jes + the gork

It was my first time playing in front of anyone since August of 2019. Crazier than that, I'd barely bothered to pick up the guitar at all during the past two years. So, I didn't really know how this was going to go. 

Of course, it went great. Seeing old friends, hanging like we used to, and doing a show like we used to really felt freeing, like a weight is slowly being lifted collectively off of everyone. It felt good to do. It felt right. 

I'm sure a lot of my friends out there in bands agree. When you've been performing in bands for most of your life, which I certainly have, it simply doesn't feel right not to play for a couple of years. Now that we're getting it back, I hope we keep the momentum going. 

I love the White Mountain music scene, and looking around and seeing people succeed at their bands is so fulfilling to me. I want to encourage everyone to do more, and to push, and to keep it going. There's a beautiful thing happening here and I am excited to see it grow. 

A big thank you to Phil The Band and Negative Thirty-Two for including me in this. We have much, much more to do together guys! It was also good to see Christian Tyler cox get out there and sing some tunes, and see his wife Lindsay sing some as well. 

For everyone who missed the show, fear not! YouTube has saved the day. Below you can check out any of the acts from that night. Also be sure to SUBSCRIBE TO GORKY TV and also FOLLOW GORKY ON SPOTIFY 

Thanks again to everyone who came out and we are looking forward to seeing you next time! 

Well, it's been a pretty eventful month! 

First off, I was invited to appear with actor Rainn Wilson and scholar Reza Aslan on their podcast "Metaphysical Milkshake" which was great! You can check out the episode HERE! On the podcast, we dived pretty deep into the big question of what came first...consciousness or matter?

Next month, which is November, my Audiobook for Keep Music Evil: The Brian Jonestown Massacre Story is FINALLY coming out! The biggest challenge? Actually recording it. The second biggest challenge? Getting the cover past censors, which is weird considering that no one seems to have a problem with the actual book cover, yet I have to bleep out Anton's middle finger on the audiobook. Oh well. The world we live in. 

"Metaphysical Milkshake" wasn't the only Podcast I appeared on this month...I also appear on my friend Shawn Maus's podcast Art In Your Heart! To check that out, click HERE!  Shawn is a good friend whom I worked with at the David Lynch School. From his site: "Art In Your Heart" is a podcast for those who have been told their dream/career in entertainment isn’t realistic and for those who need hope to continue to follow their arts dream during these tough times. Your host, Shawn Maus, is a screenwriter, storyteller, marketer -- and former stand-up comedian! Let's talk about the Art in Your Heart!

Last but not least, I won a 'Top Ten Best of the Fest' award for my screenplay "Nicholas Kringle" at this year's Show Low Film Festival  which is held every year at my place of employment, WME Theatres. I feel very honored! Screenwriting is one of my many endeavors. I've got two finished projects at the moment: "In The Land Of Good Oaks" and "Nicholas Kringle." If you want to find out more about those projects, please click on the 'Screenwriting' tab. 

Other than that, I have been posting more regularly on TikTok and YouTube doing some acoustic performances. I hope you dig those! I will likely post new songs as I write them, and maybe play some older Gorky tunes as well, just stripped-down acoustic versions. 

It has been a great month, to say the least. Hopefully there will be more to report next month! 

In the meantime, remember to follow GORKY on Spotify and please consider making a purchase at our Bandcamp. 

Thanks so much for your continued support and I will see you on the flip side! 

Jesse & the Gork 

Above pic by RODELO

So, if you live in Arizona, chances are you came across this front-page article in the Arizona Republic a couple of weeks ago about the Sitgreaves County publicity stunt intended to promote our in-development film In The Land Of Good Oaks! 

To hear the "Sitgreaves County" album click HERE 

To read up on the Sitgreaves County publicity stunt click HERE

Michelle Branch's first record "Broken Bracelet"

It was the weekend of my fifteenth birthday, so this was early October in the year 2000.   

I was with my family in Sedona attending the Verde Valley Music Festival, which was the first music festival I'd ever been to. Jackson Browne had started it ten years prior to raise money for the Verde Valley School and its Native American Scholarship Fund. 

Browne played the festival. Keb Mo played. So did the Indigo Girls, Bruce Cockburn, Nanci Griffith, Trisha Yearwood, and a bunch of other people. Back then, I was into rap, metal, and pop-punk like a lot of young teens, so there was no way I could've appreciated the sounds that were coming at me. I remember having a good time, but that the music was incredibly boring.  

Then Michelle Branch got on stage. 

It was one of her very first shows, and I heard later that this show got her signed to Madonna's Maverick records, which was incredible to me. 

She had this blue guitar and wore shades that were too big for her face. She was from the area, too, a little hippie chick as some would say, and she was two years older than me, 17 to my 15, which when you are a teenager practically made her a grown-up. 

