Now that’s what I call a heatwave - Dan Donovan’s magical desert adventure

Five years ago musician and photographer Dan Donovan, who has worked with Forest for 15 years, pursued a dream and travelled to the Mojave Desert in California.

Thanks to his friend, Snow Patrol’s Jonny Quinn, Dan had been invited to spend two weeks at Rancho de la Luna, a famously creative lo-fi recording studio in Joshua Tree.

As he wrote at the time:

I've been obsessed with the desert and the studio Rancho de la Luna for a few years now. Pretty much everything that comes from that studio I love - Iggy Pop, Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal, Kyuss, PJ Harvey, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club to name a few.

A good few weeks ago I hooked up with long time friend Jonny Quinn and asked him if he'd come across the place in his travels. He said yes and it would be perfect for me to go and record as Dave Catching, the owner, and myself are 'cut from the same cloth'.

I thought no more about it then Jonny told me he'd been in touch with Dave C. Next thing Dave C listened to some of my tunes and invited me over to record. Next thing Jonny says he's recording the new Snow Patrol album in LA during May/June and would come and play drums for the session if I go ahead with it.

The tracks Dan recorded at Rancho de la Luna were later released as a nine-track CD, Mojo del Rancho, but it was the photographs he took that inspired me to think I'd like to go there too.

He caught the hauntingly dry terrain perfectly and during our own heatwave this week I thought about Dan’s desert adventure. Last night, in response to my queries, he wrote:

My time in the Mojave Desert was magical. My visit there was booked around the availability of Rancho de la Luna, an infamous recording studio in the desert scrub just outside the small town of Joshua Tree. Little did I know that there was to be a Californian heatwave waiting for me.

However my excitement at being there overshadowed any concern I might have had with regard to coping or dealing with the heat. The car I’d hired had air-con, the studio had air-con, all the bars, eating houses and shops had air-con. The people I got to spend time with took it all in their stride and they joked about the irony of me, a pale-faced Englishman deciding to spend two weeks in the desert at this particular time of year.

Apart from recording new tunes for an album I also spent my mornings taking photos and shooting some video around the area and in particular the Joshua Tree National Park, a vast protected area in southern California characterized by rugged rock formations and stark desert landscapes. We could drive through the park and would stop randomly to get out and clamber around the rocks or just to take a moment to shoot the views. We would spend maybe 15 minutes at a time out and about and then quickly retreat to the car to soak up the air-con.

Generally there weren’t people out and about on the streets, just us crazy tourists, everyone was pretty much indoors. We did go to an open air market one day which was reasonably busy. There were stalls selling local produce and local crafts but no chuntering or moaning about the heat. I was at a market in the UK just the other week, the temperature was around the 30 degree mark and most of the stall holders had something negative to say about the heat.

Naturally the gardens in the residential areas were nothing like our lush green gardens in the UK but there were gardens of mainly assorted cacti, palm trees and of course Joshua trees. I would happily live out there and would miss our greenery for sure but to spend two weeks there I never tired of the dry dusty landscapes and unique nature.

The current heatwave here in the UK really does put me in mind of my time at Joshua Tree but the sense of panic and alarm that we’re embracing has nothing in common with the laid back bohemian community that live quite happily out in Joshua Tree.

According to a screen grab from Dan’s weather app the temperature while he was there varied from 41 to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit), so higher than the temperature we've experienced on two days this week and may not experience again for several years.

Funnily enough, shortly after Dan visited Rancho de la Luna another musician with a connection to Forest, Firebug’s Juliette Tworsey, moved to Joshua Tree from New Orleans. Commenting on this blog in August 2017 Juliette wrote:

When Jules [Juliette’s partner] and I still lived in Los Angeles we would occasionally visit Joshua Tree, but we still had that itch to live in a city, so we moved to New Orleans for its lower cost of living and musical culture.

Fast forward a few years and the mountains of the West came calling. There are a lot of musicians here, which is one of the main reasons why we chose this area and you can see the stars at night!

Meanwhile here are some of the photos Dan took while he was in Joshua Tree. I love looking at them because some are like viewing another planet and I did wonder how people could survive that relentless heat.

The short answer is air-con but as Dan says, “The sense of panic and alarm that we’re embracing has nothing in common with the laid back bohemian community that live quite happily out in Joshua Tree.”

PS. A few remaining copies of Dan’s Mojave Spirits photo book are available here.

Photos courtesy Dan Donovan