Photos: Deserted at The Palms
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Someone asked how Deserted At The Palms fits into the landscape of other popular desert music festivals and the short answer is, it doesn’t. Calling it a festival might be misleading because it is more like a party with great music, delicious tacos and cheap yummy Bloody Marys at a strangely beautiful dilapidated saloon in the middle of nowhere. There’s no barrier between bands and audience. They mingle like they’ve just wandered in from a dream, stumbling into someone’s backyard. Magnificent mountains stretch out the horizon in all directions.
As you leave the small town of Twentynine Palms and enter the area known as Wonder Valley, there’s a sense of breaking away from everything. Abandoned shacks, low shrubs, tumbleweeds and some dudes on motorcycles is all you’ll encounter until reaching an unusual oasis of palm trees and a water tower that rise above the saloon. The Palms is owned by a family/band, the Sibleys. Brother and sister Laura and James tend the bar, cook the burgers, half of which they don’t even charge guests for. A dusty piano missing a few teeth stands in the corner of the eating room, watched over by a mannequin wearing a giant cat head. The tables give splinters. Random road signs decorate the walls. There are at least 50 different types of chairs strewn about the backyard. A big stage wears a rusty blue metal crown. There’s a bathtub buried in one corner full of murky water, and a guillotine stands ominously beside a vintage trailer in another. So that’s the setting for Deserted and not much is done to change the environment or tarnish its surreal awesomeness. The point of Deserted is to bring people to this place and have them experience it for themselves, with the bands providing the perfect soundtrack to enhance the weird, wonderful adventure.
That they did. Rudy De Anda gave a triumphant opening performance. Paul Bergmann followed with an intimate gentle set inside. Stars At Night came next, thrusting people into a rock and roll state of mind. Isaac Rother & the Phantoms delivered 35 minutes of Halloween bliss. Sex Stains missed their set time but were able to get squeezed in right before Kim and the Created later that night, luckily. Things work out in the desert.
Bloody Death Skull came through as a nine-person band and gorilla masks. The Dead Ships were perfect as the sun began to set, casting them in magical golden light. Haunted Summer were dreamy, and covered Fleetwood Mac. In their cowboy shirts and neanderthal masks, Fartbarf looked (and sounded) sensational under the full moon. At least half the people there fell in love with Pearl Charles. Then came the Sex Stains. When Allison Wolfe did her signature split on the wooden stage, I worried she would come up bleeding, but since she’s wonder woman it appears her flesh is impervious to harm.
Kim and the Created wasted no time getting crazy, and dutifully Kim climbed the stage’s metal crown. People packed the room for Death Valley Girls, and the energy hit a zenith point of pure happiness fueled by Satan. The Garden wore their harlequin costumes and people received their wisdom, mouths agape, losing their coconuts, as the twins expanded their minds with energetic eccentricities. Finally, Mild High Club capped the night off by lulling the audience into a sweet state of mushy tranquility. As their set went on, people dropped to the floor, then levitated.
The weather was perfect. And the message: Let go, get weird, find beauty in the imperfect, enjoy music and be nice to everyone.
Photos by Zane Roessell
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