In a year that has included the closure of Little Street Music Hall and the end of shows at Music House Indio due to permits, a local rock star is helping bring one local venue back to life.
Brian Ray, a part-time Palm Springs resident and a member of Paul McCartney’s touring band, is a member of the Palm Springs Plaza Theatre Foundation’s board, which is overseeing the renovation of the historic Plaza Theatre in downtown Palm Springs.
After years of fundraising and planning, the theater will re-open its doors with a special gala featuring Cynthia Erivo on Monday, Dec. 1.
Ray has been visiting the Coachella Valley since the ‘70s, but only became familiar with the Plaza Theatre after moving here in 2018.
“I was approached by a musician friend of mine named Spike Edney, who tours with Queen as a keyboard player, who asked if I wanted to be involved in a fundraiser charged with helping raise funds for the remodeling of this beautiful, old ’30s theater in the middle of town,” Ray said during a recent Zoom interview.
This idea would eventually become Rock the Plaza, an all-star concert hosted at the theater on Nov. 11, 2022, featuring performances by Alice Cooper, Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Paul Rodgers (Bad Company) and Orianthi, with a backing band featuring Edney, Ray and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer Matt Sorum (Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, The Cult), also a Palm Springs resident. Rock the Plaza raised $200,000.
Ray said he was awestruck when he first toured the theater with Palm Springs Plaza Theatre Foundation board president J.R. Roberts.
“He took me into the theater and turned on the lights, and my jaw dropped,” Ray said. “I said, ‘Oh my God.’ I’m instantly transported into this little Mexican village with windows and balconies and a starry night sky, and you’re instantly in a new environment. I just fell in love with it, and I’ve been involved ever since, for six years.
“It’s an interesting story how that whole plaza center—the shopping center and the theater and those little apartments above it—were all built at the same time, and it was done by a woman, Julia Patterson Carnell, heiress to the National Cash Register Corporation. It was all imagined and built by a woman, and it’s just such a fabulous story. It deserves to be saved. It’s something very special right in the middle of town.”
Just before the Plaza gets back to business, a recording of the Rock the Plaza concert is being released on vinyl. Rock the Plaza: Concert to Save the Historic Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs, produced by Ray, is being released on Nov. 28.
“This is just something I did, basically for fun and for free, as another donation to the city and to the foundation,” Ray said. “ … I sort of jumped into action and called the company I engaged to do our live sound, Clair Global, to ask if they would further donate Pro Tools, an engineer and a system. They had already donated all of the front-of-house and monitor sounds and desks for our concert, so I was asking for an extra donation at the last minute, two weeks before the show, and the guy said, ‘Yeah, I can do that for you.’”
Ray wanted to ensure that the legendary performances were able to be remembered forever.
“I went out of pocket for those things and got this done because no one else had made plans to do it, and I thought, this could be good; this could be really important—and you know what? It’s really good,” he said. “Paul Rodgers is singing insanely well; the band is sounding terrific. Alice Cooper put on a killer show and sang great. Joshua Homme was a revelation. Orianthi was shredding on guitar, and she sang great as well. We had the makings of 90 minutes of very strong music.”
The double-LP is being released as a part of Record Store Day, a celebration of vinyl and record stores that happens twice a year, where artists press limited editions, new music or fun surprises onto vinyl, and send them to record stores all over the world. Only 1,200 vinyl copies of the Rock the Plaza release will be available.
“Paul Rodgers is singing insanely well; the band is sounding terrific. Alice Cooper put on a killer show and sang great. Joshua Homme was a revelation. Orianthi was shredding on guitar, and she sang great as well. We had the makings of 90 minutes of very strong music.”
Brian Ray, on his Rock the Plaza recording
“We worked out a deal where the foundation gets paid from dollar one. It’s a really good deal for the city, for the foundation, and we got accepted onto Record Store Day,” Ray said. “We had to scurry around and pull all strings toward the middle to make it work, with agreements with the artists and label waivers to be able to release their material in a live setting. It’s a lot of work and a lot of excitement and a lot of effort, and it’s paying off.
Ray is happy to do all that he can to benefit the Plaza.
“I may not be the fundraiser guy … but I can do something,” he said. “The concert I could do, and then getting an album deal with this, I figured out I could do, and some other cool things on the tech side. I’m responsible for bringing in a big video wall that will be part of the theater forever. This is something that’ll separate us from other performing arts centers and smaller theaters. When people walk in, they will be impacted by the tech that’s there—some really great pro tech. All of these things are really fun for me.”
The calendar for the Plaza Theatre features a great variety shows, with events catering to both the older Palm Springs crowd and younger fans of entertainment spread across the desert. The Oak View Group, which also runs Acrisure Arena, is managing the Plaza.
“The Plaza Theatre is doing everything it can do to be what we call an ‘open room,’” Ray said. “One of the things that the foundation wanted to have in place … was that Oak View Group would be holding the calendar for bookings, but would not be trying to dominate with Oak View Group or Live Nation-only acts. In other words, any promoter can come in and rent the room. It’s not exclusive to any one promoter, and that was important to me, and Oak View Group was 100% on board with that. John Bolton (general manager of the Plaza) and Oak View Group have done a fantastic job so far, booking and managing this herculean effort.”
One unique event on the schedule is the Dec. 9 film screening of Queens of the Stone Age: Alive in the Catacombs, a live concert the band filmed from the Paris catacombs. Joshua Homme, a Queens of the Stone Age member and Coachella Valley native, will take part in a Q&A after the screening.
“When I asked (Homme) to be a part of our fundraiser Rock the Plaza, he was all in from the beginning,” Ray said. “He says, ‘You don’t understand; I used to beg my mom to go and see movies there when I was 13 years old,’ and he told that story from the stage at Rock the Plaza. Down the road a little bit when we were booking, I just texted him and said, ‘Joshua, we would love to have you be a part of our opening month. Is there something you’d like to do?’ I had just heard about Live at the Catacombs, and he said, ‘Oh man, I’d love to do that.’”
Ray said the Plaza Theatre’s programming will serve all desert communities, not just Palm Springs.
“This will be a cultural sort of campfire for all of the desert cities, because it was built in the image of people that came long before us, back when California was Mexico,” he said. “It’s a celebration of Palm Springs and all the Coachella Valley, so it’s a place where we can all come and meet and enjoy art together.”
Learn more at www.palmspringsplazatheatre.com.