In any case, I looked up to her. I'd only been playing guitar for a couple of years, but she had these incredible songs that made me want to write pop songs. After her set, I approached her and introduced myself. I have no idea what the conversation was, but I was probably a babbling nerd, as I can be. 

I bought her CD, Broken Bracelet, and she signed it. I played it over and over until it scratched. It was fantastic! It was all of these acoustic songs, these folk pop songs, and it wasn't like anything I had heard, and it made it ten times cooler that she was from Northern Arizona like myself, and she'd produced it herself. I thought, "she's got it going on! I've got to do what she's doing!"

Somehow I got her email address, reached out to her, threw a bunch of praise her way, and told her I was trying to start a band. She wrote back and encouraged me, and when I responded I asked her about how to write lyrics. I sent her some of mine, and she kindly told me that they were shit. 

I was writing lyrics before I had set them to music, so these lines went on and on like rap lyrics because I listened to too much Eminem, something I'd gotten in big trouble for in middle school when a substitute teacher found my Eminem-esque handwritten lyrics making fun of our teachers. I don't remember what the words were, but I assure you by today's standards my thirteen-year old punk ass would be canceled immediately.

Anyways, she tore them apart and told me something along the lines that it would be difficult to set these lyrics to music in a way that could be communicated to a broad audience. They were too complicated and wordy. The music had to come first, she said, and then you feel the vibe of the music and the chords and then sounds just start coming and then the song comes, and you write it verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, etc. you know, like you do.  

I was a little discouraged, but it flipped my switch on songwriting. It took me another two or three years before I could write a proper song, but my drive to nail one was all due to that chance meeting with Michelle at the Verde Valley Music Festival, sometime in October, 21 years ago. 

By the time I formed Gorky a couple of years later, Michelle had already gotten huge with her record The Spirit Room and collaborated with Santana. She was light-years ahead of me and still is, but I was admittedly disappointed in the direction she took then, both musically and visually, which had everything to do with the pop culture machine. 

When I met her, I didn't see a pop star. She was earthy and cool, and into Jewel's early records, which were great, and she was emanating that. That's what the "broken bracelet" was. It was something given to her by Jewel as a sort of talisman or totem, and when the bracelet finally broke, she went on to fulfill her destiny. 

Michelle was exactly like Jewel to me, maybe almost like Ani DiFranco when she gets catchy, even though she was playing "Goodbye To You" to a half-listening audience in Sedona.

I wish I still had my copy of that CD, but whatever the case, thanks for grilling me on my lyrics, Michelle. It paid off.   

- J 

Found this while going through storage. Crazy! 

With our 20-year anniversary coming up, it's a good a time as any to reflect back on the history of the band. The text might be a little hard to read, so I've transcribed it here: 

Local Band Tries To Sell Original Sound, by Benjamin Sedillo 

SHOW LOW - Local alternative rock - or as they like to call their genre, PIPE rock (Progressive Indie Post-punk Emocore) band 'Gorky' is scheduled to play June 9 in Snowflake, time and place are unknown as of yet. 

'Gorky', comprised of four Show Low natives - Chris Christiansen, 20, guitar and back up vocals, Jesse Valencia, 19, lead guitar and lead vocals, Ben Holladay, 19, drums and Gregg Aldridge, 16, bass - hopes to use its upcoming performances as well as its past successes as a stepping stone for a career in music. 

"Hopefully we'll be networking more shows this summer in Flagstaff and Phoenix," Valencia said. "We plan to do a recording session in July or August in San Diego, California and get a tour together for next summer with our demo and ship it off to record labels to try to get signed."

"We got our name from a girl named Whitney, who used to call her security blanket 'gorky,'" Valencia said. "We were searching for a name for our band and we thought it was a perfect name especially when we found out that it had other interesting connotations, such as meaning 'bitter' in Russian and we thought it could describe a person," Christiansen added. 

The members of Gorky draw inspiration from different aspects of life and channel that through their music. 

"I write most of our material about what is affecting me hardcore at the time, and whatever is bothering me and it is just stuff that I need to get off my chest and then I take all of my influences and put it in a bucket and mix it around and you get our music," Valencia said. "There's so many facets of music that haven't been explored yet. Our inspiration comes from a wide variety of things, from family members, politics, religion and even beverages." 

Gorky's members say they are trying to protect their band's uniqueness by offering music that is different to the audience's ears. 

"We are trying to progress our listeners up through different styles of music because there's at least one style of music that not everyone is hip to, so we have to change it up album to album, but not too much that way they will listen," Christiansen said. 

"We are different from other alternative rock bands in that a lot of the times people don't like our sound upon first listen, they get into it eventually but it's just different from other pop rock," Valencia said. "It's just so much fun to play your own music and when the people respond to it by singing and learning your songs when they come to our shows." 

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