Update – we previously uploaded the shorter version of this story below. The longer version is now in it’s place.
Listen to the longer version here:
One of the highlights of the upcoming Morongo Daze music festival is “desert legend” Sean Wheeler, a longtime veteran of desert rock and a deep-rooted influence on its surrounding culture.
Fronting bands like Throwrag, Sean and Zander, The Reluctant Messengers, and countless projects for the last 40 years, Sean Wheeler’s deep baritone often swirls into coyote-esque yelps, grounded by an often-described “Shamanistic” stage presence that appears possessed, steeped in otherworldly waters deep enough to avoid anything close to contrived, now with a new focus on poetics that seems a focused reinvention of the desert veteran.
Wheeler touched on how he acquired the desert legend moniker.
“(on a flyer) Someone called me ‘desert legend,’ and I was all, ‘I’m gonna use that.’ It sounds like one of those blues names where you’re like, ‘I think I’ve heard of that’ even though you know you’ve never heard of it, but it sounds like you should have. And you know, it was just a joke. But then these intercommunity guys were getting upset by the proclamation, even though it’s actually one-hundred percent accurate. But you know, anyone in the desert can be a desert legend if they feel legendary.”
Whether or not its tongue-in-cheek, the desert legend moniker has substantial roots that go all the way back to the late 1800s. After his great grandparents met in San Jacinto at a barn dance in 1903 (where Wheeler’s great-great uncle Milt entertained as the one-man-band), Rose and Oliver McKinney would eventually move to Morongo Valley in 1911 with a well-digging machine, earning a living by digging for water for the area’s first homesteaders like themselves.
I spoke to Sean at this very homestead that he’s been fixing up and rehearsing in for the past year, where he continued speaking to the depths of his family’s local history which led them down the hill in 1916:
“So then the McKinney’s went to Palm Springs and kept knocking babies out. My great uncle Ted McKinney was the first non-native boy, and my grandma was the first non-native girl to be born in Palm Springs on the corner of Ramona and Indian Canyon. There was another white family who claimed to be the first, but my grandma told them, ‘You weren’t because you left, because there was no hospital in Palm Springs, you went to Banning or whatever… I was born right there on the corner in a tent!’
Wheeler was a pioneer himself in the early 80s, when being a teenager in the desert wasn’t at all how it is now, especially for one just discovering punk rock, far removed from the action in Los Angeles.
“When we were punk kids in ’81, ’82, the first punk shows in the desert were in the garage at my mom’s house, then we started doing the generator parties.”
Organized by Wheeler’s friend and collaborator Mario Lalli (who he considers the Godfather of the Desert), these infamous generator parties are what gave desert rock its roots of culture, best documented in the films Lo-Desert Sound and The Desert Age, both in which Wheeler is a key figure raconteur who nearly steals the movie with his seasoned stream of consciousness.
For his set at the upcoming Morongo Daze festival, Wheeler is reuniting with Billy Pittman, his guitar player from their gospel-blues project The Reluctant Messengers, rounded out by the rhythm section of Los Pancho Tones, who will also be performing.
I asked Wheeler what makes Morongo Valley unique compared to the rest of the basin, and how Morongo Daze is turning into a true community event.
“One thing that makes Morongo Valley rad is, depending on who you talk to, it’s the first town… or the last town in the high desert. And sometimes it seems overlooked, but it really is the sweet spot. When I played the last Morongo Daze in the fall, I was shocked—the community was jamming! You couldn’t even find parking! Like, everybody turned out.”
Sean Wheeler and band plays at 5 PM on Saturday, May 4th for Morongo Daze in Morongo Valley’s Covington Park.
