A local legend is performing a hometown show after a lengthy European tour.
The Brant Bjork Trio is set to perform at Pappy and Harriet’s on Sunday, Jan. 11. Bjork’s songwriting and drumming helped Kyuss, a band he co-founded, launch our desert into rock-music stardom. Thanks to Kyuss, the term “desert rock” is known worldwide, and Bjork, alongside a generation of Coachella Valley rockers, helped solidify what became known as the Palm Desert Scene.
After stints in bands like Fu Manchu and Mondo Generator, Bjork has performed with other desert-rock icons under the names Brant Bjork and the Bros, Brant Bjork and the Low Desert Punk Band, and his latest, Brant Bjork Trio, featuring Bjork on guitar/vocals, Mario “Boomer” Lalli on bass, and Mike Amster on drums.
During a recent phone interview, Bjork recalled fond memories of performing at Pappy and Harriet’s, including a time when the band played through a heavy rainstorm.
“It was the night of a really, really intense rain that flooded the whole high desert,” Bjork said. “It was really kind of amazing. Water came in and just dumped. A lot of the crowd was kind of stuck at Pappy’s, because there was no way to get off the hill. It was pretty wild. We ended up getting a hotel in Yucca Valley, because we couldn’t even make the remaining five-mile drive to my place in Joshua Tree.”
Hundreds of legends and stars have graced the Pappy’s stage, yet only a few dozen concert posters hang on the walls inside the venue—and Brant Bjork and the Bros is the subject of one of those posters. A few months ago, Bjork released Live in the High Desert, a live album Brant Bjork and the Bros recorded at Pappy’s in 2009.
“That sat on my shelf for many years,” Bjork said. “I remember why we decided to record that night, but I don’t remember why we decided to shelve it. The planets aligned, and we were like, ‘Now’s the time.’ It’s kind of coincidental that we’re fixing to do Pappy’s in January, not long after that release.”
Bjork can personally attest that Pappy and Harriet’s “has a magic.”
“As a performer, you want to have a nice connection with the audience, and obviously, there’s the musical connection and the vibrational, but there’s also a physical connection,” he said. “The stage is close to the ground, and the people are right up on you. It’s a nice, intimate situation, and I enjoy that. I really like being a club performer. I get off on playing some of the bigger shows; whether they’re outdoor festivals or theaters or concert halls, those are always a rush. But ultimately, I like playing clubs. Man, I like that intimacy. I think it’s the jazz enthusiast in me. I feel like my music translates better in intimate settings, and Pappy’s is great for that, so I’ve always loved playing Pappy’s. … When I first started going to Pappy’s, and then playing there, it hadn’t yet become what it is today. It was still just a desert venue and a desert destination, and very much catering to the locals. … Then over the years, word gets out, and all of a sudden, you’ve got Paul McCartney playing there.”
Even though it’s been decades since Bjork cut his teeth playing around the desert, he still revels in performing among the creosote and the mountains.
“I love playing hometown shows with familiar faces and friends who I’ve known my whole life,” he said. “That’s where our music comes from. That’s where it started, and that’s where it ultimately belongs.”
Bjork would perform in the desert more frequently if there were a larger number of appropriate venues. The struggle for a consistent music venue with a few-hundred-person capacity in the low desert, specifically Indio, has persisted throughout Bjork’s entire music career, from the short-lived success of Mario Lalli’s Rhythm and Brews in the ’90s, to the successful yet recently shuttered Little Street Music Hall.
“Boom (Lalli) and I talk about this all the time, and we would love to play the low desert more regularly, but it’s just hard,” he said. “There are not really solid venues that are in line with what we need and want in terms of bringing our music to our friends and family in the low desert. … I know The Hood is there, and we’ve had some great shows there, but sometimes it’s a bit of a struggle to get people motivated on the other side of the fence for shows to happen, which is, to be perfectly honest, a little frustrating, because we know there are a lot of people in the low desert who want to see some rock shows that we definitely want to play.”
