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Backstage Pass: The Airborne Toxic Event cover

Pemberton

In the space of one week in 2006, Mikel Jollett was diagnosed with a genetic autoimmune disease, his mother was diagnosed with cancer, he and his longtime girlfriend split, and he quit a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit cold turkey.

After a month of moping around his apartment, Jollett, who until then had been working on a novel, decided to pursue his career as a musician. So he pulled himself together and set out to create the Airborne Toxic Event.

“I was in a haze, feeling knocked down, and one day, I decided to start playing my guitar,” Jollett says. “And I realized that music is all I want to do.” Over the course of several months, Jollett, 35, recruited the group’s other four members through friends of friends, meeting keyboardist Anna Bulbrook at a taco stand after a night of bar-hopping.

The Los Angeles-based band hails from all over the musical spectrum, from punk (drummer Daren Taylor) to classical (Bulbrook). The result of their diverse musical influences? Their self-titled debut album, out Aug. 5, and a full slate of festivals and small shows, including a few gigs in the U.K.

Despite his emotional and financial struggles, Jollett is confident he’s on the right path. “We were so poor, we knew the going rate of blood,” he jokes. “But in the last year, we’ve started becoming respectable.

“Sometimes things in life just have to break, but if it’s in you, you just do it.”