From a skeletal homesteader cabin on a cold Mojave night, it’s the annual Desert Oracle Christmas Special. New Mexico writer Anna Merlan joins us to talk about the winter holidays in Santa Fe. New solstice sounds by RedBlueBlackSilver.
Tonight at 10 p.m., from Amboy to Zzyzx on Z 107.7 FM, or streaming from Z1077FM.com or streaming via Tune In or get the free podcast.
Merry Christmas, pigs.
It’s our show before Christmas
And all through the cabin
Not a creature is breathin’
Because of the stabbin’
We pay a visit to Amboy, and to the burnt forest of Joshua trees at Cima Dome, Mojave National Preserve. That’s right, it’s Episode #114. Get in.
DESERT ORACLE, VOL. 1: Our new book is available everywhere, please enjoy responsibly. (SORRY IT’S BACKORDERED AT BOOKSHOP.ORG, WE’VE ALERTED THE AUTHORITIES.)
New soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver. Listen on the FM radio, from Amboy to Zzyzx (Fridays at 10 p.m. on Z 107.7 FM), or streaming from Z1077FM.com or streaming via Tune In or get the free podcast.
LINER NOTES by Ken Layne
San Francisco was so cheap in the 1990s that people would move there when they ran out of money. You could get around on a $35 monthly MUNI pass, cable cars included, and there was always a rundown Victorian in need of another roommate. There were plenty of bar jobs, temp jobs, restaurant jobs, part-time work that afforded the luxury of doing the important stuff: boozy nights, bookstore afternoons, art and music.
I washed up there in late 1992, having bummed around Eastern Europe for a while. Because I’d spent a memorable night carousing with Giant Sand in Prague, when I saw they were playing San Francisco’s Bottom of the Hill, I took the bus down to Potrero. The opening band started up just as I got my first beer, and within half a song I had relocated to the edge of the low stage.
The music they played stuck right in my soul and has been there ever since—one of those rare moments when you walk into a bar and everything feels like a movie. And you’re in it, along with all these beautiful people: punks and bums and booze-bags, spirits high despite the usual load of troubles on everybody’s back.
The group was called the Buckets. What you’ve got here is a platter of demo/single songs they put out themselves, or on minuscule 45 labels, in the era of grunge and alternative. “Postmarked Virginia” and “I Wrote This Song”—both performed that long-ago night at the bottom of Potrero Hill—are perfect country compositions, better than anything of the Nashville or Alt-Country of the time. The rockers had a bit of grunge, and all their music has soul and sincerity far beyond the jokey truck-driver premise of the band; none of them drove big rigs, as far as I know.
Earl Butter and Wanderlean Taters were the heart of the Buckets, loaning themselves from the oddball folk group Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, but each lineup I saw in those years was terrific. I brought everybody I knew to see the Buckets, and nobody ever regretted it.
—Ken Layne
Joshua Tree, Calif.
Tonight we share the tale of the Krill Papers, strange legends of Cold War space-alien conspiracies, located right in the very heart of the Nevada desert wilderness.
Speaking of, we are also joined by Patrick Donnelly, Nevada state director of the Center for Biological Diversity, which along with Nevada native tribes and desert lovers everywhere is celebrating a victory. Ever been to the Desert National Wildlife Refuge? Well whether you ever set foot there or not, it’s safe again, for the desert bighorn and desert tortoise and a true wonderland of rare wild lands. For now. Let’s keep it that way.
And happy book publication week to us!available everywhere, please enjoy responsibly.
New soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver, and don’t forget to check out his new album, Five Flora.
A new show for Friday night, yes! And on SUNDAY, 12/6/2020, join Ken Layne and Anna Merlan for a Skylight Books virtual event, where we’ll be telling ghost stories and reading something weird from the new book and talking with you, if you choose to talk to us. Virtually, sadly. No whiskey & kissin’. Maybe next time. And we don’t know who “Lockdown Willie” is, either. It just sounded good.
Whatcha doing this Sunday? Join us as we travel to the virtual Mojave with @Desert_Oracle, @JoinTheDynasty and @annamerlan at 6pm PT!
