Desert Daze Redefines Music Festivals As An Intimate Experience

LOS ANGELES, CA – Before he was thrown into the music scene as a young teenager, Phil Perrone tracked soccer statistics. Over the course of decades, his initial interest in figuring out how to “keep track of stuff” slowly morphed into booking gigs for his first band, throwing block parties and eventually growing into the professional projects he’s involved in today.

Now, Perrone plays many roles: JJUUJJUU bandmate, husband to rocker Julie Edwards of Deap Vally, father to a baby and founder of Moon Block parties and the Desert Daze music festival.

“I was always the very DIY-minded person, so I guess what I’m doing now is more an extension of that,” Perrone said.

Desert Daze is a psychedelic music festival held on October 12-15 featuring headliners Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, Iggy Pop, and Spiritualized. Now in its sixth year, the festival’s location at the “sacred site” of the Institute of Mentalphysics in Joshua Tree is an atypical environment for a music festival. Desert Daze is more of an “experience,” Perrone said, and all of the components of the festival help form a level of intimacy between everyone that attends.

Originally, Desert Daze was an 11-day event that spanned across both weekends of Coachella. Although it has scaled back since its conception, the essence of the festival has primarily stayed the same, Perrone said. The only difference now is that things have “just clicked.”

“If you like the idea of being in a prehistoric alien landscape, and you like this music there’s no better place you could go. Ever. Anywhere,” Perrone said. “Desert Daze is a more cohesive thing for the kind of people that like music festivals but don’t like big crowds.”

Unlike a festival held in an urban setting, watching bands perform with the moon overhead and isolated in nature speaks to the music Perrone and his team have created. Even the energy at Desert Daze is different, he said. People get married at Desert Daze, people propose at Desert Daze, and it’s a completely different environment full of “nice, intelligent people,” Perrone said.

To an extent, Desert Daze is like a little secret to the people that know of it right now, he said, and the comfort between strangers is “unparalleled.” The barricades separating the stage and the crowd are much closer than they are at larger festivals, so the connection between the bands and the throng of people is stronger and more intimate. People at Desert Daze can enjoy a “wide-open space” and a “mosh pit and crampiness,” he said.

“It’s the kind of festival you can’t mimic because what it is lives inside of its own DNA, if that makes sense,” Perrone said. “The people who show up to the festival make it what it is.”

The small core group that helped Perrone plan the first Desert Daze are still helping him with the festival today, maintaining a “we’re in this together” mentality throughout the planning process, he said. It's such hard work that when he gets to the other side, he's basically in tears, Perrone said.

“I’m getting emotional just thinking about it because the feeling of going through that with our group is just unmatched," he said.

To view the full lineup and to purchase tickets, visit the festival website. To listen to all of the artists that will be performing, check out this Spotify playlist.

Main photo and secondary photo by Angela Holtzen; third photo by Lance Gerber