Big names band together to benefit disaster victims
San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey introduces Wine Country fire hero Forest Badaracco and his family at Thursday’s Band Together Bay Area benefit concert at AT&T Park in San Francisco. Promoters Another Planet Entertainment and Live Nation sponsored the benefit for low-income families, immigrants and other victims of last month’s fires. A diverse array of musicians played the benefit, including heavy metal forefathers Metallica, Oakland rapper G-Eazy, punk veterans Rancid, Oakland R&B crooner Raphael Saadiq, Dead & Company and Dave Matthews.
An eclectic group of artists, most of whom grew up or gained fame in the Bay Area, took the stage Thursday night at AT&T Park to help raise millions of dollars for victims of the North Bay fires.
The names kept getting bigger for the sold-out Band Together Bay Area benefit concert, with Rancid, G-Eazy and Dead & Company giving impassioned performances and Metallica closing out the night.
But the top billing belonged to the audience, including a front section reserved for first responders, volunteers and community members who lost their homes.
San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey took the stage to cheers, which were quickly eclipsed when he introduced Forest Badaracco and his sons, who knocked on their neighbors’ doors on Oct. 8 as fire consumed their Santa Rosa neighborhood.
“They refused to return home until they alerted everybody,” Posey said, his voice filled with emotion. “Many people wouldn’t have survived without their help that night.”
The concert was conceived at an Oct. 15 meeting called by Rabbi Ryan Bauer of the Congregation Emanu-Elin San Francisco. Soon several prominent business and community leaders were on board, including Salesforce Chairman Marc Benioff, Giants President Larry Baer and concert promoters Another Planet Entertainment and Live Nation — rivals that collaborated for the evening.
“To have those two music companies come together and work on this big music event is just amazing to watch,” said Tipping Point Community founder Daniel Lurie. “That epitomizes what this whole night is about — it’s about one community saying, ‘We have your back.’ ”
Lurie reported before the event began that $15 million had been raised by Band Together Bay Area — with more coming in throughout the night — for the Tipping Point Emergency Relief Fund, which seeks to provide short-, intermediateand long-term relief for lowincome families, immigrants and other fire victims.
The outdoor concert started just before 6 p.m. with an interfaith blessing by several local religious leaders. Bauer asked each first responder, each fire survivor and eventually the entire crowd to light up their phones.
“Each one of those lights is small,” he said, “but collectively we will vanquish the darkness as we rise out of the ashes.”
At that point there were just a few thousand attendees at the park. But when Dave Matthews took the stage around 7:40 p.m., the venue was swarming with enthusiastic fans, including thousands standing or dancing on the Giants outfield. By the time Dead & Company took the stage, organizers announced a sellout.
Backstage, some of the Bay Area’s biggest names in music, business and sports — Joe Montana and Barry Bonds were there, too — mingled with everyday heroes from the fire, who were chosen to present each band. For one night, it seemed as if the firefighters and nurses and residents who answered the call of duty were the stars.
The bands leaned toward crowd-friendly songs, with a few nods to the tragedy. Dead & Company closed their hourlong set with “Fire on the Mountain,” “Not Fade Away” and “Touch of Grey,” leaning into the line, “I will survive …”
Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead said the spinoff band Dead & Company dropped everything to fit the concert into its tour schedule.
“This is a boost spiritually, as well as a few bucks toward people who can’t afford to keep equilibrium in a time of crisis,” Hart said backstage before his band’s set. “It’s what you’re supposed to do. Every one of my band members just said, ‘Yes!’ Everybody pitched in for this.”
Onstage, the bands seemed cognizant that they were sharing the night with artists who rarely appear in the same sentence.
G-Eazy bounced back and forth onstage in a Metallica T-shirt and ran through hits such as “Me, Myself & I,” “You Got Me” and “Some Kind of Drug” during his roughly 30minute set, but he also made sure to include to include “F— Donald Trump” where he compared Trump to Adolf Hitler. He pointed out that despite the scale of the damage caused by the fires, Trump’s public statements on the relief efforts were highly limited. Trump also never visited the North Bay during the fires.
Final act Metallica took the stage at 9:55 p.m. like a shot of adrenaline, beginning with one of its newer songs, “Hardwired to Self Destruct” — rattling the bones of the ballpark and waking up any children who managed to sleep through the previous set.
In the audience, there was no shortage of emotion and support — from the Bay Area and beyond.
Ellen Herman came up from Los Angeles to see the show.
“I am a friend of wine and wine was affected by the fire, so I am here to protect wine … and I am a Deadhead,” she said, pulling up her shirt to reveal a new tattoo that included the lyrics to the Dead song “Samson and Delilah.”
Krista Butts of Santa Rosabased 911 dispatcher Redcom said she and her colleagues were taking 300 calls per hour during the first 24 hours of the fires — more than they usually get in a day. The dispatch center itself was in the fire zone.
She carried a homemade banner with a heart, a San Francisco Giants logo and the words “Sonoma County strong” in capital letters.
“I’m just so proud of my co-workers and my community,” Butts said. “We’re here, Sonoma County strong. We love everyone, and our thoughts are with the families who lost someone.” Chronicle staff writer Annie Ma and
Arts Content Editor Mariecar Mendoza contributed to this report.