WHEN RESTAURATEUR BRIANA Valdez was slinging Tex-Mex tacos at pop-up shops around Los Angeles in the early 2010s, music was already a big part of the process. Her sister, Andy Valdez, was co-managing Little Dragon at the time, and the band would DJ backyard events, bringing together friends, music fans and foodies. By 2013, Briana had opened a Tex-Mex joint of her own, HomeState, in L.A.’s hip Los Feliz neighborhood, its creative community reminding her of Austin, where the sisters went to college.
“The neighborhood people that come in every day were artists, managers, musicians and creatives,” she says. “We were like, ‘What can we do with this that’s not exploitative, that can allow us to have a charitable component?’ ”
Two years later, Andy floated the idea of…
