One805’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Firehose

Richard Weston-Smith is a Co-Founder & COO of One805. This nearly indescribable outfit can rightly be called First Responder to our First Responders. Like many nouns in the English language, though, First Responder wildly underwhelms as a signifier. On that front, Weston-Smith recalls an early episode of revelation. 

“During the Thomas Fire I was filling up with gas on Coast Village Road and one of the hotshot trucks pulled in next to me to fill up. The whole of the side of their truck was just completely baked, blistered and burnt. And I thought, sh*t – these guys are driving around surrounded by these flames and the heat is unimaginable!” Weston-Smith pauses. “We truly can’t grasp how close these people come to losing their lives every minute of every day when they’re fighting these fires, which can turn on a dime.” 

At this writing, the explosive firestorms in L.A. County have been exhaustively televised, analyzed, and reported on. The crazed immediacy of the news coverage gives us a sense we are experiencing some version or degree of what the First Responders down there are going through. It’s a well-meant but unhelpful illusion. 

“The greatest dangers are not always physical,” Weston-Smith says. “They come from the emotional violence of the job. Joseph Wambaugh describes it as being like a constant drip of acid on the human soul.” 

A Marshalling of Resources

One805 has long since transfigured these First Responder empathies into jaw-dropping action items featuring stacked amps and Stratocasters. One805’s genius has been to wrangle our huge-hearted and madly implausible creative community into happily mounting a stage and putting on a little show – not exactly the sort a teenaged Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland used to enthusiastically cobble together in the Hardy family’s barn. 

“We’ve done three now,” Weston-Smith says of the stupefying dream shows One805 has been mounting with increasing success. “When our CEO Kirsten Cavendish took over, she just sort of turbocharged the whole thing and pulled together the talent to do a big show. We can’t make promises to our first responders and then not deliver. So we made a promise to ourselves that we would always have at least three years of funding for the program ahead.”

One805LIVE – the performative fundraising arm of the org – gathers Maroon 5, Alan Parsons, Joe Bonamassa, P!NK, Katy Perry, The Duke of Sussex (etc!) onto their hometown stage in Kevin Costner’s back yard (don’t ask), the fever dream concert a potent disseminator of information, and fundraiser for all the things Santa Barbara County First Responder. “Because of the extraordinary mix of talent we have been lucky enough to pull together, it’s always unique,” says Kirsten. “We describe it as a show you have never seen before, and a show you will never see again.”

Why do our First Responders need the equivalent of a superstar bake sale to get the stuff they need? Weston-Smith explains.

“People often say, well, look – they’re really well funded. First Responders are funded by the state. They’re federally funded, they’ve got all this shiny equipment. What’s the problem here? But the budgets are incredibly slow and cumbersome. If you need a new fire truck it can take several years to get that approved. Not to mention the fact that the cost of a fire truck has doubled since 2019…”

And it is worth noting here that in certain circles the word “budget” is rarely seen in public without its sidekick “cut.” In government, “fiduciary responsibility” comes down to striking line items, these decisions based on a complex gumbo of publicly opaque incentives. All this can seem like painless belt-tightening till the mountains catch fire. 

“So many competing needs are given priority that most of the time public safety budgets are inadequate, especially for capital and replacement costs,” Weston-Smith says, and ticks off several recent One805 grants from a fusillade of giving – from a new Jaws of Life for extricating car wreck victims, to 700 pairs of woolen socks for the folks who are on their feet 20 hours at a time, running all over the place to save our bacon. 

“One805 provided a jet ski to county fire for open water rescues, and we provided two high-tech drones, one for open water rescue and one for backcountry rescue, equipped with infrared. So it’s not just equipment for our first responders. It’s equipment that saves lives of the citizens of our county.”

When on January 15, One805 held its annual Advisory Council Luncheon at Santa Barbara’s University Club, the occasion saw the convening of the County’s First Responder Chiefs and the Sheriff. At that luncheon, One805 announced its largest-ever grants, with over $560,000 in departmental grants and $415,000 pledged to the mental wellness fund, totaling $973,000.

For Whom the Mental Bell Tolls

Your First Responder can have all the life-saving tech and woolen socks money can buy and still come up short. “The fire departments, the chiefs within our county are all very, very proactive on mental wellness. Our fire chief Mark Hartwig said, ‘…what use is a fire engine to me if I don’t have anyone to drive it? People are my most important asset.’” Thankfully, our stressed and embattled First Responder is a more enlightened centurion than was once the case, as Weston-Smith points out. 

“There used to be a sort of attitude in the ranks of ‘suck it up buttercup.’ It was a thing you just didn’t talk about. But over the years that has changed. And now they’re starting to address the issues of mental wellness in the Fire Academy itself so that the new cadets and their families are aware of the stresses and the strains that are put on them mentally.” A robust peer support system has grown over time in the First Responder ecosystem, and feeds – where needed – into crucial wellness programming funded by One805.

“They can refer them to one of the TCTI counselors that we fund,” says Weston-Smith. “TCTI is The Counseling Team International, and it’s a nationwide counseling organization for First Responders; for the government, for the FBI, for law enforcement – all over the country.” While we’re talking about it, who in the One805 org makes the decisions about where to spend the raised funds? 

“We have all of the chiefs in Santa Barbara County and the Sheriff on our Advisory Council, which is unique. To our knowledge no one else has ever done that. As our Advisory Council, they tell us where to spend the money. We just say, okay, where do you need it? We’re guided by them.”

Give Back to Where You Now Belong

When Adam Levine of Maroon 5, Elliot Easton of The Cars, or Danny Seraphine of Chicago first got into their respective bands – or when Alan freaking Parsons was getting comfy around the mixing desk at the Beatles’ Let it Be sessions, or was watching the lads’ last performance on the roof of Apple Records (yeah, Parsons was up there in a black suit, orange shirt and skinny tie), none of these artistes likely foresaw themselves on Kevin Costner’s back porch in the far-flung 2020s raising dough for First Responders. Life’s funny that way, to understate it. 

There is mayhem, yeah. Together we rise to confront it. Period. We’ve all seen the dandelion having burst through the filthy sidewalk. The nodding little flower is surrounded by crumbs of cement, its raggedy bloom and outstretched leaves seeming to say, “What’re you lookin at?” It is a lovely, lovely thing.

“The police, the firefighters, the sheriff,” Weston-Smith says. “When the sh*t hits the fan, they just come together and work as one kickass, beautiful team.” Two beats.“For us. That’s why we do what we do.”