Select people from all walks of life are invited to step onstage and sing, dance or narrate an original story about the desert, as part of a fundraiser.
“Live From Joshua Tree,” hosted at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center, is an evening of stories and songs that celebrates the multifaceted nature of our local landscape; showcases and empowers those who share a story; and raises funds for Mil-Tree, a local veteran-focused nonprofit. Beth Allen, Sarah Bliss, Annie Connole, Gretchen Grunt, Casey Kiernan, Andrea Kline, Brian O’Hare, Liz Meyer, Kennedy Verrett and Palo Xanto are all set to participate this year.
The event will take place at 7 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 31, inside the Sanctuary Building at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center. There will also be a ticketed livestream available.
During an interview with host Cheryl Montelle, she discussed the history of the event, which was formerly called “Desert Stories.”
“The reason that I started it was because in 2006, my house burned down in Burns Canyon in Pioneertown,” Montelle said. “I started the event in 2007 at the Hi-Desert Cultural Center in the playhouse, because I had published a story called ‘Fire Dance’ about losing my house. It started out as a spoken-word event, and then I would add at least two musicians to the roster. The game is that you have to tell a desert story, sing a desert story, dance a desert story, recite a desert poem, or (do) something about the desert, and it doesn’t have to be about the high desert.”
The musicians featured at this event are locals Beth Allen and Palo Xanto, and composer Kennedy Verrett.
“(Verrett) has done a lot with the Harrison House music venue in Joshua Tree,” Montelle said. “He is an amazing composer, but he’s from Portland, Ore., so he comes back and forth to Joshua Tree all the time.”
Montelle is also the founder and co-executive director of Mil-Tree, a Joshua Tree-based nonprofit that helps veterans adjust to civilian life. The Mil-Tree site explains: “Our programming allows veterans, servicemembers and the community to participate in creative and impactful programs, events and retreats with the goal of ending veteran isolation.”
Said Montelle: “Mil-Tree brings veterans, active duty (military members) and civilians together through art programming, dialogue, creative entrepreneurship and sharing experiences. This is a fundraiser for this organization that I founded. I did Desert Stories at the playhouse from 2007 to 2019, but it was time to move on. My nonprofit was gaining its own momentum, and I felt that I should be raising money for that.”
Montelle picks the lineup every year, and tries to not have any repeats.
“The stories range from hilarious to touching to sad, and every year is different,” she said. “I curated by just picking people who I intuitively feel would be good for the show. I try to be diverse in my choosing, and I don’t tell them what to write, but I tell them how long it can go: They have eight minutes to tell, dance or sing their desert story.”
“Live From Joshua Tree” often features, alongside accomplished musicians and performers, people who have never spoken in public before.
“I’m very particular, and I really produce it,” Montelle said. “It’s not just ‘get up in front of a mic, and read off of your iPhone.’ I work with each artist who has never performed before so that they go up at the end of the sentence and not down, so we can hear it. Usually performers know what to do. I do pick writers; I do pick musicians; but I also pick people in the community who just have a story. One year, we had Eric Burdon from The Animals do it. It’s a small community up here, but it is more than an arts community up here. … In this show, I have two veterans represented. It’s important now, since it’s a military event, that we hear from the veterans.”
Beth Allen, a local musician in bands like Hot Patooties and ALiEN PROBE, is one of the participants this year. She shared the event flier on Facebook with the caption, “I am excited and nervous; this will be my first time performing a story … sans instruments! Very honored to be part of this event.”
“I’ve actually never gone to one of these events in person, but you can buy a ticket online and watch it online, and it doesn’t have to be the night of the event, so I bought them and then watched them when I could,” Allen said during a recent phone interview. “I’ve had a lot of friends who participated, and I’ve just really, really enjoyed the stories, and they’re all very heartfelt. Some of them made me cry. They were really good. I always had this little wish inside of me of, ‘I hope I get asked to do this someday.’”
“I do pick writers; I do pick musicians; but I also pick people in the community who just have a story.”
“Live From Joshua Tree” host Cheryl Montelle
Even her though performances—with her loud and screamy punk band Hot Patooties, and her otherworldly narrations in an astronaut costume with ALiEN PROBE—would suggest otherwise, Allen still gets nervous onstage. She describes the thought of performing without a full band or guitar as a “push” out of her comfort zone.
“Aside from giving presentations at work and fronting bands, I’ve never stood up and told a story,” she said. “I’m nervous. I had this dirt bike teacher who said, ‘You have to get out of your comfort zone in order to grow. You can dirt bike around slowly and carefully, but you have to be a little scared, or you’re never going to push yourself to the next level.’ I think that applies to a lot of things in life.”
Allen intended to just do a spoken-word story, but after some feedback from Montelle, she’s including an a cappella version of one of her songs.
“When Cheryl asked me, I think she thought I was going to do a song,” Allen said. “Some people do music, but that isn’t what I wanted to do; I wanted to tell a story. When I sent her my draft, I think she was a little disappointed, and she was like, ‘Oh, I thought you were going to do a song,’ and I said, ‘I don’t really want to do that, but I have a song that would kind of fit in with my story, and I could sing a little part of a cappella’—which was completely scary, because I don’t do that. I had to take some of the story out to put that in, and she liked it.”
Allen shared a tidbit about her story.
“If you had told me 30 years ago I’d be living in the desert, I would have just been like, ‘No fucking way,’” she said. “It would never have been something I would ever think I would do. The story is sort of about how it evolved, and how much I love it here. I was always a water person. All my vacations were to Hawaii, to Costa Rica, anywhere with rivers and lakes, so the thought of the desert is just like, ‘What?’ You just never know where life will take you.”
Allen has an impressive writing resume, including some contributions to the Coachella Valley Independent. She will combine her love of writing, and a disdain for poetry, into her performance.
“I would rather sing a cappella terribly than read it like a poem,” she said. “(Poetry) just makes me cringe. It kind of flowed out of me. … I’m relieved. I was stressed, because I had six months to write it, and I just wanted to get it all out, get it done, so then I would feel better about it.”
“Live From Joshua Tree” will take place at 7 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 31, inside the Sanctuary Building at Joshua Tree Retreat Center, at 59700 Twentynine Palms Highway, in Joshua Tree. Tickets to the event start at $33.61, and livestream passes are $22.65. Veterans get in for free. For tickets or more information, visit www.mil-tree.org.