Sunday surf rock show featuring local bands at Mojave Gold 

On Sunday, Mojave Gold is turning into a surfside oasis with Desert Beach Party. The event features the music of two local bands: the Jimmy Dale Trio, playing classic surf rock music, and punk rock honky tonk band the Hot Patooties.

The Jimmy Dale Trio is led by Jimmy Dale, whose late father, Dick Dale, is heralded as the “King of the Surf Guitar.” His sounds inspired the surf rock music of bands like the Beach Boys and the Ventures, while his version of Eastern Mediterranean folk song Misirlou was featured in the 1994 Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction. The younger Dale, who grew up in Twentynine Palms, has curated his own musical sound that draws on his father’s style, yet his personal tastes also reflect those of his late mother.

“She’s old school punk; she was raising me on that the whole time. My dad, it was more so like his taste in playing, a lot of the Middle Eastern melodies. Mom was the real punk, metal fan, all the way from Tool to Radiohead to Ramones and all that, it was really all over the place. My music taste and influence definitely comes from my mother Jill.”

Dale formed the Jimmy Dale Trio to honor his surf rock heritage, and much of the music played by the group is his father’s. The trio features a rotating group of musicians; on Sunday, he will be joined by bassist Chris Benedetto of Twentynine Palms and drummer Tyler Ontiveros of Palm Desert. He explained that surf music has its own distinct, nostalgic sound honed into existence by drawing on cultural and musical influences from Southern California and beyond.

“It was the 60s where it was born and a lot of the riffs are kind of like blues pentatonic things. It was really punk before punk, surf dudes who were like I don’t want to go to college or get a job. I just want to go surf, and surf music was born out of that. It’s got roots in being overly loud, and overly aggressive than most people would think. Then dad’s heritage being Lebanese and his family playing the oud and some of the melodies on that was very Egyptian. Because there’s no vocals or there’s not a lot of room for it…it lets people kind of imagine and create little images and feelings on their own instead of being told what to feel with lyrics. It’s the guitar just playing a melody and then you kind of color it in yourself. It was creative in its own way.”

In addition to performing surf music, Dale also fronts the local punk band Kill Jill, named as a nod to a Tarantino-esque joke he had with his mother. He described the Hi-Desert as being an ideal environment for the creation of various musical styles.

“I think it’s very passionate out here. There’s a lot of bands out here that I didn’t know you know… there’s desert rock and some psychedelic stuff going on that I’m like I’m still discovering. It seems endless, like an endless forest of people coming out here and doing super experimental stuff.”

The Sunday show was organizeded by Hot Patooties guitarist Beth Allen, who reached out to Dale after learning that he lived in the Morongo Basin. Allen described her long-time love of surf music, and past run-in with its pioneer.

“I’m a huge Dick Dale fan, a huge fan of surf music. I actually interviewed Dick Dale in the 1990s; I used to work for a weekly newspaper. I think I had a Ramones t-shirt on, because we were chatting about things and he said, ‘Oh, my wife loves the Ramones!’ I talked to her for a while, her name was Jill…Before Dick passed away, I saw him play a few times in the past, and it was great. I’m excited to see what Jimmy will do.”

Desert Beach Party with Jimmy Dale Trio and the Hot Patooties will be held on Sunday, December 14 at Mojave Gold, located at 56193 Twentynine Palms Highway in Yucca Valley. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; the Hot Patooties play at 8 p.m., with Z107.7’s own DJ Kim on bass.

The Jimmy Dale Trio will follow at 9 p.m. Tickets are $18, and can be purchased here.

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