Santiago, Chile · alternative rock

Alain Johannes

1 upcoming festival

Chilean-American rock polymath: Eleven co-founder, desert-rock producer, and the secret weapon on records by Queens of the Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures.

Alain Johannes was born in Santiago and moved to the United States as a child. With Natasha Shneider he formed Eleven, a Los Angeles trio that recorded through the 1990s, and the pair worked together on records by Chris Cornell and others. He plays guitar, bass and a cigar-box instrument of his own making, and sings.

His name recurs around the Palm Desert scene: he played and produced with Queens of the Stone Age, joined Them Crooked Vultures on tour, and worked with Mark Lanegan and PJ Harvey. His solo records, beginning with Spark in 2010 after Shneider's death, are sparser, largely built from acoustic and looped parts.

alternative rock