Other Desert Cities

"other Desert Cities" (with an intentional lower-case) gets its name from a peculiar spelling on a freeway sign between Ben Paley's home in Tempe, AZ and Charles Wanless's home in Hollywood, CA. Childhood friends, the two first worked together many years ago while gigging around Phoenix while they were in college, each honing their musicianship before Ben would decide to pursue Music full-time at Arizona State University, while Charles studied Audio Engineering and Production at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences. The month before Charles moved to Los Angeles, he invited Ben over to record a few riffs and melodies that he had in mind, and took those ideas to the recording studio he would end up working for in Burbank. When Charles had put together a demo of Ben's song "I Carry Your Heart" the two knew they were on to something special, and decided to make an EP to test how well the sound would be received. In a marathon session at Wava Studios in July of 2015, Charles and Ben wrote and tracked all the songs of debut EP "The History of What's to Come" during a three-day visit Ben took to LA, which was released in October 2015.

Ben and Charles are currently writing and recording material for the first other Desert Cities full length.