Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my buddies in the Limbeck Band and all the great times we’ve had together. In particular two trips are standing out in my mind that make me proud of being in that band. The first in the timeline is when we went to the Joshua Tree National Park and took photos with some Joshua Trees for our self-titled record with the bear on the cover. It’s a really beautiful drive on the way there. You go past Palm Springs and all those crazy wind mills. When you get there the sight of everything around you pretty much takes your breath away and leaves you speechless at first. At least for me it did. Maybe I was too busy thinking about the times that Gram Parsons and Keith Richards had there taking crazy drugs and looking for aliens decades earlier. When we got there we only had about 2 hours of sunlight left so we ran around like little kids and took a bunch of photos with the bear you see above. When the sun went down it got super cold because you’re about 3,000 ft up in elevation. So we started a campfire, roasted marshmallows and took more photos around the fire wearing fake beards, shirtless, with jackets, trading the bear suit around, it was a great time. I took a flight home the next day and I was super bummed because Joshua Tree is literally one of my favorite places I’ve been in my life.
The second story is damn near 2 years later. We did a couple random shows for a weekend that I flew in for and the first of the three was at Pappy & Harriet’s in Pioneertown, CA. Which is about 20 mins from Joshua Tree. The bar’s been around for decades and every once in awhile a famous guest will show up out of no where and just jam for example like Robert Plant. The town is unincorporated and was made in the 1940’s as a movie set for westerns to be filmed and the movie stars would live there while they shot. The infamous Pioneertown Motel is in the parking lot of P & H’s so when you’re done playing and drinking till you got your fill ya just stumble over to your room. We showed up early in the day so we got to explore a bit on Main St. and have some beers outside on the patio. I actually got to hand feed ponies that day and enjoy P & H’s homemade chili which is to die for. The show was only us on the bill so we played every song we knew pretty much and some of our friends showed up as well as some locals who stuck around after dinner. When you play they open these huge windows behind you so you feel like you’re performing outside underneath the desert sky. One of the the most beautiful feelings ever. After our set we got a case of beer from the bar and drank outside with our friends that came into town and it felt like we were in a western movie. Then the next day we picked up the pieces and went to Arizona. It was weird, when we pulled out of town our van died. All the electronics turned off and everything. Patrick waited a couple minutes and then turned the key and it started right back up. Kind of freaky but I’m sure stranger things have happened in that desert. Roy Rogers and Gene Autry used to live there for Christ sake, just imagine.