A desert rocker is hosting a two-day celebration of music and the Mojave.
On Friday and Saturday, March 20 and 21, Patrick Brink—guitarist/vocalist of Twentynine Palms stoner-rock band VOLUME—is hosting the first Mojave Experience festival, honoring the iconic, heavy sound birthed in the desert.
A limited number of tickets for the Friday pre-party at Mojave Gold—with the Rubber Snake Charmers featuring Sean Wheeler, The Freeks, Arthur Seay and the RiffKillers, Borracho, Insomniac and SoftSun—were just released as of March 9. Tickets are still available for the Saturday main event at Joshua Tree Lake RV and Campground, with Earthless, Dead Meadow, John Garcia, Acid King, Yawning Man, Hippie Death Cult, Nick Oliveri’s Death Acoustic, Ecstatic Vision, Howling Giant and Early Moods.
“I love the desert, and I love what’s coming out, and there are so many different types of music coming out,” Brink said during a recent phone interview.
Why did Brink decide to assemble a two-day music event?
“I’m in a band, and I want to get on a cool fest,” he said. “I see some cool fests with some cool headliners, but the rest of the festival is kind of boring to me, and I was just like, ‘I want to curate the bands and make sure all the bands are something I’d like to watch, and just make a cool event and then put my band on there.’
But … VOLUME isn’t slated to perform at Mojave Experience.
“It started taking off, and I was getting all these cool bands, so I was like, ‘You know what? The first year, I’m not going to play, because I want to come out swinging,’” Brink said. “Not everybody knows our band, so I’d rather have that spot be somebody people actually know.”
Alongside legends of the desert’s music scene like Mario Lalli (Yawning Man, Fatso Jetson), John Garcia (Kyuss) and Nick Oliveri (Queens of the Stone Age), Mojave Experience features more modern bands like Borracho, Earthless and Hippie Death Cult—groups from outside of the area who are keeping the music of the desert alive.
“I want to have some heavy-hitters and some legends every year,” Brink said. “With Mario Lalli, who’s in, like, 50 million bands, and Brant Bjork, there’s enough to keep mixing it up and have those people as a mainstay in the festival, but with other bands around the country. I’ve already started working on next year’s, and I’m trying to get some (bands) over from Europe right now.”
Even though the focus is desert rock, Brink hopes the festival’s future lineups cover a wider musical spectrum.
“The early days of Coachella were really cool, and Levitation festival—I’m totally influenced by that, where they can have a band like Pavement with a band like Mastodon on the same stage,” Brink said. “I want to do something like that. … The desert has so many different styles of bands that it just would make sense to do that.”
The enticing beauty of the Mojave Desert meant artists were quick to say yes, and fans were quick to buy tickets.
“Joshua Tree is a destination place,” Brink said. “People want to come out here. They want to experience the mystique and the natural surroundings. I was born and raised out here, so I love it … and other people want to come out here and play.”
Brink recognizes the importance that comes with celebrating a world-famous music scene right where it began.
“It’s the perfect place to stop, and it’s not in the middle of the summer. There’s the national park, Giant Rock, all the lore and so many art installations all over that people have put up. There’s just so much stuff to do.”
Mojave Experience producer Patrick Brink, On Joshua Tree in March
“People want to see (desert rock icons) in the original setting,” he said. “A lot of people want to come out to Joshua Tree, where it all began. The music is good. It’s real; it’s something you can grab a hold of; it’s got a good groove to it, so I think that attracts people. We’ve sold tickets from all over the world. We’ve got at least 15 people coming from Australia. This one lady hit me up, and her whole band’s coming out, and she’s bringing her son, who is 17 years old—and she named him Kyuss. She wants to show them where it all started, and see some of the bands like John Garcia and Mario Lalli and Yawning Man, and to be part of the experience.”
Brink hopes that people recognize the experience portion of the festival by checking out local vendors and supporting the high desert community.
“That’s the whole thing with the Mojave Experience—I want it to be more than a festival,” he said. “I want people to look at it as an adventure, and I want them to come before and hang out and take in all that the desert has, or stay afterward and make it a vacation. It’s the perfect place to stop, and it’s not in the middle of the summer. There’s the national park, Giant Rock, all the lore and so many art installations all over that people have put up. There’s just so much stuff to do.”
Brink said he has big goals for Mojave Experience—and that he wants the festival to get bigger each year.
“I want to get bigger bands, and I’m already hitting up bigger bands and talking to them,” Brink said. “I want to have more vendors, more local vendors, and just a variety of stuff, so when people come there, in between bands, we give them something to do instead of just sitting around smoking a cigarette. I want to get more immersive stuff. I wanted to get some telescopes out there, because people from the cities don’t know what stars look like. They’ve seen them in books or on TV, but they haven’t seen them in real life, so I want to get some telescopes out there so people can check them out, see the rings of Saturn and stargaze.”
Mojave Experience will take place on Friday, March 20, at Mojave Gold, at 56193 Twentynine Palms Highway, in Yucca Valley; and Saturday, March 21, at Joshua Tree Lake RV and Campground, at 2601 Sunfair Road, in Joshua Tree. The Friday event is sold out, and tickets for the Saturday event are $79.80. For tickets and more information, visit www.mojaveexperience.net.