The sounds of the Sunset Strip are coming to the Coachella Valley!
L.A. Guns have been cementing a hard and heavy legacy for more than four decades. Tapping into glam, blues and hair metal, the band offers shredding solos, sleazy style and vicious vocals. Hits like “Electric Gypsy” highlight high-energy, explosive rock, while “The Ballad of Jayne” showcases a solid, somber power-ballad vibe, trading tenacity for tenderness. Vocalist Phil Lewis and guitarist Tracii Guns remain from the band’s ’80s lineup.
You can catch L.A. Guns, performing with fellow ’80s rocker Tom Keifer (of Cinderella), on Thursday, July 2, at Agua Caliente Rancho Mirage.
While the pairing of L.A. Guns and Tom Keifer is a killer one-two punch for roarin’ audiences, it’s also full-circle moment for Lewis.
“Cinderella was the soundtrack to my Hollywood initiation,” Lewis said during a recent phone interview. “I came over from London in 1986, and Cinderella’s “Night Songs” and that album were just played over and over again on all the rock radio stations—back when we had rock radio stations, and when we had stations that actually would play some new music instead of music from dead people. I was like, ‘I love this album; I love this guy’s voice,’ and a lot of our second and third albums are heavily influenced by Tom’s writing.
“Every now and then, back in the day, we’d go and see Cinderella play, and we were big, big fans. Cut to several years later, and here we are, on tour with him. It’s a dream, and I still watch him playing with exactly the same enthusiasm as I did in my 20s, and he hasn’t dropped a beat. He’s absolutely amazing—and it turns out that he’s a fabulous guy. He and his band, we’re all like some best friends now, because we’ve done so many shows and so many tours together.”
L.A. Guns and Cinderella were a welcome departure for music fans during a decade dominated by pop.
“Coming from London at that particular time, the mid to late ’80s, with all the shitty music that was over there like Duran Duran and the Spandau Ballet, it was so incredibly refreshing to find ’80s rock bands, and not Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and the Led Zeppelin, because that was all ’70s,” Lewis said. “Tom is the ’80s equivalent of those ’70s mega bands, if you know what I mean.”
Keifer’s vocal badassery on Cinderella’s jams mirror the skills of Lewis with L.A. Guns.
“There’s something really unique about his voice,” Lewis said. “I do hundreds of covers a year, tributes and whatnot, and I can do the Robin Zander (Cheap Trick) stuff easy enough, even the Brian Johnson (AC/DC) stuff, but there’s something very extraordinary about Tom’s voice, and it’s so great to hear him warming up down the hall prior to him hitting the stage. He just nails it, and it’s like a beast, the sound that emanates from his body. It’s more than a voice; it’s a vibe, and it blows me away.”
L.A. Guns are not existing today as a mere legacy act; in fact, the band has become rather prolific regarding new music.
“We have released five new original albums without a single cover in the last eight years, and it’s a feat that we’re incredibly proud of,” he said. “We enjoy the process, the writing process, and the art of recording and songwriting, and so far, every one of those albums has pleased us enormously. We’re really, really happy with the outcome.”
L.A. Guns continues to provide an excellent live show. Their latest live album, Live From the Guild Theatre, showcases a particularly electric show from their 2025 tour.
“The band is sounding so good, so tight, and here’s the thing: It’s a real live album,” Lewis said. “We didn’t go in the studio with post production, and I didn’t do any vocal overdubs; Tracii didn’t go in and fix any solos. It is what it is, and it sounds good, because it was well-recorded—but it will sound exactly the same if you held up your phone and recorded one of our shows. What you see is what you get, and we’re also incredibly proud of that.”
The live album and their current live show both celebrate multiple eras of the band.
“There are songs, we call them nuggets, like ‘Sex Action,’ ‘Electric Gypsy’ and ‘The Ballad of Jayne,’ that absolutely should be sounding good live, because we’ve been playing them for so long, but it’s really good when we look at new stuff like the ‘Cannonball’ song that we open with,” Lewis said. “It’s actually, in my opinion, better than the album version, because when you play something countless times, it does get better, whereas when we recorded it, we’d never really played it live—so it’s taken on a new dimension. It’s much stronger, and it blends in really well with the nuggets.”
This year marks four decades since Lewis moved to Hollywood from England.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “That’s a lifetime, isn’t it? A lot of people don’t live that long, and here we are, still doing it, and still having a great time—and most importantly, all getting on really well. The road is bumpy, but the camaraderie and the strength of the unit is remarkable, and I think that really makes for a good live show.”
L.A. Guns and Cinderella’s Tom Keifer will perform at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, July 2, at Agua Caliente Rancho Mirage, at 32250 Bob Hope Drive. Tickets start at $50.23. For tickets and more information, visit www.aguacalientecasinos.com.
