2 Much Live Music: Recapping a Jam-Packed 2025

2025 began with devastation in Los Angeles, as massive wildfires ripped through Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Dozens of lives lost, thousands of buildings destroyed, all combining for the second-costliest natural disaster in American history.

From that dark time came a ray of light, in the form of FireAid. The two-venue benefit concert saw Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga, Rod Stewart, Sting, Jelly Roll, Katy Perry, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish and Finneas among many superstars at Intuit Dome, while the likes of No Doubt, John Mayer, Joni Mitchell, Green Day, Stevie Nicks and The Red Hot Chili Peppers held it down at the Kia Forum.

Nearly a year later, there is so much to be done to help residents of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena recover from the fires. Still, FireAid helped to bring some small measure of relief — in terms of both funds raised and entertaining distractions provided — to many victims and families in need.

Any opportunity to see Tom Morello wield his axe is one worth taking. The man remains one of the pre-eminent (and most creative) talents on guitar today.

And if he uses his superpowers to revive riffs from Rage Against The Machine, all the better.

That was certainly the case when Tom played to a packed house at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood. With his son, Roman Morello, by his side, the 61-year-old guitar legend had the whole house rocking and moshing to familiar RATM tunes — including an audience-led shout-along to “Killing In The Name” — amid a smattering of solo tunes and protest songs.

The return of Dead & Company to Sin City brought with it a whole host of new “screensavers” to captivate crowds inside Sphere.

There were wacky carnivals depicting the cycle of life and death, rides with Undead Uncle Sam through a Dead-ified Las Vegas, crystal kaleidoscopes, trippy TV towers, a Tron-style video game romp, and a tasteful tribute to The Grateful Dead’s beloved tapers.

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping of all, though, was a live filter that visualized Bob Weir, John Mayer, Mickey Hart, Jeff Chimenti, Oteil Burbridge and Jay Lane as warping sheets of bear-stamped acid tabs. If anything could rival the usage of Nvidia GPUs by tech giantsOpenAI, Google and Anthropic, this would’ve been it.

Read more about “Dead Forever” here.

I’m not usually one to attend political rallies, but the prospect of seeing (and photographing) Neil Young, Joan Baez and Maggie Rogers was enough to drag me out to downtown Los Angeles bright and early on a Saturday morning for Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Fight Oligarchy” event at Grand Park.

The Red Pears, Indigo De Souza, Dirty Projectors, Jeff Rosenstock and Raise Gospel Choir did their part to keep the crowd engaged between speeches from politicians, activists and other community leaders.

Neil brought plenty of his own fire to the blisteringly hot day, once he took the stage, with just his guitar and harmonica in tow. Joan’s rare public performance was a sight and sound to behold, with the 84-year-old icon lending even greater gravitas to the occasion. Maggie, meanwhile, held it down for the younger generation with her powerful pop anthems.

All the while, the abundance of sunlight created the perfect conditions to capture plenty of crisp, clear photos of these legendary musicians.

It had been nearly a decade since my first (and only) Memorial Day Weekend at BottleRock. This year’s long-awaited return left me thinking that maybe, just maybe, I should make it an annual trip.

Capturing 32 (!!) bands and artists on my camera across three days was enough on its own. Throw in the sheer variety and star power throughout the lineup, and Napa Valley Expo was clearly the place to be over the holiday.

Looking for rock? Green Day, Cage The Elephant, and Robby Krieger had you covered, with Sublime and Rebelution lending a ska/reggae vibe to the mix, and Goose, Eggy and Khruangbin handling the jams.

What about pop? You could go for singular stars like Justin Timberlake, Benson Boone, Noah Kahan and Lauren Mayberry, or a fun family band like Lawrence.

Kaskade, Sofi Tukker and Drama turned it up for EDM lovers; Ice Cube, Public Enemy and E-40 represented for the hip-hop heads; The War and Treaty and Allen Stone brought soul to the party; and Carin Leon offered a taste of BottleRock’s Latin-themed sister festival, La Onda.

Read more about this year’s BottleRock bonanza here.

“Weird Al” Yankovic has left an indelible mark on my life in and around music.

His show at the Greek Theatre in 1999 was the first live concert I ever attended. Around that same time, I got to meet him (and give him a Thanksgiving-themed art piece of him that I’d made), thanks to a friend of mine, whose dad worked on AL-TV, .Weird Al’s series of specials on MTV.

Getting to photograph a Weird Al show, then, was a bucket-list moment. Doing so at Red Rocks in Colorado, of all places, made it all the more special.

