The music festival Desert Daze has been inactive since it canceled its events at Lake Perris in 2023 and 2024. But founder Phil Pirrone and the brand has continued as a concert promotion company that just announced a series of concerts throughout Southern California.
Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming “Desert Daze presents” shows.
Add Desert Daze concerts to your list of things to do in Joshua Tree
A recent Instagram post by Desert Daze noted that the April 24 Queens of the Stone Age concert at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center was one of its many events between now and November.
Other upcoming local concerts from the concert promoter include:
For tickets and more information, visit desertdaze.org/ddpresents/.
Desert Daze started in Desert Hot Springs
At the same time the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was drawing thousands of people to Indio over two weekends in spring 2012 to see headliners The Black Keys, Radiohead and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, Dillon’s Burgers and Beers in Desert Hot Springs hosted Desert Daze for 11 days. The festival featured bands such as Dengue Fever, Dead Meadow and Akron/Family. The lineup also included the local bands Waxy, Slipping Into Darkness and War Drum.
Pirrone, the frontman of the psychedelic rock band JJUUJJUU, lived in Pomona and built a reputation for throwing block parties featuring rock ‘n’ roll bands under his Moon Block Party moniker. He met his wife and Deap Vally drummer, Julie Edwards Pirrone, during a show at Pappy and Harriet’s, and they started working on the first Desert Daze shortly after getting together.
“The whole thing that we do is just an extension of many years of playing music with our friends and then finding places and environments where it sounds fun to do a show like a block party outside, or in the desert after being changed by the desert in many ways,” Pirrone said.
In 2013, Desert Daze moved to the Sunset Ranch Oasis in Mecca featuring headliners Tinariwen and Warpaint. It moved again in 2016 to the Institute of Mentalphysics in Joshua Tree before settling an hour away from Palm Springs at the Lake Perris State Recreation Area in 2018.
Desert Daze took 2023 off, and when it was canceled in 2024, a message on the festival’s homepage listed “rising production costs and the current volatile festival market” as the reasons.
Until its final year in 2022, the festival featured performances by Tame Impala, Devo, The War on Drugs, Japanese Breakfast, Eagles of Death Metal, Viagra Boys, Primus, Wu-Tang Clan and many more.
Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment for the Desert Sun. He can be reached at brian.blueskye@desertsun.com
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Desert Daze announces summer concerts in Pioneertown, across SoCal
Reporting by Brian Blueskye, Palm Springs Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
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