With their group Desert Music Project (DMP), guitarist Jake O’Rourke, bass player Daniel Woodruff and percussionist Zachary White look to connect with audiences through instrumental, cinematic desert rock. The music is designed to take listeners through different emotions.
The band will play at Club Congress on Sunday, Aug. 3, along with Ashridge from Phoenix and Poems from San Diego.
DMP also has a number of other shows in August, including St. Philip’s Plaza on Aug. 6, the Owls Club on Aug. 8, Che’s Lounge on Aug. 10, Wooden Tooth Records on Aug. 22 and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum on Aug. 30.
O’Rourke said with their music, they try to engage audiences in different ways.
“We’re really trying to build an immersive soundscape for listeners to be able to participate in, without any lyrics. You can create your own meaning from these sounds that we’re putting out there. It’s all original music. It’s heavily based in jazz and rock. Those are probably the two biggest influences, but we dip into other genres: country, bluegrass and math rock,” O’Rourke said.
The band often mixes in different time signatures as well.
“It’s weird time signatures, where it’s not just straight 4/4 time signatures. We get into some strange ones, where it’s 7/9. It’s not just feeling like you’re hearing the same beat throughout every song,” O’Rourke explained.
He said that their music is very inspired by the Southwest landscape, especially the Sonoran Desert. “That’s the way I came up with naming the band ‘The Desert Music Project.’ It’s this ongoing, fluctuating project. We bring new genres into the mix. We try to keep it fresh in terms of what we’re doing, but it really all comes from the heart of Tucson and the surrounding area, the desert landscape that we’re in. I think that’s important in terms of how we shape our music.”
The guitarist noted that DMP’s music appeals to people of different ages, and the band often sees mixed generations in the audience.
“I like our music because I feel like it’s timeless,” he said. “We’ll have an all-ages show, and we’ll have people come out that are under 21. And we’ll have people come out that are in their 70s, who like our music and who connect with it.”
O’Rourke said they are able to adapt their music to different crowds and spaces. “We can play our songs with a stripped-down, contemplative vibe, or it can be more amped up and distorted in a club, where it feels more energetic and dynamic.”
O’Rourke and Woodruff started recording and playing together as a duo in 2021, and they recently became a trio with the addition of White in April 2024.
O’Rourke said the band has grown to a level they never expected in the beginning.
“We at first started getting together to jam and flesh out these songs and then got a couple of gigs. It just really built from there. The fact that it’s almost five years feels wild,” O’Rourke said.
This is the first band that O’Rourke has played in, although he does have a musical background.
Growing up, he played guitar in Utterback Middle School and Tucson High School jazz bands. He is originally from Tucson.
“I was playing in the school band, playing jazz guitar up until I was 18 years old, and then I was doing undergrad at the UofA (University of Arizona). I wasn’t in a band. I wasn’t doing music for studies. That’s when I started making my own original music, around the time I was 18 years old, and then by the time it turned to 2021, I had a decent amount of original music to work with. Then getting Daniel on board, he was able to really help me flesh it all out, and we just kept building off of that,” O’Rourke recalled. “Bringing Zach on board last year was another big step for us, too, because he’s a really great percussionist and musician and really popular in town, too. He plays in quite a few bands, so we’re lucky to have him on board playing with us.”
Woodruff and White also have jazz backgrounds. White plays with the Tucson Modern Jazz Quartet and recently toured with country artist Drew Cooper.
The trio members regularly work on new music together. O’Rourke said that when the songs feel ready, they will start playing them live. They like to take their time to work on and develop material.
“A bunch of our music is unreleased. We’re not the best at doing the whole recording and releasing process. We’re still trying to dial in exactly what works best for us. Sometimes, we just overthink it project to project. It’s all been a little bit different every time. We’re still trying to figure out what works best for us, but it’s gone well so far, and we’ve learned a lot from every experience,” O’Rourke said.
Sometime in the next few months, the group plans to release the song “Raincheck.”
“The song was finished and untitled for a while, and we had been performing it for a little bit. We get a decent amount of outdoor gigs. One of them, we were getting ready to go to, and then it just started dumping rain,” O’Rourke said. “I was sitting on my back porch playing the song and was like, maybe ‘Raincheck’ is a good name for it. That just stuck.”
Over the years, the band has released singles such as “Desperado,” “Red Eye Home” and “Crossroads.” They also worked with the instrumental group oms on the EP “The Legend of Mugsy Bones.”
“We had made the music already. We knew that we were trying to capture this western, cinematic, mysterious vibe, so we wanted to create a character who this music would be about,” O’Rourke said.
O’Rourke tends to play either an acoustic six-string or lap steel guitar. Woodruff mostly plays bass but moves over to a six-string electric guitar when O’Rourke is on the lap steel guitar. White has a drum set but brings in auxiliary percussion instruments, such as chimes, a glass bottle and cowbells. He also incorporates different mallets, sticks and brushes.
“It’s interesting to watch him play close up because he really is doing a lot back there and makes it happen seamlessly,” O’Rourke said.
The group regularly plays in different types of spaces, including hotel lounges, outdoor stages, smaller bars and clubs. They recently did their first California gig at the Kensington Club in San Diego on July 31. They have also played in New Mexico multiple times. O’Rourke said they have been looking at doing more out-of-state shows.
This November, the band will play at DUSK Music Festival in Tucson.
Also in the works is a full-length album, which DMP hopes to release in 2026. It will be the first recording since the 2022 EP “Breaking Ground.” O’Rourke said often, audience members recognize and request songs from this EP.
Over the last few years, DMP has developed a reputation for what it can bring to the stage. At first, the members had to prove themselves as an instrumental band.
“We don’t brand ourselves as a jazz band,” O’Rourke said. “We have jazz roots and jazz influences. You aren’t gonna find us playing shows at the Century Room. We’re not really that vibe. It was really the first couple years establishing and proving our concept as this instrumental rock band. But it’s also acoustic focused. We do all of our sets on acoustic guitar, but then I’ll use effect pedals to add some distortion and bring in that electric sort of sound. We just like that more raw, woody sound coming from the acoustic guitars.”
At shows, they will often see fans who have been following DMP for the last few years. They will often share their thoughts on the music.
“It’s awesome to hear the different interpretations and inspirations that people pull from listening to our music,” O’Rourke said. “I’ve learned of a lot of new bands through what people have said that they think we sound like, so that’s really cool for me to be able to experience new music that way.”
Desert Music Project with Poems and Ashridge
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 3
WHERE: Club Congress, 311 E. Congress Street, Tucson
PRICE: $10 in advance, $15 at the door
INFO: hotelcongress.com/venues/club-congress
Desert Music Project
WHEN: 7-10 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 6
WHERE: St. Philip’s Plaza, 4280 N. Campbell Avenue, Tucson
WHEN: 9-11 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8
WHERE: Owls Club, 236 S. Scott Avenue, Tucson
PRICE: $Free
INFO: desertmusicproject.com
Desert Music Project with Bloomstone
WHEN: 7:30-10 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 10
WHERE: Che’s Lounge, 350 N. Fourth Avenue, Tucson
PRICE: Free
INFO: cheslounge.com
Desert Music Project with Language of Thieves
WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 22
WHERE: Wooden Tooth Records, 108 E. Congress Street, Tucson
PRICE: $10 day of show
INFO: woodentoothrecords.com
Desert Music Project
WHEN: 6:30-8:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 30
WHERE: Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum, 2021 N. Kinney Road, Tucson
INFO: desertmusicproject.com
This article appears in Jul 24-31, 2025.