Desert Noises Heat Up

When Kyle Henderson of Desert Noises picks up the phone, he has just finished mowing his parents’ lawn. The recently turned 24-year-old is at home in Provo, Utah, staying at his folks place for a bit before the band embarks on a lengthy stretch of summer tour dates. Desert Noises (Tyler Osmond, Patrick Boyer and Brennan Allen on bass, drums and guitar, respectively) have been pursuing an indefatigable touring schedule over the course of the past six months — traveling the country since their full length album Mountain Sea was released in October. While they still have ranks to climb, they’ve begun to leave an indelible impression on people across the nation.

At their show in Nashville, they stand idly next to a relatively sparse merch table – a 7-inch released in the fall, a t-shirt and an e-mail sign up. But people aren’t there to buy their merch; they’re there to hear what all the fuss is about. Club owner Mike Grimes requests that the guys play three or four more songs than groups are allotted to play at New Faces Night, so the band ends after a raucous, sweaty 35 minute set that should have been ten or fifteen minutes.

“It [has been] a lot of work. We booked all of our shows until just this last year,” Kyle says of the group’s rigorous commitment to touring their music. But, if the crowd at The Basement is any sign, the work is paying off. With Grimes’ request, the group finishes a set to an energized, packed room. And while booking your own shows is a bit of an Indie band right-of-passage these days, it isn’t surprising the group has done this for a while on their own. However, it is a surprise how long the band has already been doing this, and how young its members are.

The oldest, Kyle, recently turned 24. The youngest is a barely-legal-21. Using your best arithmetic, that means most of these guys have been playing music with Desert Noises since they were in their teens. The next band to show its face on the scene will probably just be a troupe of toddlers playing the recorder.

Kyle himself didn’t even start playing guitar until his senior year of high school, about the time he saw a show that made it impossible for him to not want to write and play music.

“The first time I wanted to write music [was when] I was taking this class in high school and you had to go see a concert within like three days, and there was nothing good coming to town. So I just went to the venue I usually go to…randomly…and I ended up seeing this guy called The Robot Ate Me…but it was just him and it was really one of the most magical shows I’ve ever seen, still. And then, I just started writing music, because I was like, I want to do that. There were only like twelve people there…It wasn’t like he was doing anything super special; you could just feel the passion, you know? It just lit a fire.”

Around this time, Henderson started playing with his brother in their parents’ basement, where the first pieces of Desert Noises started to come together. And after meeting different people involved in the local music scene around town, Henderson got an invite from Joshua James to join him on tour. So, naturally, Kyle learned bass and went out on the road (at the time he had only been playing guitar for a couple of years and had actually never played the bass.)

“I was turning 19 and Josh asked me to come out. And so I went out with them for three months – I had never been outside of Utah and toured three months straight – and went to Japan for a week.”

After that, Kyle says, he was “done.” He got a job as a business analyst (yawn), and quit soon after to pursue music full time.

“I got the itch to do my own thing when I was out on the road.”

And so, he started the full-fledged version of Desert Noises. The group has started to create buzz in pockets of scenes around the country — notably in Nashville and Lincoln, Nebraska, where their fan base has already started packing out small clubs for sold out shows.

“Nashville’s always a good one. Just because it’s been such a fast climb, and it’s really fun to be there. Toledo, OH, is maybe even crazier than Nashville. Toledo is awesome too.”