The Desert Sessions

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The Desert Sessions are a musical collective series, founded by Josh Homme in 1997. Artists such as Brant Bjork, PJ Harvey, Jeordie White (a.k.a. Twiggy Ramirez), Dave Catching, Nick Oliveri, Mark Lanegan, John McBain, Ben Shepherd, Josh Freese, Chris Goss, Alain Johannes, Troy Van Leeuwen, Dean Ween and many others from the Palm Desert Scene have contributed as songwriters and musicians.

Video The Desert Sessions

History

The Desert Sessions began in August 1997 at the Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree when Homme brought together musicians from the bands Monster Magnet, Goatsnake, earthlings?, Kyuss (his own band, which had split in 1995) and Soundgarden. The ranch is an old house filled to the brim with rare and unique recording equipment and instruments and was owned by Dave Catching and the late Fred Drake. Songs are written "on the spot", often in a matter of hours. Many stories have grown around the Sessions. For example, the song "Creosote" from Volumes 9 & 10 was written by Dean Ween and Alain Johannes on the ranch's front porch within four minutes of meeting each other. Similarly, Chris Goss and PJ Harvey wrote the song "There Will Never Be A Better Time" for I See You Hearin' Me after going out onto the porch of the ranch for four minutes with an acoustic guitar; they re-entered the house and recorded the song in one take, the only time the song was ever played by the collective.

The first Desert Session was not actually a "session" per se, but Homme and his band at the time (The Acquitted Felons) playing for three days straight on psychedelic mushrooms. Since then, the Desert Sessions have become legendary, growing in intensity and artistic merit.

At Desert Sessions, you play for the sake of music. That's why it's good for musicians. If someday that's not enough anymore, or that's not the reason behind you doing it--that's not your raison d'être--then a quick reminder like Desert Sessions can do so much for you, it's amazing. It's easy to forget that this all starts from playing in your garage and loving it. - Josh Homme

The Desert Sessions have only performed live twice. The live incarnation, which included Joey Castillo, Troy Van Leeuwen, Brian O'Connor, Josh Homme as well as a variety of musicians performing different songs, have performed on an episode of the British music television show Later... with Jools Holland as well as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2004.

After eleven years of inactivity, Josh Homme revealed in October 2014 that he would start working on more Desert Sessions material the following year.

Maps The Desert Sessions

Recording history

There's nothing going on [now]. I wish, but I've run out of time. I'm talking to this one guy about adding four more hours to each day, but he's not real positive about it. Those are never going to end, because there's no reason for them to end. But I'd like to make them more regular. - Josh Homme interview with Billboard.com, April 13, 2007

The Desert Sessions are gonna go on forever. There's no reason to stop them. No, it wasn't me that said there would be only 12 volumes--I'm gonna do 112! It's just a mix tape--the longest-running mix tape in existence. It's awesome: doing them is just a matter of making the time frame come together. I was really wanting to do one before the new album "Era Vulgaris" came out, but we didn't put a time frame on it and it consumed what would have been that time. I didn't want it to take away from what we were doing. - Josh Homme in May 2007 as recorded by Blabbermouth.net.

In a 2007 interview with Rockline, Homme stated that he was going to be working on a new Desert Sessions album in December 2007 and the first ten will be re-released as a box set, however more years passed since any activity happened.