‘Deserts, Mountains, Oceans’ — The new album is out from wife and husband team Dawn and Dandy Brown.
In the long tail of contemporary music streaming, every genre of music has a continuing life while finding the space to grow through innovation. And thank goodness, because I love me some desert rock, and The Fizz Fuzz brings pedigree and passion to the form.
“Well I’ve lived in a lot of places you know and I’ve had a really lucky streak of rubbing elbows with some really cool folks and playing some really cool music with them,” said Dandy Brown, one half of the married songwriting duo at the core of The Fizz Fuzz.
Originally from the midwest, Dandy came out to California after working with desert/stoner rock legend John Garcia, most famously as the testosterone-oozing singer of Kyuss.
As a producer, instrumentalist, singer and songwriter, Dandy worked with a full setlist of desert rock greats.
What the hell is desert rock you ask? In the late 80s, blues jam-influenced heavy rock bands hauled generators out into the desert plains around Palm Desert and threw rock parties. Guitars tuned down way low and blasted volume way high through bass amps shook snakes, desert spirits, and the god themselves on through the night. Bands like Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, and Yawning Man emerged from the now legendary desert sessions.
The Fizz Fuzz blends the octave-heavy assault of the desert sound with the energy of alternative rock, but you know, brainy. Maybe this amalgamation is rooted in the other half of the equation, guitarist-songwriter Dawn Brown.
“I am a third-generation musician but this really is my first big project musically, that I’ve gotten involved in. I’m really proud of what we have created in our work,” said Dawn during our Zoom interview, the couple cozying together to fit on camera. “Definitely from our first record to our second record, I feel like we have really grown a lot in how we co-write together.”
While the band’s first album, Palmyra, feels fully rooted in the sun-warmed rock sound of the desert of years past, the new release brings forward more diversity of sound, a bit more pop sensibility, and a bolder juxtaposition of the two singers’ styles. Two-part harmonies float over oscillations between guitar twang and bass dirge.
Lucky is the couple that shares in the creative act of their passions. “Usually one of us will start out with kind of a structure and the other one will help fill it out,” said Dawn. “One of us or the other will come up with [a] specific sound that we want to go with and will kind of hand it off to the other and we’ll go back and forth with adding bits and pieces.”
“That first record that we did was more pieces that we brought from times before we were together. With this new record, [the band has] totally evolved into this cohesive unit,” said Dandy. “We just play off of each other and the comfort level has just grown and the co-writing has just meshed together. And you know, we just keep growing, we keep having fun with it. You know, that’s really the name of the game. Just have a blast and get out and play music every now and then, write music together, hang out with the one you love and just have a good time.”
“Love and power cords,” I said. “What else can you want?”
“That’s a good motto,” laughed the Browns together.
Deserts, Mountains, Oceans by The Fizz Fuzz is out now. Stream and enjoy.
The Fizz Fuzz is currently touring in the UK.
