Bruce Fessier | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Years active | 1971–2019 [1] |
| Spouse | Jane Cannedy Fessier (m. 1984) |
| Children | Clay, Parker |
Bruce Fessier is an American arts and entertainment journalist. [1]
Bruce Fessier | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Years active | 1971–2019 [1] |
| Spouse | Jane Cannedy Fessier (m. 1984) |
| Children | Clay, Parker |
Bruce Fessier is an American arts and entertainment journalist. [1]
Fessier was born in Los Angeles and raised in Whittier, California. He attended Whittier High School, alma mater of the 37th U.S. President, Richard Nixon, and was taught piano by Nixon’s cousin, Margaret Smith. He earned a journalism B.A. from San Francisco State University in 1975, placing second for enterprise reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Western U.S., for a story on Nixon’s “Road to Watergate.” [2]
Fessier covered Southern California entertainment news for 44 years for two separately-owned "Desert" magazines, [3] USA Today , Racquet Club Magazine, The Truth Seeker , Freedonia Gazette and more. He covered the 1978 California Jam II music festival in Ontario, Calif., [4] and U.S. attempts to start a 1981 world expo in Ontario for The Herald-News of Fontana, Calif., 1977-78. He joined a Bloomington, Calif., Crime Prevention Commission after a riot in his neighborhood. His subsequent reporting of state Attorney General Evelle Younger’s pilot crime prevention program in an area identified by author Hunter Thompson as the home of the Hells Angels was called by local police, “an integral part of the successful effort to reduce crime within the greater Fontana area.” The United Way honored him for community service in January 1979.
Fessier wrote a people and entertainment column, plus news and feature stories for The Desert Sun in Palm Springs from 1979- 2019. He left the paper after 40 years to pursue writing and speaking opportunities. [5] His Desert Sun career was celebrated with a State of California Assembly resolution, a CV Music lifetime achievement in journalism award sponsored by the Coachella Valley Weekly newspaper, and an endowment in his name from the College of the Desert Foundation to pay for Desert Sun internships. [6] He continues to raise funds for that cause.
Fessier has covered every Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Stagecoach country music festival and Palm Springs International Film Festival, plus the first US Festival in San Bernardino, Calif. His awards include Best News Reporting, AP, California-Arizona 2005 for his stories on Ronald Reagan’s death; Best Writing, California Newspaper Publisher Association 2018 for his story on the death of Sonny Bono; and Best Video, Gannett 2015 for his history of the Mafia in Palm Springs. He updated that story for a two-part Coachella Valley Weekly series in January 2023 titled “The Flip Side of Utopia,” [7] including new perspectives on the forced removal of minority occupants from Palm Springs’ Section 14 and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians conservatorship program. He also was interviewed by director Tom Donahue that month about Chicago mobsters Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana for a projected Paramount Plus docuseries, “Mafia Spies,” based on the 2019 book by Thomas Maier.
He was roasted by a panel including Bono and jazz artist Georgie Auld in 1987 [8] to raise funds for the Desert Theatre League, which he co-founded with actor Steve Meek. He served on Bono’s founding Palm Springs International Film Festival committee in 1987 and co-founded the Jazz Celebrity Golf & JAMS Session in 1997 with his wife Jane Fessier and singer Frankie Randall. He researched the 2006 touring Global Inheritance exhibition, “Portal Potties,” [9] debuting at the 2006 Coachella, to showcase the pop culture of each decade of the 20th century. He co-wrote the title track to Pat Rizzo's 2011 LP, It’s Not You, It’s We.
Fessier covered Frank Sinatra's home life and the Coachella Valley underground music scene from which Queens of the Stone Age emerged. He appears in Leo Zahn’s 2018 documentary, Sinatra in Palm Springs [10] and Joerg Steineck’s 2015 documentary, Lo Desert Sound. [11] He co-founded a Desert Rock at the IPAC series with Mario Lalli [12] that evolved into Tachevah: A Palm Springs Block Party, produced by The Desert Sun, Goldenvoice, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, P.S. Resorts and Harold Matzner in 2015.
He taught classes on “Elvis Presley in Palm Springs” for UC Riverside Palm Desert in 2007 and “The History & Legends of the Joshua Tree Music Scene” for Desert Institute at Joshua Tree National Park in 2019. He lectured on "Palm Springs: From the Rat Pack to Coachella" for the Palm Springs Historical Society in 2019 and chronicled a longer history of the Palm Springs music scene in a 2022 program for the Oasis Music Festival, published by Palm Springs Life. [13] He reported the 20-year history of Coachella for The Desert Sun [14] and Empire Polo Club magazine. [15]
Fessier hosted and produced the last tribute to Merv Griffin in 2007 [16] to benefit the La Quinta Arts Foundation. In 2022, Fessier produced the benefit “Pet Love and Rock & Roll” September 17 in the Palm Springs Art Museum featuring a concert by former Kyuss lead singer John Garcia and Songwriters Hall of Famer Billy Steinberg to help Amy’s Purpose’s put more veterinary workers in the field in the Coachella Valley. [17] He was honored as an Amy’s Purpose “champion” at a mixer to raise funds for Amy’s Purpose March 1, 2023 at Willie’s Modern Faire Restaurant & Lounge in Rancho Mirage. [18]
He is now working on an immersive VR project incorporating his many anecdotes about Rancho Mirage-based celebrities, titled Rancho Reality, and he’s researching a screenplay on the late NAACP leader Willis Edwards for Pearl Devers, Edwards’ co-producer of the 2002 TV film The Rosa Parks Story.[ citation needed ]
Cathedral City, colloquially known as "Cat City", is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. Situated between Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage, the city has the second largest population, after Indio, of the nine cities in the Coachella Valley. Its population was 51,493 at the 2020 census, a slight increase from 51,200 at the 2010 census.