Shoutout to my friends Matt and Sara (and Cora, Ryla and Bodhi) for hosting me in Denver for that experience. Read more about the show here

If you were a Millennial kid, you grew up knowing all the biggest boy bands and their songs, whether you want to or not. Back then, The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC were everywhere: on the radio, on TV, over the PA system at the mall. You name it. You were bound to learn all the songs by osmosis.

Fast forward to 2025. I’d already been hooked on the Sphere concert experience by Dead & Company, The Eagles and Anyma. At this point, I’d see pretty much anyone perform there — including, it turns out, The Backstreet Boys.

Their rendition of a Sphere show was pure spectacle. They borrowed and built on many of the visual tricks that previous acts had tried there (think: dizzying trips through cityscapes and space, balletic ghosts, giant projections of the band members, etc.), but with a production value all their own.

Read more about the “Into The Millenium” residency here.

If I didn’t qualify as a “Deadhead” after seven Sphere shows in 2024, I suppose I do now.

In addition to the five more times I saw them in Las Vegas this year, I also trekked up to San Francisco for The Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary weekend at Golden Gate Park over the late Jerry Garcia’s birthday weekend in early August.

Dead & Company did their thing, with scintillating supporting sets from Billy Strings, Sturgill Simpson, and Trey Anastasio Band. Each of those acts also saw their titular heads sit in with the Dead. Trey delivered the most memorable cameo, with “Big Red” taking the lead on “Scarlet Begonias” —> “Fire on the Mountain” (a.k.a. “Scarlet Fire”) while giving Deadheads and Phish heads alike the Vulcan guitar meld with John Mayer of which we’d all dreamt.

Kudos are due, as well, to Grahame Lesh. The son of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh was the hardest-working man in SF that weekend. On top of running the “Heart of Town” aftershows at Pier 80, he sat in with Dead & Company on bass each night.

Perhaps no show that I got to see and shoot in 2025 meant more than The Who at the Hollywood Bowl.

I’ve loved The Who since, well, around the time I got into Weird Al. I always appreciated their wide range and expansive imagination, particularly among bands to come out of the “British Invasion” of the 1960s.

For all the times that I’d gotten to see The Who over the years, this would be my first, last and best chance to photograph them. After all, there would be no more of The Who live in concert after the aptly-named “The Song Is Over Tour.”

Beyond the thrill of adding more of my idols to my photo archive, the show itself was incredible. Rather than dragging on well past their expiration date, The Who went out on top — with Roger nailing all the big notes and Pete telling stories with aplomb.

As an added bonus, the opening set from The Joe Perry Project turned out to be star-studded in its own right. Slash sat in on guitar, and Steven Tyler shocked the Bowl by strutting out for a mini Aerosmith reunion on “Walk This Way.”

Read more about this superb double-header here.

Choosing just one show to highlight from “Rocktober” was tough, but in this case, the British Invasion won again.

Even at 83, Sir Paul McCartney still brings so much heart and soul to his shows. And with more than two hours onstage in Las Vegas, he had plenty of time to touch on seemingly every corner of a catalog that includes The Beatles, Wings and his solo material.

So many of those songs came with a story and, often, a smile from Macca. In that way, Sir Paul demonstrated his greatest gift of all: the ability to make a venue like the cavernous, 65,000-seat Allegiant Stadium feel intimate.

Except when the pyrotechnics went off, that is.

Read more about Sir Paul’s visit to Las Vegas here.

If you were here for the inaugural edition of 2 Much Live Music, you’ll recall my romp through the swamp better known as Hulaween.

Suffice it to say, I’m still beaming from a long Halloween weekend split between jams and womps, with The String Cheese Incident tying all of that together in one weird, costume-filled festival.

Special thanks to my friend James Cook, who’s both a phenomenal photographer and an incredibly inventive one. His “disco window” made my trippy, sparkly shots possible, and make so much of his work pop.

In between the literally hundreds of shows that I got to attend this year, I took some big steps forward with The Charcoal Club.

A Kickstarter campaign that I ran through December and January raised enough money to cover the framing of a collection of my charcoal portraits, along with a “starter kit” for outdoor art shows.

That, in turn, opened up a whole new world of opportunities to exhibit my art. I brought The Charcoal Club to three outdoor events, including The Beverly Hills Art Show in October. I also had the distinct honor and pleasure of taking part in my first-ever gallery exhibition, at the DOMA Arts Complex in the Downtown LA Arts District.

Along the way, I completed five commissioned pieces, including my first full-fledged painting since high school.

I’m excited to keep pushing The Charcoal Club in 2026, and dabble in more media along the way.

In the meantime, you can support my “side hustle” by visiting my Etsy shop and following The Charcoal Club on Instagram, TikTok, X, Threads and Facebook.

(And if you’d like to commission me for a custom piece, please reach out! A direct reply to this email will do.)