Desert Rock Pilgrimage: Kyuss Fans From Around the World Make an Annual Journey to the ‘Welcome to Sky Valley’ Sign

Diehard music fans make pilgrimages to places that are significant in their favorite band’s history—like gravestones, famous clubs, recording studios … and a “Welcome to Sky Valley” sign?

Yep.

By 1994, Palm Desert rock outfit Kyuss had made their mark on the music industry. The band’s unique mix of doom rock and psychedelic tones had landed Kyuss opening slots for Metallica, and worldwide appreciation for LP Blues for the Red Sun, released two years earlier. They released their third album, Welcome to Sky Valley, named after the high desert town—with the Sky Valley welcome sign featured on the album cover.

Even though the band broke up a year later, the music of Kyuss continues to enthrall and captivate fans today, almost 30 years later—as does the desert the band called home.

Since 2017 (pandemic years excepted), Kyuss World, an online community of fans created in 2013, has organized annual visits to the Sky Valley sign, to meet other members, swap stories, take a group photo and celebrate their love for the desert. The yearly meetup often coincides with a live music event such as the former Stoned & Dusted festival, but 2023 is shaping up to be a bit different. At 7 p.m., Friday, Sept. 29, Kyuss drummer Brant Bjork is hosting the Kyuss World Desert Invasion Party, welcoming fans with a special show at The Hood Bar and Pizza in Palm Desert, featuring the Brant Bjork Trio, as well as Whiskey & Knives, which features desert-rock alum Alfredo Hernandez.

What, exactly, is Kyuss World?

“For the most part, it’s a Facebook group with about 20,000 people, but Instagram has about 45,000 followers,” said Kyuss World founder Nathan Lawver during a recent phone interview. “A lot of what I saw on the Facebook group and reposted on Instagram are people from all around the world going to see the sign and take a picture with it. I’ve seen people from Tibet make the trip to Sky Valley just to take a picture with the sign. Over the course of 10 years of managing the group and Instagram page, I’ve seen thousands of these.”

Lawver dubs the trip to the sign as a “desert rock pilgrimage.” He said the first organized Kyuss World event, in 2017, drew about 20 attendees. The numbers have grown since, and Lawver said members of the Kyuss World group try to crowdfund one member’s trip to the desert each year.

“We as a group … pool our money together and crowdfund one of the members from anywhere in the world to be there with us,” Lawver said. “In 2017, it was me who got crowdfunded out there. In 2018, we got a guy from Australia, Daniel Hofman, and in 2019, we crowdfunded Jorge Hartley from Peru, and we got him here to be with us for the Stoned & Dusted weekend of live shows and concerts with a lot of the bands that we really love. At the sign in 2019, it was Memorial Day weekend, and we had 100-plus people.

“In 2020, we had just begun the GoFundMe campaign for Martine Jacobs, a female member of the group from the Netherlands. We had raised enough money for her airfare, and we were making all the arrangements for her to come out—and a week after we paid for her airfare, COVID happened.”

Attendance was down significantly last year for the first gathering since the arrival of COVID-19, which was planned around a show by Kyuss vocalist John Garcia at the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Annenberg Theater. Lawver hopes this year’s welcome party will entice more group members.

“This year, with Brant and Mario Lalli throwing us a welcome show at The Hood, I’m thinking that should help get a few people out to the sign this year,” Lawver said. “There’s also a show in San Diego on Saturday night, the 30th, with UNIDA and a few other stoner-rock bands. Then Sunday, Oct. 1, is when we’re going to get back to the sign. I did start getting the word out a little earlier this year than usual, so hopefully it’ll do pretty well this year.”

Lawver’s first trip to the Sky Valley sign, in 2017, was a particularly memorable experience. His trip was crowdfunded thanks to friend and community member Brian Seckman.

“We landed in Palm Springs and rented the car, and drove right out there,” Lawver said. “A couple of Midwestern Kyuss fans going out to the Sky Valley sign for the first time was pretty amazing.