Indio is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, in the Coachella Valley of Southern California's Colorado Desert region. It lies 23 miles (37 km) east of Palm Springs, 75 miles (121 km) east of Riverside, 127 miles (204 km) east of Los Angeles, 148 miles (238 km) northeast of San Diego, and 250 miles (402 km) west of Phoenix.
Rancho Mirage is a city in Riverside County, California, United States. The population was 17,218 at the 2010 census, up from 13,249 at the 2000 census, but the seasonal (part-time) population can exceed 20,000. Incorporated in 1973 and located between Cathedral City and Palm Desert, it is one of the nine cities of the Coachella Valley.
Twentynine Palms is a city in San Bernardino County, California. Twentynine Palms serves as one of the entry points to Joshua Tree National Park.
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is an annual music and arts festival held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, in the Coachella Valley in the Colorado Desert. It was co-founded by Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen in 1999, and is organized by Goldenvoice, a subsidiary of AEG Presents. The event features musical artists from many genres of music, including rock, pop, indie, hip hop and electronic dance music, as well as art installations and sculptures. Across the grounds, several stages continuously host live music.
The Low Desert is a common name for any desert in California that is under 2,000 feet in altitude. These areas include, but are not exclusive to, the Colorado Desert and Yuha Desert, in the Southern California portion of the Sonoran Desert. These areas are distinguished in biogeography from the adjacent northern High Desert or Mojave Desert by latitude, elevation, animal life, climate, and native plant communities.
The Coachella Valley is an arid rift valley in the Colorado Desert of Southern California's Riverside County. The valley may also be referred to as Greater Palm Springs and the Palm Springs Area due to the prominence of the city of Palm Springs and disagreement over the name Coachella. The valley extends approximately 45 mi (72 km) southeast from the San Gorgonio Pass to the northern shore of the Salton Sea and the neighboring Imperial Valley, and is approximately 15 mi (24 km) wide along most of its length. It is bounded on the northeast by the San Bernardino and Little San Bernardino Mountains, and on the southwest by the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa Mountains.
The Palm Springs Walk of Stars is a walk of fame in downtown Palm Springs, California, where "Golden Palm Stars", honoring various people who have lived in the greater Palm Springs area, are embedded in the sidewalk pavement. The walk includes portions of Palm Canyon Drive, Tahquitz Canyon Way, La Plaza Court and Museum Drive. Among those honored are Presidents of the United States, show business personalities, literary figures, pioneers and civic leaders, humanitarians, and Medal of Honor recipients. This listing is a selection of notable people so honored.
KUNA-FM is a commercial regional Mexican music radio station in La Quinta, California, broadcasting to the Palm Springs, California, area on 96.7 FM. It is owned by News-Press & Gazette Company, through its Gulf-California Broadcast Company subsidiary.
Palm Springs is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. The city covers approximately 94 square miles (240 km2), making it the largest city in Riverside County by land area. With multiple plots in checkerboard pattern, more than 10% of the city is part of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians reservation land and is the administrative capital of the most populated reservation in California.
Howard Lapham was a modernist architect whose notable residences exist primarily in Southern California.
The Stagecoach Festival is an outdoor country music festival held annually at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. Various artists attend, whether they be mainstream or relatively unknown, ranging from folk, mainstream country, bluegrass, roots rock, americana and alternative country. It is the highest-grossing festival centered on country music in the world. The festival is presented by Goldenvoice, The Messina Group, and Moore Entertainment and acts as a sister event to Goldenvoice's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, taking place the following weekend at the same site. The 2020 and 2021 Stagecoach Festivals were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On June 1, 2021, Stagecoach announced its 2022 return. The country music festival took place between April 29 and May 1, 2022.
KPSC is a radio station licensed to serve Palm Springs, California. The station is owned by the University of Southern California, and is a repeater of KUSC and their classical music format.
The Empire Polo Club is a 78-acre polo club in Indio, California in the Coachella Valley of Riverside County, approximately 22 miles southeast of Palm Springs. Founded in 1987, it has hosted international polo tournaments. It leases out its polo grounds for Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and Stagecoach Festival annually for the last three weekends in April.
Desert X is a site-specific, contemporary art exhibition that is held in the Coachella Valley in Southern California. The inaugural Desert X was held from February 25 to April 30, 2017, and has held subsequent exhibitions every two years. The next planned exhibition is for March 4, 2023.
Modernism Week is a 501(c)(3) organization which provides public education programming fostering knowledge and appreciation of modern architecture, the mid-century modern architecture and design movement, the Palm Springs School of Architecture, as well as contemporary considerations surrounding historic preservation, cultural heritage, adaptive reuse, and sustainable architecture. Modernism Week provides annual scholarships to local students pursuing college educations in the fields of architecture and design and supports local and state organizations' efforts to preserve and promote the region's modern architecture. The organization is centered in the greater Palm Springs, California area in the Coachella Valley which is home to a significant collection of extant residential and commercial buildings designed in the mid-century modern vernacular.
The Coachella Valley Firebirds are a professional ice hockey expansion team based in Thousand Palms, California, that began play in the 2022–23 American Hockey League (AHL) season. The team is an owned-and-operated affiliate of the Seattle Kraken, which began play during the 2021–22 National Hockey League season. Located in Southern California's Coachella Valley, Acrisure Arena in Thousand Palms is the team's home arena.
Indio is a former and future train station in Indio, California.
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