High Desert Foxes
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 3 months AGO
The local band High Desert Foxes will bring its progressive folk soul sound to Cloudview Kitchen in Soap Lake Friday. From left: Mary Conway, Jesse Horwath, Dusty James (standing), Jewel Mauceri, Clayton Visker and Doug Coutts.
COURTESY PHOTO/DARKLENS PHOTO
High Desert Foxes guitarist Jesse Horwath also plays saxophone. The seven members of the band swap off instruments frequently from one song to the next.
High Desert Foxes singer Dusty James wrote “On the Road,” the original single the band will drop at Cloudview Kitchen Friday night.
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | June 19, 2025 1:20 AM
SOAP LAKE — Progressive soul folk music may not have been a thing before, but it is now.
“It’s a genre that we kind of created,” said Dusty James, singer with the local band High Desert Foxes. “We do soul music, we do folk music, and when we write our own music as a band, it becomes a new experience.”
High Desert Foxes will debut its new single, “On the Road,” at Cloudview Kitchen Friday during the Soap Lake Food and Folk Festival. The progressive soul part of the genre owes a lot to the 1960s and '70s sounds of Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, James said, and also has echoes of Sade and Lenny Kravitz.
Much of the band’s repertoire is cover songs, said band member Doug Coutts, but the bands that get covered are pretty varied.
“We go from Fleetwood Mac to Tom Petty, The Lagoons, Sublime, Radiohead,” Coutts said. “It’s all over the map. It’s trying to put our own twist onto some of these great songs that these incredible artists have done.”
Besides James and Coutts, High Desert Foxes includes drummer and singer Jewel Mauceri; guitarist and sax player Jesse Horvath; Mary Conway, who plays a 150-year-old violin; harmonica player Blayne Walsh; and Clayton Visker on bass, synth, piano and drums. Who is playing what when is a very fluid thing, James said; the members rotate freely from song to song.
“When Jewel is singing, Doug goes to the drums, and when I’m singing Jewel’s on the drums,” James said. “Two of us are actually music teachers, and a lot of (us) are classically trained. So, when we come together, it comes together as a group. There are no individual egos wrapped around things; we’re all very open to help each other out.”
High Desert Foxes had planned to unveil a video to go with the new song at the release party, James said, but the logistics couldn’t be worked out in time. But the band does have some shows lined up already, at Sun Lakes and various festivals in the area.
The members of High Desert Foxes aren’t going to quit their day jobs any time soon, James said. But in their spare time, they love to make good music.
“It’s fun, it’s expressive, it’s the release that we all need from a busy life, and we’re having a really good time doing it,” James said.
High Desert Foxes
Soap Lake
Cloudview Kitchen
117 Main Ave. E.
Friday, June 20
7 p.m.
High Desert Foxes guitarist Jesse Horwath also plays saxophone. The seven members of the band swap off instruments frequently from one song to the next.
High Desert Foxes singer Dusty James wrote “On the Road,” the original single the band will drop at Cloudview Kitchen Friday night.ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
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