Jesse Valencia | GORKY

Jesse Valencia - Musician, Filmmaker, Author, and Rebel Storyteller

Jesse Valencia is an Indigenous-American musician, filmmaker, author, and cultural entrepreneur whose 25-year artistic journey blurs the line between chaos and vision. Born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1985, Valencia is descended from Yaqui refugees, German-Scandinavian farmers, and Appalachian frontiersmen — a lineage that fuses rebellion, mysticism, and grit into everything he creates.

He is best known as the founder and frontman of Gorky, the cult-favorite Arizona band that became synonymous with desert romanticism, indie sleaze, and political defiance. Formed with his blood brother-in-spirit Ben Holladay in a high school geography class, Gorky grew from teenage rebellion into a 25-year odyssey of pure DIY rock’n’roll mythology — complete with drug-fueled gigs, ex-Hell’s Angels producers, beefs with the Gin Blossoms, and brushes with lawsuits from Hanna-Barbera. Through it all, Gorky invented the “White Mountain Sound,” a distinctly Southwestern fusion of folk, punk, and Britpop attitude that made them Arizona’s answer to The Libertines and The Velvet Underground.

Valencia’s story, however, reaches far beyond music. A U.S. Army veteran turned anti-war activist, he holds three master’s degrees — in Creative Writing, Literature, and Screenwriting from the David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts — where he studied Transcendental Meditation and developed his first feature concepts. His acclaimed book, Keep Music Evil: The Brian Jonestown Massacre Story (Jawbone Press), became a cornerstone of modern rock literature and helped inspire both DIG!XX and Joel Gion’s memoir In the Jingle Jangle Jungle.

As a filmmaker, Jesse has written, produced, scored, and acted in numerous independent projects — including collaborations with director Travis Mills and roles alongside Tom Sizemore. Offscreen, he’s built a parallel career in the cinema industry itself — managing social media and marketing for WME Theatres and advising independent exhibitors across the country.

An unflinching civic agitator and policy advocate, Valencia made headlines for his “Sitgreaves County” stunt that nearly created Arizona’s 16th county and led to tangible legislative reform, including a clause in Arizona’s film tax credit guaranteeing in-state hiring. In Portland, he’s since become a visible voice in music policy, exposing corporate manipulation in Live Nation’s land deals and helping elect the city’s first pro-music City Council.

At heart, Jesse Valencia is a spiritual anarchist — an artist of many mediums whose work spans theology, rock music, and film. Whether performing in the high desert or fighting for independent art in City Hall, his message remains the same: make noise, tell the truth, and never let empire own your soul.

Gorky: A Legacy of Rock and Roll Resilience 

Gorky was formed in 2001 by high school sophomores and best friends Jesse Valencia (vocals/guitar) and Ben Holladay (drums/percussion), who bonded over a shared love of comic books, movies, and rock and roll music. Far removed from London or New York, where their favorite bands were from, Gorky took root in Arizona's remote White Mountains region, crafting a Southwestern sound distinctly their own as the cornerstone of a burgeoning local scene that nurtured future successes like Zella Day and Charles Ellsworth.   

In 2019, Jawbone Press (UK) published Valencia's critically-acclaimed creative nonfiction book Keep Music Evil: The Brian Jonestown Massacre Story, a decade-long labor of love to compile a history of one of his favorite bands, which later inspired “DIG!XX”, a new cut of Ondi Timoner's original 2005 film, as well as Joel Gion's own BJM memoir “In The Jingle Jangle Jungle".  

Valencia graduated from the David Lynch Film School in 2020 and in 2021 orchestrated the Sitgreaves County Project, a runaway publicity stunt to promote Valencia's thesis screenplay at the school that went so far, not only did it end up making headlines, it influenced Arizona politics and history forevermore. After developing the film further with some of the creative team behind Prince's 1984 hit movie “Purple Rain,” Valencia initially abandoned the project when, in January 2023, after over 20 years of playing music and working together, Ben Holladay tragically died after battling complications from Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, a rare genetic lung disease. 

Valencia then relocated to Portland, Oregon, where he immersed himself in the city’s music, film, and literary scenes. As a member of MusicPortland, he became a vocal advocate for independent artists, joining the fight against Live Nation’s corporate expansion and stepping into the political arena as a Field Organizer for Portland City Councilman Jamie Dunphy’s successful 2024 campaign. In November of 2024, Portland elected its first-ever, progressive, pro-Music city council and mayor. 

During this time, after extensive historical, textual, and scholarly research, Valencia was enrolled in the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians 120 years after his great-grandfather Celedonio Valencia first fled from the Porfiriato Genocide that decimated the Yaqui population of Sonora, Mexico.  

Valencia's journey reflects resilience and creativity, and Gorky’s story serves as both a testament to rock and roll’s enduring spirit and a tribute to Ben Holladay, his late best friend and collaborator. 

The band will return in 2025 with a new lineup in celebration of Ben’s life and legacy, alongside a new direction for the film project originally begun at the David Lynch Film School.