The desert attracts musicians from all over the world … including a band 3,000 miles away in the Catskill Mountains of New York.
The Nude Party—a seven-piece rock group known for its country-garage musical blend and folky lyrics that frequently include music-biz commentary—on Feb. 13 released Look Who’s Back, the band’s fourth album, which was recorded in Joshua Tree. The album’s cover and promotional material showcase the twangy troubadours posing in and around the Mojave.
On Friday, March 20, The Nude Party is bringing the Look Who’s Back tour to the place where the album was made, as they’ll perform at Pappy and Harriet’s.
“I think a tour has always been the thing that’s brought us out that way,” said guitarist and frontman Patton Magee during a recent interview. “I remember one of the very first tours we went on when we were still, like, really slumming it … like sleeping on people’s floors, we had some time off, and we got to spend a few days out in Moab, Utah, and we went out to White Sands, N.M. One of the (other) desert places we got to go camp out at was Pioneertown and Joshua Tree, which was first time I’d ever been there.”
Holed up at Joshua Tree’s Taurus Rising Records, the band tracked Look Who’s Back with local psychedelic-folk fellow Michael Rault and cosmic-country queen Pearl Charles.
“The desert is very much baked into the album where we did it,” Magee said.
The nine tracks show the twangy rockers inching closer to full-blown country jams while maintaining their gritty edge, as songs like “Sweetheart of the Radio” exhibit classic cowboy-trucker vibes, while raunchy riffs on “Carolyn” cross blues eras from the Rolling Stones to the Black Keys.
While the Mojave played a role in the creation of the album, the songs were written well before the band arrived at the studio.
“It’s not like we’re necessarily writing new words about the sand or anything,” Magee said. “But it does change the schedule. It’s just crazy out there. It’s cold when the sun goes down, hot when the sun’s up—and dry.”
“Sweetheart of the Radio” features vocal performances from Pearl Charles and Haylie Davis. It is the first time someone from outside of the band has sung lead vocals on a Nude Party song.
“Pearl’s awesome,” Magee said. “She’s just helpful to bounce ideas off of, and she sang some backing vocals, and it’s just a good hang, a good presence, keeping the vibe alive with her and Michael.”
Look Who’s Back was tracked over multiple 16-hour days in the studio.
“We did it pretty fast, which sometimes is the best way to do it, because you just can’t overthink it,” Magee said. “Overthinking it doesn’t always make it better. I’ve gone into the mode of just doing a couple takes and leaving it as that, and then coming back to it later. If it sticks out to you, you can do it again, but there’s just so much to do with an album, and so little time, and none of us have real big studio budgets. … When you have a good vibe going, and a good producer, it’s best to just sort of flow through everything and decide later if it’s a keeper or not.
After long being fans of Pappy and Harriet’s, The Nude Party will finally get the chance to perform at the iconic venue.
“I am so stoked that after however many years of trying, we finally get to, and it’s back in the place where we made the record,” Magee said.
After becoming acquainted through various tours—including a 2022 tour during which the Pearl Charles band, featuring Rault, was an opening act with The Nude Party—Rault and Charles welcomed all seven members of The Nude Party into their home studio.
“That was definitely, in two different ways, the biggest thing we’ve done,” Rault said during a recent phone interview. “It was the first time we were recording a band that actually has more of a following at our studio, but the other thing was that they’re just the biggest group of people that we’ve had here. We also had their tour manager here as well, on top of the whole band. I was definitely going through all my technical needs on the studio side of things, like, ‘Do I have enough mics to record everything that I need to record simultaneously to make this work?’ I was also like, ‘Do we have enough chairs?’ We brought in a couch right before the session. In the long run, that added to the enjoyment of the process—all of us just really crammed into our little desert house studio and really living right on top of each other, but we had a good time with it.”
“There really isn’t anything else to do … so you really do just lock in. The scenery is beautiful, and the vibe is very peaceful and calming—as long as there isn’t some sort of crazy desert wind storm.”
Michael Rault, on recording in the high desert
Rault said the desert landscape does indeed help bands keep their focus when they come to record.
“I’m so deep into this lifestyle out here that I kind of forget about how much distraction there would be for me, on a day-to-day basis, if I was working in a studio in L.A. or any other big city,” he said. “People say it to me all the time, but when they come out to do various projects, I feel like everybody always ends up commenting on the fact that it provides an extra level of focus. There really isn’t anything else to do … so you really do just lock in. The scenery is beautiful, and the vibe is very peaceful and calming—as long as there isn’t some sort of crazy desert wind storm.”
Charles explained how Taurus Rising Records’ homey vibe, the desert landscape, and the duo’s knack for twangy folk all played a role in conjuring the cosmic country vibe on Look Who’s Back.
“It’s really more of a studio than a house; we just happen to live here,” Charles said. “If you look around, it’s totally decked out with all my little knickknacks and vintage furniture and artwork and all this stuff. I’ve always been drawn to the desert. My family’s had a place out here for over 20 years, and Michael and I really fell into this house that we turned into the studio in a really magical kind of way. … (The Nude Party) already have that sound and that vibe and that aesthetic in them, so as time went on, they’ve evolved more in this direction. They thought about making the record in L.A., and by choosing to make it out here in the home of cosmic country music, it was going to find a way to come through in the sound.”
Rault talked about a moment while recording “Sweetheart on the Radio.”
“I remember talking to Shaun (Couture, guitarist/vocalist), who wrote ‘Sweetheart of the Radio,’ when we were recording that, and I was struck by the combination of how they were playing that song through the gear that we were recording with,” he said. “I think I said to him, ‘Wow, this just sounds legitimately like a cool country record,’ in a way that I was impressed by, and I remember Shaun just saying, ‘This is what we all listen to all the time.’ We may have influenced it a slight bit—with the environment of the desert, the sound of the gear in the studio, my approach with engineering and producing, and Pearl’s vibe—but I think it was their main focus, on a musical level, that was just starting to take the forefront, and maybe we were able to help nurture that transition.”
Taurus Rising Records could become a go-to for cosmic country vibes in similar ways to how Rancho de la Luna, a recording studio also in Joshua Tree, has become a hotspot for the desert-rock sound.
“I think in some ways, we’re continuing the tradition of places like Rancho de la Luna … but stylistically and musically, we’re kind of also carrying on that tradition of the types of people who used to just come hang out in Joshua Tree in the ’60s and ’70s with the Stones and Gram Parsons,” Rault said.
The Nude Party will perform at 9:30 p.m., Friday, March 20, at Pappy and Harriet’s, at 53688 Pioneertown Road, in Pioneertown. Teddy and the Rough Riders are the scheduled openers. Tickets are $28.76. For tickets and more information, visit pappyandharriets.com.