Dustin Kensrue, The Brevet, Brother Bird

From the venue:

Dustin Kensrue was still a teenager when he formed Thrice, the dynamic and multifaceted rock band who have been bending and blending genres for the past quarter century. Before the group’s touring schedule took him around the world, he spent his childhood in Southern California, regularly heading into the desert to visit his paternal grandparents in Palm Springs. While there, he would wander for hours through the rocky hills and sandy washes near their home, and the landscape, colors, and stories of that sun-baked wilderness left a lasting impression. Decades later, Kensrue summons the spirit of the American southwest with his third original studio solo album, the evocative and eclectic Desert Dreaming. It’s a transportive album that blurs the lines between genre and geography, balancing the influence of old-school country western icons like Marty Robbins and Gene Autry with the sharp songwriting of a modern musician who’s spent 25 years on the road, on stage, and in the writing room. Kensrue approaches these songs like a western novelist, filling them with details of the desert — the sound of coyotes howling in the distance, the smell of sage and lilac in the dry wind, the lure of hidden treasure in the hills — and punctuating the recordings with pedal steel guitar, train beats, and the strongest melodies of his career. “The setting really is the main character of the record,” says Kensrue. “I grew up in the southwest, and over time, you can get so used to a certain kind of beauty that you stop seeing it. I used to think, ‘It’s just so brown here.’ When I moved back to the southwest after living in the Pacific Northwest for a little bit, I gained a totally new appreciation for the landscape. I fell in love with the desert all over again.” That sense of rediscovery — of finally seeing something that’s been right in front of you all along — runs throughout the self-produced record.