I wished to construct a house for my youngsters, and my grandchildren, my descendants, that will serve them financially and in each different means it might, as a result of I do know this property is effective, my home doubled in worth, it was value twice what I paid for,” Moore mentioned. “However our insurance coverage shouldn’t be paying us sufficient cash to construct the identical home, it’s like lots of of 1000’s of {dollars} quick, so everyone like us, we’re in a scramble to get the cash to fill within the gaps.”
After years of renting in Altadena, Moore lastly purchased his first dwelling there in 2011, a purchase order made doable because of his success within the music business. Moore is thought in each the jazz and hip-hop music scenes, having produced acts just like the Pharcyde and Freestyle Fellowship whereas additionally drumming for jazz greats like Horace Tapscott. Moore initially grew up in South L.A., the place he began enjoying drums at 13, specializing in R&B and funk earlier than finally being mentored by the famend jazz saxophonist and singer Elvira “Vi” Redd.
When the Eaton hearth started to crawl towards Moore’s home, he mentioned he shortly packed his most necessary possessions. He took an archival laborious drive which contained his music from 2004 to the current, however all the things else burned: his recording studio, archival tapes and reels, and his favourite drum set, a classic 1965 Rogers Vacation package he purchased within the ‘80s.
“I performed on albums and information with that Rogers package, once I moved to New York in ’89, I took that Rogers package with me, and I pushed that package down the road each night time from the East Village to the West Village to work,” Moore mentioned. “I can get one that appears identical to it if I used to be keen to spend the $4,000, however was it behind the subway, did I play it on Bleecker Avenue?” the jazz drummer mentioned.
Instantly after the hearth took his dwelling, Moore wanted to work, however he now not possessed the peripherals and tools he required to document. MusiCares donated 1000’s of {dollars}’ value of apparatus he wanted, together with a drum set, and it additionally offered grants to assist him pay each his mortgage and the lease the place he’s at present staying. Moore has an extended option to go earlier than he utterly recovers financially, however he says the group made a major impression in his life this previous yr, and he’s grateful.
“My studio’s again on-line, I’m capable of follow, I’m capable of work and do some gigs … it gave me my voice again, actually, that was the start of all the things,” the hip-hop producer mentioned.
For Gwendolyn Sanford and Brandon Jay, a married couple elevating a 16-year-old and a 9-year-old, the emotional weight has been simply as vital because the monetary burden that adopted. The couple mentioned they’ve been proactive in prioritizing the psychological well-being and happiness of their youngsters since dropping their Altadena dwelling.
“It was tougher for them early on, once we have been transferring so incessantly, we didn’t have any management over it, we have been simply making an attempt to get someplace steady to be, and I believe they have been processing the loss after they have been unhappy that we didn’t have our dwelling,” Sanford mentioned.
Sanford and her husband are singer-songwriters and have scored music for tv reveals like “Weeds” and “Orange Is the New Black.” The couple can be in a youngsters’s music band referred to as Gwendolyn and the Good Time Gang, they usually not too long ago composed music for the off-Broadway present “Romy and Michele the Musical.”
Like many others, the couple misplaced their private recording studio, making work troublesome. The stress has been immense for the couple, however they mentioned MusiCares was capable of ease a number of the monetary burden when the group provided them grants to cowl their mortgage, which they’re nonetheless on the hook for.
Darryl “JMD” Moore in entrance of his dwelling that burned down within the wildfires, taken in 2023.
(Darryl “JMD” Moore)
“There’s all of the pink tape and hurdles and issues we have now to just do to rebuild our dwelling, in order that in itself is sort of a full-time job that we by no means wished, on prime of simply our common lives elevating our youngsters and doing work,” Jay mentioned. “So, to have the help of somebody like that and have them say you don’t have to fret about this one side for some time, is invaluable.”
Just lately, Sanford was requested to carry out at a groundbreaking ceremony her former Altadena neighbor was having for a brand new home being constructed there. Sanford’s daughter had not wished to return to the neighborhood, however she determined to accompany her mom anyway. The return was cathartic.
“She was capable of stroll round our lot and have a non-public second, and I requested her how she felt, and she or he mentioned, ‘I really feel secure right here, that is my dwelling,’” Sanford mentioned.
On the occasion, Sanford sang a music she penned in 2011 referred to as, “Acorn,” which was impressed by the grandeur of oak bushes and what they symbolize in nature. The music has taken on a unique which means for her within the wake of the fires.
“The acorn is a metaphor, and I believe that’s sort of the place all of us are proper now, we have now to begin over, we have now to begin small, and finally we’ll get again to the place we have been,” Sanford mentioned.