After generations of music success in the Coachella Valley, from the Rat Pack to the desert rock scene to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the ratio of music love to music support is unbalanced. Bjork calls it “one of the world’s great mysteries.”
“We’ve just kind of accepted it as the low-desert fate. It’s just what we have to deal with,” he said.
The Brant Bjork Trio’s 2024 album, Once Upon a Time in the Desert, features Bjork’s laid-back, groovy desert guitar riffs intertwined beautifully with Lalli’s thunderous, fuzz-filled, melodic basslines. It’s an immaculate combination by two desert-rock legends, and a YouTube comment on a live performance video of the Brant Bjork Trio reads, “This could be the greatest desert rock lineup of all time.”
After generations of music success in the Coachella Valley, from the Rat Pack to the desert rock scene to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the ratio of music love to music support is unbalanced. Bjork calls it “one of the world’s great mysteries.”
“Mario Lalli was the name I heard as a kid in terms of who was responsible and who was the gatekeeper,” Bjork said. “For me, he was the ring leader, and I wanted to join the circus. When I discovered him, he was in Across the River at the time, and it was really exciting to know that there was someone in the desert who was spearheading a punk-rock movement. I was given this information by older guys in my neighborhood who had a punk band that I would go watch rehearse, and that alone was already exciting—but to learn that there were other punk bands in the desert, in a small little scene that was happening, was incredible.
“I eventually found my way into a band, and my first proper show was at a nightclub at Palm Springs called Adrian’s, and our band opened up for Mario’s band. It was his first project right after Across the River had broken up, which was called Inglenook at the time, but it would eventually turn into Yawning Man. He liked my band, and he invited us over to his ‘Chihuahua house’ in the cove to record us, and we’ve been friends ever since. He’s the musical big brother I never had, but needed and got, so I cherish the relationship.”
It took them more than two decades to be in a band together, but the wait was definitely worth it.
“It goes without saying that I was hungry and ready to jam with Boomer on any project,” Bjork said. “We’ve played so many times over the years and collaborated, but he’s a powerful artist in his own writing, and needs to be doing his own thing and steering his own ship. Like most of my musical adventures, there was no game plan. I got an offer to do a solo show around the time we were winding down Stöner, and I didn’t have a solo band together at that moment. Boom was like, ‘Yeah, let’s take this gig; I’ll play bass,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, fuck, that’d be killer.’”
Once Upon a Time in the Desert marked the first release by Brant Bjork’s Duna Records label since 2006. On the Duna site, Bjork writes, “Duna Records was and will continue to be my personal record label that is a home for all things creative amongst myself and others (who) are close to me.”
“We released our first Duna release in 2002,” Bjork said. “We went for a handful of years, and it was really good, and it was successful. I was running it with my then-girlfriend, and we broke up, and I just decided to shelf the label for a while. … I wanted to start putting out my own records again. I became a father in 2010 and had a couple of boys, and I was slammed when I was at home—rightfully so, being a parent. The concept of me releasing my own records and what that entails, I just didn’t have the time for it, but things changed, and I’m now able to do that. I always want to put out my own stuff.”
To Bjork, releasing his own material on his own label is “synonymous with my love and my motivation to play music.”
“I grew up in the ’80s, so my record collection was independent punk-rock stuff, so it wasn’t my lifelong goal to go out and play music that sounded like Minor Threat or Black Flag, although I love those bands,” he said. “I wanted to play my music, and I certainly wanted to take what they did as far as starting their own labels and putting out their own music. They were autonomous to enable that, the ability to oversee their craft and their art, so that was always there from the beginning.”
Brant Bjork Trio is set to perform at 9 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 11, at Pappy and Harriet’s, at 53688 Pioneertown Road, in Pioneertown. Warm Uncle is set to open. Tickets are $31.86. For tickets and more information, visit pappyandharriets.com.