“Part of the mythos of Kyuss is that, in their albums and songs, they all kind of speak of this place. On the first album (Wretch), they have a song called ‘Hwy 74,’ and ‘Whitewater’ (on Welcome to Sky Valley), so for a Kyuss fan to actually get out in that area and spend a few days, you’re seeing all these places that they were talking about and singing about.

“Kyuss has kind of an otherworldly, larger-than-life being at this point, because they haven’t been a band for almost 30 years now. For someone to spend decades listening to this music, and stewing on it, and loving every minute of it, and then to actually be out there in it, you’re in Kyuss country; you go out to Sky Valley, and there’s nothing there—but it’s freakin’ magical, because you’ve been listening to this album and obsessing over it for years.”

Lawver has discovered a whole bunch of like-minded fans through Kyuss World.

“It’s really blown my mind how it took off, and how we’re a big family of Kyuss fans now,” said Lawver. “Over the years, I’ve been able to meet just about everyone in the desert-rock scene out there, and everyone has been super-supportive and appreciative. It’s kind of weird just being a superfan from Wisconsin, then starting something and bringing people together from around the world. When we get together out there, it really adds to that. … I’m going out there and meeting these people from social media who I’ve known for years on Facebook, and being able to actually spend some time with them and talk music and hear some of our favorite musicians playing is really wild.”

Lawver said Kyuss World has become much more than an online fan club.

“It’s kind of like a family reunion,” Lawver said. “Even some of my own family, we don’t see each other that often. … I’ve had some really amazing times with these Kyuss World get-togethers. There have been people who have met each other and married each other because they met on Kyuss World. Families have started from Kyuss World—and it’s just a trip.”

Some musicians try to separate themselves from their past work, while others celebrate their history. Brant Bjork is a prime example of the latter. Since departing Kyuss after Welcome to Sky Valley, Bjork has produced a number of different solo records and played in side projects with other desert musicians—carrying a love of the desert into everything he does.

Of course, Bjork is well aware of Kyuss World. During a recent interview, he said hosting a welcome party for his fans was a “no brainer.”

“Mario Lalli and I became aware that they were going to have a gathering at the Sky Valley sign, and we just happened to be wrapping up a tour that weekend, and we had a night off before we go to San Diego and play our final date,” Bjork said. “We were planning on just taking the night off, because we would likely be in town, and just kind of relax and get some good sleep—but once we found out that they were doing this Kyuss World thing, we thought, ‘Well, shit, man, maybe we should just play a local show, and hopefully people who come out for this Kyuss World event could also come to the rock show and have a good time.’”

Bjork said he finds Kyuss World’s annual pilgrimages to the Sky Valley sign both flattering and interesting.

“I am flattered that people enjoy the music and the band’s legacy,” he said. “I’m grateful to them, and I’m grateful to be part of a band that is looked at so fondly. As for traveling to post up next to the Sky Valley sign, it must be a pretty exciting and meaningful venture for the fans. I wouldn’t have guessed that fans would be excited enough to make some kind of trek like that.”

The fans’ fascination with the desert is some what ironic, because the members of Kyuss started crafting music, in part, because of a distaste for their surroundings.

“Growing up, the desert sucked,” Bjork said. “None of us wanted to be here. It was a drag. There was nothing here to do. It was hot as hell; there were no clubs, nowhere to play. We all know the story—that’s why we went out in the desert and did our thing. Our manager started taking us to L.A. to do shows. We had no ambitions outside of the desert, and we didn’t like L.A. at first, but we enjoyed playing, getting onstage and freaking people out. The one thing everyone seemed to comment on after our shows, almost as much as the music itself, was: ‘You guys are from the desert?’ And we were like, ‘Yeah.’ We didn’t understand why they were tripping on that so much.”

At the same time as the members of Kyuss were starting to navigate the music industry in the early 1990s, an alternative rock scene was exploding out of Seattle. This led to a lesson on the importance of place, Bjork said.

