A longtime pillar of the local LGBTQ+ music community is being honored during Greater Palm Springs Pride.
Gary Moline founded Palm Springs Desert Winds (formerly known as the Desert Winds Freedom Band) in 2001. In the 25 years since, the group—featuring a symphonic band, jazz band, pep band, marching band and pop band, along with small ensembles—has provided scholarships to local high school grads and hosted workshops for desert music students, on top of performing across the valley and beyond.
Moline is being honored with the Community Service Award by Greater Palm Springs Pride. He’ll serve as one of the grand marshals 40th Anniversary Greater Palm Springs Pride Parade on Sunday, Nov. 8.
“I’ve done stuff behind the scenes all my life, and I’ve never really wanted to be in the limelight, so this award that I’m given with the grand marshals is totally unexpected,” Moline said during a phone interview.
Moline, with artistic director Dean McDowell and the Desert Winds Freedom Band, were recognized with Pride’s Spirit of Stonewall Community Service Award—which highlights groups who commit to and support the LGBTQ+ community in the Coachella Valley—in 2012.
“It’s always said that you don’t realize you’re creating any kind of history, because you’re living it at the time,” Moline said. “People seem to recognize things you’re doing, and then they maybe will submit your name for some kind of an award or something, and to me, it’s always unexpected. It’s nothing that I’ve ever sought to do.”
Palm Springs Desert Winds has become a local institution for equality and musical expression after starting from humble beginnings.
“When starting our band, my whole idea was just to get one going, since there wasn’t one existing in 2000 when my husband and I moved down here,” Moline said. “There were eight of us who really started it, but somehow my name got in there as the founder.”
In 1978, Moline was a charter member of the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band, “the world’s first openly gay musical group,” as the band’s site details.
“We formed the band up there just to march in the parade, and nothing else,” Moline said. “It became such a thing where at least 100 of us were marching onto Market Street at the same time, and we were either in front of or in back of Harvey Milk. Later in that year, he and George Moscone were assassinated, and you had no internet, so the only thing we had to get a hold of people was a telephone tree, so you called 10 people; they called 10 people; somebody else called 10 people; and we got everybody into San Francisco to march in the candlelight parade down Market Street to City Hall.”
In 1982, as other pride bands began forming, Moline became involved in the Pride Bands Alliance, an organization of LGBTQ+ community bands from cities around the world.
“The Pride Bands Alliance has allowed us to do things that we never could have done as individuals,” he said. “As part of that group, we marched in both of President Obama’s inaugural parades. … We get to do things and go places that we never would have gone before without music or without the group that we were involved in.”
In 2000, Moline and his husband, Larry Chew, moved to Rancho Mirage. At the time, there was no local LGBTQ+ band, so Moline decided to fill that gap.
“When we were forming it, I didn’t want it to have ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ or anything in the title; I wanted it to be the Desert Winds Freedom Band,” he said. “That, with the colors, was enough to identify what we were, and we wanted to become part of the community, which we really have over the last 25 years—much wider than I thought we would ever come. Then we went into our educational outreach and did scholarships for kids graduating from high school, going on into music, so it’s just developed over the years.”
Palm Springs Pride was integral in the ensemble’s growth, as former Greater Palm Springs Pride president Jack Schloeder invited Desert Winds to have a booth at the event.
“Twenty-two names or something came up from people who stopped by,” Moline said. “… Our first rehearsal was at the Rancho Mirage Chamber of Commerce with about eight people. … We did a second rehearsal, and then finally we just decided we wanted to do a concert. … The first concert we had was at the Church of St. Paul in Palm Springs, and we had 27 people onstage, and the reception was fantastic.”
Since the very first Desert Winds concert, the group has shared members with the Gay Freedom Band of Los Angeles. Moline has been working with that band since the darkest days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“All the local groups had trouble after AIDS came in, and the bands were decimated in their numbers,” he said. “The San Francisco band that I was a charter member of lost many, and we went down from about 100 people in the band to about 30, and the same thing happened with the L.A. band. We helped each other build up.”
Even in Palm Springs, a city with one of the highest LGBTQ+ populations in the United States, it took many years for the group to be welcomed on some local stages.
“Acceptance is hard, but you just keep working at it, and finally you break through,” Moline said. “… It was hard, very hard for us to get into some of the larger venues, but now we are.”
Moline is grateful that some younger members of the ensemble “don’t even realize or remember those (hard) times.”
“To them, it’s just like, ‘Oh, we’re just going to join the band, and it doesn’t really matter what your label is,’” he said. “We’re, of course, very DEI, which is not the best thing to say these days in some cases, but we live in a community where we still have a wonderful acceptance, and that’s what we’re all for.”
In 2026, the band’s roster is approaching 140 musicians. As the group celebrates its 25th anniversary season—with the season opener taking place on 3 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 22, at the McCallum Theatre—Moline is watching with the rest of the audience, after stepping down as artistic director in 2007, and leaving the band in 2017.
“I tend to take things as far as I can take it, and then it’s time for someone else to step in,” he said. “In 2007, we finally got our permanent artistic director, Dean McDowell, and then I just became a board member and went to rehearsals and played my tuba. Dean built it up to what it is today with the 25-year anniversary. … It’s amazing to see what this group has grown into, especially under Dean’s leadership.”
Moline remains as supportive as ever of the groundbreaking ensemble he created.
“I’m a strong supporter and donor, and I go to all the concerts, or as many as I can attend,” he said. “… I think we’ve got a tremendous board, and it’s just a great organization.”
When you see Moline in the Palm Springs Pride parade, he’ll likely be thinking back to the small beginnings of Palm Springs Desert Winds.
“When we first started marching, we didn’t have enough people to do it, so we rode in the back of a truck,” he said. “We finally started marching, and now we’ve got a marching band, pep band, jazz band, small groups, a pop band—you name it.”
The Greater Palm Springs Pride Parade takes place at 10 a.m., Sunday, Nov. 8, in downtown Palm Springs. Learn more at www.pspride.org/parade.
“Stronger Together: Music of Hope and Resilience,” the Palm Springs Desert Winds’ season opener, will take place at 3 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 22, at the McCallum Theatre, at 73000 Fred Waring Drive, in Palm Springs. Tickets start at $35. Learn more at www.psdesertwinds.org.