We’ll have campfire tales and desert lore galore 🌙
Tix here: https://t.co/bPyNTERjoX pic.twitter.com/WUXQDXIjcH
— Skylight Books (@skylightbooks) December 5, 2020
@KenLayne, author of "Desert Oracle," will join us for #AltaAsksLive next Wednesday at 12:30pm PT to take us on a digital journey through the massive, magical Mojave.
Register here for this free event:https://t.co/TisLJdsPMv— AltaJournal (@AltaJournal) December 4, 2020
Oh and this one, Wednesday evening at (virtually) McNally Jackson in New York: A conversation about the desert and probably everything else, with New York Times style editor Choire Sicha, famously of The Awl and Gawker and many other things.
Listen to tonight’s show, Episode #112, on the FM radio, from Amboy to Zzyzx (Fridays at 10 p.m. on Z 107.7 FM), or streaming from Z1077FM.com or streaming via Tune In or get the free podcast. Hey and if you listen on the radio, there’s a bonus episode after that. A repeat, yes, but it’s nice to hear a couple of shows together on the radio. New soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver, and don’t forget to check out his new album, Five Flora.
OUR BOOK IS OUT ON DECEMBER 8, pre-order from your favorite bookseller today & you’ll have the book as soon as it’s out.
Photo by Utah DPS.
New soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver, and don’t forget to check out his new album, Five Flora. You might recognize some of the tracks.
Listen on the FM radio, from Amboy to Zzyzx (Fridays at 10 p.m. on Z 107.7 FM), or streaming from Z1077FM.com or streaming via Tune In or get the free podcast.
OUR BOOK IS OUT ON DECEMBER 8, pre-order from your favorite bookseller today & you’ll have the book as soon as it’s out.
An orphan child from Cincinnati loved the scriptures and lived a live of gold-mine adventure in the Almost-Old West before winding up in a bomber-plane factory in Los Angeles, creating death-delivery systems for the permanent Cold War. Anxious over this atomic nightmare, yet optimistic enough to think humanity could survive it, Frank Antone Martin built an enormous concrete Jesus in his Inglewood driveway.
Such is the tale. Tune in to hear it all, the whole sordid thing. It’s Episode #110, soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, snow on the western mountaintops.
Listen on the FM radio, from Amboy to Zzyzx (Fridays at 10 p.m. on Z 107.7 FM), or streaming from Z1077FM.com or streaming via Tune In or get the free podcast.
OUR BOOK IS OUT ON DECEMBER 8, pre-order from your favorite bookseller today & you’ll have the book as soon as it’s out.
It’s a Halloween Full Moon weekend and you better prepare for something else that’s coming up quick: the Great Conjunction of 2020. When Saturn and Jupiter grow ever closer in our night sky, until their Great Conjunction as winter solstice arrives, on December 21. With guest C. Del Desierto telling tales of counting eagles in the Anza-Borrego wilderness. With new sounds by RedBlueBlackSilver. On the FM radio from Amboy to Zzyzx (Fridays at 10 p.m. on Z 107.7 FM), or streaming from Z1077FM.com or streaming via Tune In or get the free podcast.
IT’S HALLOWEEN TIME, and this episode is for your October night-time, please listen responsibly. And if you enjoy the program, we appreciate your support at http://patreon.com/desertoracle. And did you know our new issue, #9, has already gone out to subscribers and is available at fine retailers in Joshua Tree, Moab, Yucca Valley, Los Angeles, Palm Springs & etc.? It’s true. Oh and we’ve got a hardcover book on the way, you can pre-order it today and get it fresh in your mailbox on publication day, December 8, coming right up.
On the FM radio from Amboy to Zzyzx (Fridays at 10 p.m. on Z 107.7 FM), or streaming from Z1077FM.com or streaming via Tune In. New sounds from RedBlueBlackSilver.
IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT AND NOW IS THE TIME, so here’s our 107th episode, please do what you like with it. And if you enjoy the program, please consider supporting the enterprise for just pennies per year, at http://patreon.com/desertoracle.
Tonight, via podcast or on the radio in Joshua Tree (Fridays at 10 p.m. on Z 107.7 FM), or streaming from Z1077FM.com or streaming via Tune In. New sounds from RedBlueBlackSilver. PLUS: Your mail, lots of it, a whole pile of desert picture postcards.
