Some people like it, some people don’t. We are talking about the desert. And this week—challenged by a listener to stop romanticizing the desert southwest—we are joined by Phoenix writer & music man Jason P. Woodbury, to help us give a couple places a real hard time. Let’s give Sedona the business, etc. New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver.
Tonight at 10 p.m. on Joshua Tree’s own Z107.7 FM, from Amboy to Zzyzx, or streaming from Z1077FM.com and Tune In.
The middle of the country might be frozen solid all the way over to the Gulf of Mexico, but here in the Great Mojave Wilderness the weather is fine, the skies are blue, and the first hints of so many little green something-or-others are now apparent on the desert sands.
Will we finally come out of our holes? Let’s figure it out together, to new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. It’s EPISODE #120: OUT OF OUR HOLES.
Tonight at 10 p.m. on Joshua Tree’s own Z107.7 FM, from Amboy to Zzyzx, or streaming from Z1077FM.com or Tune In.
Or listen on your phone, if you’re out of FM range:
You ever drive the “Loneliest Road In America”? That’s what they call U.S. 50, across the Great Basin Desert through the middle of Nevada. Not many people out there, not a lot going on. Just as we like it. The mystery visitors like it, too. They like the quiet. They need the wild mountains and desert valleys of the Basin and Range. We hope em like this: Episode #119: “Alien Corpses of the Great Basin,” with all-new spacey soundscapes by our own RedBlueBlackSilver. (And we’re on Spotify, too.)
And way back in 1952, so the story goes, 16 little alien friends were found dead in the wreckage of a glowing oval craft that smashed into the side of a copper mine near Ely, Nevada. Find out more, if you dare, tonight at 10 p.m. on Joshua Tree’s own Z107.7 FM, or streaming from Z1077FM.com or Tune In.
Or listen here, if you’re out of FM range:
There’s a leak in the studio roof and the only way we know is because an atmospheric river is bearing down upon the American Southwest. So get a bucket or a cereal bowl or something and we’ll all paddle to Hell together . . . . with new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver to keep us company.
It’s Episode #118: Atmospheric River, don’t run dry, on a cold & rainy kinda weekend in the High Desert.
Tonight at 10 p.m., from Amboy to Zzyzx on Z 107.7 FM, or streaming from Z1077FM.com or Tune In or get the free podcast. Did you know our new hardcover book is on sale now? It’s called Desert Oracle Vol. I.
PHOTO CREDIT: Reconstruction of life on a Hohokam platform mound in the Sonoran Desert in 1300 CE, courtesy of Pueblo Grande Museum, City of Phoenix.
Do you know about the mysterious Dragoon Mountains of Cochise County? Well get in the truck, we’re taking a night drive to Arizona. Now is the time for Episode #117, so get ready for the weird times. New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver as we cover some difficult terrain with the Apache leader Cochise, the strange granite of his stronghold, and the mystery craft seen on many nights around these mysterious 78-million-year-old mountain spires to this day.
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. Did you know we’ve got a new hardcover book?
Might be a nutty new year on the national news, but here in the desert we are just trying to get along and not got crushed. What happened at the Yucca Valley protest on Friday? Well good luck getting the straight story on that. With guest Brendan Maze and new 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.
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.
