In crafting this Album, Wagner filled journals with tales about the people he met, and the poems, songs and folklore he fell in love with while living for a year in the Mojave Desert near the town of Joshua Tree California. Desert Needle Grass holds stories of ghost towns, homesteaders, quirky songwriters, pianos left on porches, rattle snake weed, the folklore of Bob Keys, blooming Cacti, barking Dogs, and little songs that come true. This album, a well crafted story book of 12 chapters, brings the Listener to the crooked crow trees of the desert for an intimate concert in a field of Needle Grass. Wagner's songwriting approach explains how there is beauty in hard luck and failure, poetry in suitcases and train stations, and how there's always that possibility, that one day everything might just be green again.
