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Photo: Jaclyn Campanaro
Desert Noises
To SXSW and Beyond
Over the past 18 months, Desert
Noises have put over 84,000 miles on
their trusty tour van, which will take
them to SXSW this March.
By Jesse Thomas / mazda8u@gmail.com
esert Noises are a band that were born to
Dperform. While some local bands are content
with an occasional show at Kilby or Velour, these
guys have been traveling from one corner of the
country to another, loading and unloading their
mini-van for shows they booked themselves. Just look
at their Tumblr and see how riddled it is with tour
announcements, updates from the road and “dates
added.”
The four-piece plays folk-inspired indie rock with
enough rhythm, reverb and harmony to fill vast, open
spaces. After some changes in the past, the band’s
current lineup is Kyle Henderson (vocals/guitar),
Tyler Osmond (bass), Patrick Boyer (guitar)
and Brennan Allen (drums). All four are bonafide
Utah Valley boys who came together after playing in
separate bands for some time. They released an EP
(2009) and their excellent first album, Mountain Sea
(2011), on Northplatte Records.
For all four members, growing up around the Provo
music scene has been the biggest motivator to
become musicians themselves. “You could easily go
to any show down here and you’ll find someone
that will inspire you,” Osmond says, “or you would
see something that would just blow your mind—
there’s so many good musicians around here.” All
throughout high school, they would hit up the venues
for shows over the weekend. Allen ponders the
scene’s influence: “All of [the venues] were really
good stomping grounds, good places to be almost
raised by live music. It probably has something to do
with why we love touring so much and playing live
shows—we’ve always been around that,” he says.
Desert Noises have made touring their Number One
priority for a long time now. Until their most recent
tour, they had been booking all of their own shows,
too. Their first tour came as a risk, says Allen: “We
quit our jobs, moved out of our houses, took out a
loan, got a van and went.” Because they didn’t know
anyone in the cities they played, they were forced
to meet and hang out with new people, which has
made subsequent tours much easier to book because
most venues want them back, and they have friends
to reconnect with at each stop. Since that first tour,
they haven’t slowed down. Just in the past year
and a half, they have put 84,000 miles on their
Chevy Venture. They calculated it out: That’s more
than three times around the earth’s equator. The
van actually brought them to notoriety. Henderson
says, “It is what we were known for. It’s your typical
Mormon-mom car.” They traveled with the maybea-little-too-cozy
arrangement of five guys plus all
of their gear in the van, without a trailer. To some
relief, they recently were able to upgrade to a new,
11-seater van.
Last November, the band released a raw, three-song
mini-EP called I Won’t See You. In describing how
the recording came together, Henderson says, “I
don’t think it was necessarily supposed to happen.
We recorded some demos and liked them, and it
was something to represent the four of us because
nothing we had written together had ever come out.”
They hand-packaged and stamped
the recordings as a 7” themselves,
seeing it as a souvenir for fans to
take something home after seeing their show. It was
released on the band’s newly created record label,
Kid Canvas Records, and the title track, “I Won’t
See You,” was featured on MTV Hive. The beautifully
rough, rock n’ roll sound of the EP is a taste of what
is to come from a new record. The band says that
they have enough songs written for a new album, but
are waiting for the right time.
The big news of late is that the band got an invite to
play at SXSW this March. SXSW takes over Austin,
Texas each spring and is one of the nation’s largest
music festivals. Brennan looks forward to the event.
“It sounds like it’s going to be pretty wild from what
everybody tells us. Just busy—busy playing shows.
We’ll be probably playing, like, 10 shows in three
days,” he says. They are excited to be playing so
much there, but are probably more excited to meet
up with friends they have met out on the road who
will also be playing there. “Tons of different bands
that we have met on the road are going to be there.
So it’s like a giant gathering place of bands that we
know, and, hopefully, we’ll run into them and meet
some of their friends,” says Henderson.
To the band, the opportunity to play at SXSW, which
takes place March 12-17, is much appreciated and
exciting, but they are also almost nonchalant about
it. After all, it comes in the middle of yet another of
their tours. Henderson shrugs it off—“It’s just one of
the stops,” he says.
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