“I remember when my manager turned me on to Soundgarden when their first record came out,” Bjork said. “I was like, ‘How trippy, a rock band from Seattle.’ The eyes of the rock world were on Seattle, even though there were a lot of good bands coming out in the early ’90s that weren’t from Seattle. We were on tour one time in 1991 with the Dwarves, and I was sitting in the front seat. I was smoking a joint, and I just had one of those epiphanies where I was like, ‘I think that’s our hook.’ I think John Garcia was driving or something, and he said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘I think our hook is that we’re from the desert. I think that’s a kind of an important part of what we are and what we do.’ The guys didn’t fully wrap their heads around it like I had yet, but in that epiphany, that was a moment that I kind of foresaw. I foresaw the record that we would make next, Blues for the Red Sun. We just got to surrender to this and say, ‘Fuck it; we’re from the desert.’

“The fact that it’s become this international phenomenon is just fucking mind-boggling. It’s just really bizarre, because we were nobody, doing shit in the middle of nowhere—and now you have people traveling from all over to stand next to a sign.”

Welcome to Sky Valley marked Kyuss’ full embrace of the desert, a process that started with Blues for the Red Sun.

“I had a full concept for what would be what we considered our first real record (Blues for the Red Sun),” Bjork said. “I mean that not in any disrespect to Wretch, but we were now a band with vision. You’ve got to remember: We were kids when we were in Kyuss. That’s part of what made it so rad, because we were kids, and we were young, and we didn’t give a fuck. We were feisty, and we were hungry and confused. When it came time to do what would be Sky Valley, I was already getting ready to leave the band. I saw the end coming, and we had a couple of concepts we were throwing around for names for the record and for artwork and stuff.

“Sky Valley was definitely the strongest concept that Josh and I, at the time, were throwing around. It was really an ode to when we were younger, first starting out, and we used to go out there and play these parties at this house on Penny Lane out in Sky Valley. They were pretty questionable parties with a lot of drugs and a lot of shenanigans. It was pretty scary. We’d always go out there and play with some of the local metal bands and stuff, so that’s kind of what we’re talking about.”

Bjork pledged that Kyuss World fans will be treated to a fantastic show at The Hood, thanks to performances by the Brant Bjork Trio (featuring Mario Lalli) and Whiskey & Knives, which includes Alfredo Hernandez on drums.

“Alfredo and I go way back,” Bjork said. “I used to watch him play when I was fucking 13 years old. I just really dig the band. If I was a Kyuss fan, and I had the opportunity to roll out here to the desert, do the whole picture at the Sky Valley sign, and see some old alumni like Alfredo rock with Whiskey & Knives, then me and Boomer, I think a Kyuss fan would be pretty stoked.”

Lawver confirmed that he is indeed stoked.

“When I get out to the desert, I’ll finally be able to meet Alfredo Hernandez,” Lawver said. “He’s long been one of my musical heroes.”

Lawver said he has a goal for Kyuss World beyond meeting his heroes—a goal he admits is rather improbable.

“It’s always been kind of a selfish endeavor for me trying to get the damn band back together,” Lawver said. “I don’t think it’ll ever actually happen. From 2015 to 2020, one of our members, PJ Boston, up in San Francisco had a weekly radio show, and once a month, he would dedicate it to Kyuss World. Over the five years of that radio show, we had everybody from the desert scene on there at one point or another, and all the Kyuss members were on the show. Each one of them was given the question if they would do (a reunion), and everybody said yes. The last Kyuss World radio show had Josh Homme on. … He spoke for a good hour and a half on Kyuss and about how he would like to do it one more time. He said, ‘We could charge $5 a head and give all the money to charity,’ especially since Kyuss was never really about the money. It would be fantastic—but I know it’s a pipe dream.”

The Brant Bjork Trio and Whiskey & Knives will perform at 7 p.m., Friday, Sept. 29, at The Hood Bar and Pizza, 74360 Highway 111, in Palm Desert. The show is free. For more information, visit facebook.com/BrantBjorkOfficial. The Kyuss World Desert Rock Pilgrimage to the Sky Valley sign will take place at 1 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 1, at the Sky Valley sign, 76861 Dillon Road, in Desert Hot Springs. For more information, visit facebook.com/kyussworld.