Chilean-born multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Alain Johannes is an integral part of the history of the desert rock sound.
Johannes’ guitar wizardry, songwriting skills and ear for production have led to his involvement in numerous projects associated with Coachella Valley musicians and studios. His sounds and stylings can be heard on integral desert releases by Queens of the Stone Age, The Desert Sessions, Eagles of Death Metal and Them Crooked Vultures.
Johannes recently formed a new band with Gene Trautmann (Queens of the Stone Age, The Desert Sessions, Eagles of Death Metal), which is set to perform as the Alain Johannes Band on Thursday, Sept. 25. The show will mark Johannes’ return to the intimate Audiowild Studios after performing there acoustically in late 2021.
“It’s a great place,” Johannes said in a recent phone interview. “Brian (Parnell, the venue owner) and the crew are amazing. It’s a little cultural hub, and they have a recording studio there, so I remember the sound guy was really super-talented. … It has the feeling of a really passionate, focused place where people gather for music and for art. I think it’s been upgraded quite a bit since the last time I was there, so I’m looking forward to seeing that.”
The Alain Johannes Band did a short U.S. run in July, and this show is a warmup before they play at the Ohana Festival in Long Beach on Sept. 27.
“It was a little tricky to try to book something in L.A. around Ohana, and this was perfect, because Brian has been wanting to get me out there again, and I’ve been wanting to go out there again,” Johannes said. “I scheduled everything to fly back (from Chile) in time to have a couple of rehearsals, and then head over to Idyllwild, then have a day down by the beach and to get ready for the festival.”
Apart from these performances in Idyllwild, and a set at the recent birthday concert for Dave Catching (Rancho de la Luna) at Pappy and Harriet’s, Johannes rarely performs in the area.
“I’ve been so nomadic the last few years,” Johannes said. “When I was living in L.A., I would play Harvard and Stone, and that cool bowling alley in Highland Park, and Cobraside Distribution. It’s been quite a while since I played full electric—I would say, since Eleven, and maybe even back to Troubadour 2000 when Natasha (Shneider, Johannes’ late wife and Eleven bandmate) was still with us, and we opened for Queens on the Rated R tour. Actually, Gene was playing drums.”
Although Johannes’ presence is felt throughout the sounds of the desert, he is only in town a couple of times a year, spending most of his time in Chile.
“I have family I reconnected with, like my father, who I didn’t meet until I was 48,” Johannes said. “Josh (Homme, Queens of the Stone Age) brought me back after Natasha passed away. He booked a tour of South America in 2010, and I met my real father. Because of that, I met two brothers and cousins and aunts. I started coming to Chile every year or every other year, and then more frequently. I decided that it would be really fun to just hang out (in Chile) all the time as home base. My sister lives in L.A., so I go stay with her, too, and then lately, I’ve been going up to Seattle—to Bellingham, more specifically—where Gene moved. With our new band (Drink the Sea), with Barrett Martin and Peter Buck, I’m going to be up there quite a bit to rehearse and prepare for a world tour—and world domination.”
When Johannes spends time in the desert, he’s often making musical magic at Rancho de la Luna.
“Somehow I end up at Rancho at least three or four times a year,” he said. “Barrett and Duke (Garwood) and I spent a couple of weeks there with Davey (Catching) working on the Drink to Sea stuff, and Ramkot, the Belgian band, last year. … I’m hoping to get out there pretty soon again, by November.”
The Alain Johannes Band, and all of Johannes’ projects, honor the musician’s friendship and collaboration with Mark Lanegan, the vocalist behind classic tunes by Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age and The Desert Sessions. Lanegan passed away in 2022.
Lanegan’s song “Paper Hat,” which Johannes produced and performed on, opens with the lyric, “From Idyllwild to Las Vegas / walk the desert wearing this paper hat.”
“Those records with Lanegan were so much fun,” Johannes said. “I started working with him when I wrote ‘Hanging Tree’ for The Desert Sessions. After that, we did a cover of a Kinks song in a kind of hillbilly, Indian classical version that was really trippy in 2001, and then after that, we worked on Songs for the Deaf (by Queens of the Stone Age). Mark and I just knew we had a shorthand together, so from Blues Funeral (Lanegan’s 2012 solo record) on, it was just him and I running the show, making the records, and then bringing people in to play with us. He trusted me with all the instrumentation. It’s an incredible loss for me personally, as well as for the world musically.”
Johannes reflected on his collaborators who have passed away.
“Sometimes I sit around and try to focus on the future and continuing on, but Natasha and Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, who died in 2017) and Mark were my three hugest collaborators and inspirations, and they’re all gone right now,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and find one more at that level, but Mark was a generational artist—once in a few (generations), actually. He was one of a kind.”
Thankfully, the music Johannes made with these legends will live on forever.
“It’s nice to wake up and have had all that,” he said. “Your memories flood in … and you can feel proud and happy and blessed to have experienced these moments with these amazing beings. I’m very, very, very lucky that way.”
Fans of all of Alain Johannes’ collaborative efforts will enjoy the music his band intends to explore in Idyllwild.
“We’re doing the usual Desert Sessions (songs), Eleven, some of the Desert Sessions stuff that became part of the Queens records, Cornell’s Euphoria Morning solo stuff, and also my electric and acoustic solo stuff,” he said. “I’ve got three records now, and I’m hoping to record a fourth. … It’s quite a quite a big catalog to draw from, and I’m probably going to work up some other stuff that I did with Lanegan. Some of his tunes are a lot of fun, like ‘The Gravedigger’s Song’ and stuff like that.”
Even though Johannes is not from the desert, he embraces his connection to the desert sound, which he describes as not a genre or a label, but “a space, mentally and spiritually.”
“The desert has that magic and connection to all things spiritual and otherworldly,” Johannes said. “It’s very much close to nature, and it also has a very tough spirit, because of the environment being very hard. There’s a huge desert here in Chile, one of the biggest. Any place where there’s heat and sand, it just creates this melancholy to it—and a depth that I find really attractive.”
While he doesn’t spend as much time in the desert as he used to, he says it’s “always felt like a second home to me—or like a first home in the sense of how comfortable I feel.”
“There’s a natural connection that happens with musicians and creative people, artists from the desert, that when we see each other, we understand each other. The first time I met Mario Lalli (Fatso Jetson, Yawning Man), it was like, ‘Oh, it’s my cousin.’ There’s a lack of pretense; there’s a directness and there’s a commitment that is quite special, which is devoid of the plastic or the façade of cities.”
The Alain Johannes Band will perform at 8 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 25, at Audiowild Studios, 54240 Ridgeview Drive, in Idyllwild. Tickets are $20. For tickets or more information, visit audiowild.studio.