Talk about unappreciated. Not even under-appreciated — which a lot of bands are — but almost completely passed over in the discussion. Yawning Man never had the PR campaign to prove it, but they formed in 1986 and were part of the very beginning of what we now know as desert rock. Led by guitarist Gary Arce, the band wouldn’t release a studio album until 19 years later, when the full-length Rock Formations and the EP Pot Head surfaced, but by then their desert-party jams were long since legendary, and their praises sung by everyone from Fatso Jetson, whose Mario Lalli has been a member of Yawning Man from the beginning, to Kyuss, who famously cited their influence and covered the song “Catamaran” on their final album in 1995.

Over the course of their 26 years, Arce has remained the constant figure behind the band. His signature tone — derived from surf, but thicker and more expansive — leads Yawning Man‘s sprawling instrumental works, and in his time doing so, he’s incorporated a host of luminaries from the California desert. Lalli, of course, has been present for the most part and still plays a large role in the band, but also the likes of Bill Stinson — who’s also worked with Chuck Dukowski (Black Flag) and has been a part of Arce‘s Dark Tooth Encounter and Ten East side-projects — Alfredo Hernandez (Kyuss), Mario‘s cousin and Fatso Jetson bandmate Larry Lalli and Billy Cordell (Unida, Kyuss Lives!) have been through the ranks, and Arce seems to relish the possibilities each new player brings.

In 2010, Yawning Man released their most solidified album to date in the form of Nomadic Pursuits (review here) on Cobraside Distribution. Then the trio of Arce, Lalli and Hernandez, the band seemed poised to collect the respect long overdue to them. Songs both resided in the realm of a “desert rock” sound and provided a reminder that it was Yawning Man who helped shape those ideas in the first place, and the album as a whole had a flow that was remarkably consistent and evocative (a recent summer revisit found it no less so) while also boasting an organic, spontaneously jammed style. The band toured Europe to support it sans Lalli (he tells the story here), and actually had some momentum working in their favor if they could make the best of it quickly.

It’s a quick interview and details are vague at best, so I’ll keep it brief, but the upshot is it didn’t pan out. Hernandez is out of the band, Lalli‘s aboard part-time. Arce, however, is almost defiant in his push to make Yawning Man work. With Cordell and drummers Stinson and Greg Saenz (The Dwarves), it’s the guitarist’s intent that the next Yawning Man release will be a double album, titled Gravity is Good for You after the Raymond Pettibon artwork they’ve secured for the cover (included below; click to enlarge), and featuring half with Lalli and half with Cordell. A pretty wild idea, but it wouldn’t be the band’s first in that regard — I think probably the first was, “I’m going to plug into this echo and see what happens” — and if anyone could pull it off and make it work, it’s Arce. The rest of us will just have to wait and keep our fingers crossed.

Please find the complete email Q&A with Gary Arce after the jump, and please enjoy.

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