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You can’t erase KGAY.
S
heryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” plays over a pulsing dance beat. It fades into “360” by Charlie XCX.
I’m listening to KGAY, the Palm Springs radio station I stream most mornings (and probably the only radio station playing these two artists back to back today). Earlier, KGAY played “Stupid Girl” by Garbage and “Shame” by Evelyn Champaign King, with KC & the Sunshine Band and Kelly Clarkson hits peppered in between. It’s not even 9 a.m. yet, but I’ve heard more music this morning than some commercial radio stations seem to play in a day.
Sure, there are still commercials on KGAY, but they’re usually advertising local businesses in Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley. If you listen often enough, you’ll be familiar with Boozehounds (the dog-friendly bar and grill) and Oscar’s (the cocktail lounge known for its weekend drag brunches). Looking for a family-owned specialty food store? Jensen’s is it. And if it’s marijuana you’re after? KGAY suggests the Double Eye Dispensary & Lounge.
Through its many sponsors and advocacy projects, KGAY isn’t just a radio station, but a hub for the Palm Springs community. Desert locals tune in on FM channels 106.5 & 92.1, while the rest of us stream from their website or our favorite music apps. “Listening from Madison, Wisconsin, but I’ll be in PS in February,” a fan writes on KGAY’s Facebook page. In this way, KGAY doesn’t just serve the desert but makes the desert and all of its happenings accessible to all of us listeners.
“We’re sending this Palm Springs vibe around the world. We’re aware we’re in a bubble in Palm Springs, where out of about 40,000 people, more than 20,000 identify as LGTBQ+,” KGAY morning host John Taylor tells me. “We’re aware of how wonderful we have it where we live, and we like to think we’re a beacon of joy that broadcasts this energy all over the planet.”
According to owner Brad Fuhr, the music is what makes KGAY successful.
“Our program director Chris Shebel has masterfully put the KGAY sound together. Chris and I first met in a small town in Wisconsin back in 1980. We were both working in radio and both in the closet,” Fuhr says.
When Fuhr began working on the radio station, there was no doubt Shebel was the right guy to program dance music for Palm Springs.
“There’s not a lot of dance radio in the U.S. in general,” Shebel says. “There wasn’t really a comparable station for me to look to for inspiration here, but Europe and the rest of the world has always been friendlier to dance music. The U.S. has a lot of rock radio, but very little dance music, which is something that really brings listeners into the KGAY fold.”
Shebel programs playlists full of disco, pop, and electronic music spanning decades and generations, alongside contemporary hits, and of course, it’s all danceable. On KGAY, I hear Madonna and Rihanna as often as Moby and Depeche Mode, Dolly Parton, and Crystal Waters as often as Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor.
“It’s meant to be a broad station filled with all kinds of music, and we have a lot of straight allies who love and listen to the radio station,” Fuhr says.
But with its signature call letters, Fuhr built queer visibility into the KGAY brand.
“When I first got involved with launching a radio station in Palm Springs, I woke up in the middle of the night and said, ‘I wonder if the letters KGAY are available.’ Literally. I went on the FCC database and found out the call letters were owned by a station in Oregon, but they weren’t being used. I called the owner of that station and begged, and within 48 hours, we had the call letters assigned to us. We got to announce ourselves as KGAY,” Fuhr says.
KGAY is historic. While LGTBQ+ radio shows have existed at stations all over the U.S., KGAY is the first commercial radio station developed specifically for an LGTBQ+ audience (while also identifying as LGTBQ+ owned and operated). For KGAY morning host John Taylor, who’s known Fuhr and Shebel for decades, collaborating at KGAY is a far cry from their early days in the radio and records business together.
“There used to be these record industry conventions every year. Billboard Magazine put one on, for example. Shebel realized there were a lot of under-the-radar gays and lesbians on both the radio and record sides of the industry. He created a group of us that communicated via email called the FOD, short for Friends of Dorothy,” Taylor says. “We had family dinners at these radio industry conventions, usually offsite, and we all became friends that way. Radio is a small business. Quite frequently, people would be out of work and let the group know. We took care of our own. I guess you could call it the gay mafia of radio. We didn’t really run things, but we looked out for each other.”
This community was essential to Fuhr and the other members of FOD.
“We couldn’t be out at all back then,” Fuhr remembers. “So this underground newsletter and group of people that gathered was really important. We’d secretly go out to the gay bars.”
Technically, Taylor was out at work before KGAY. But only because his first boss in the radio business looked at him and asked, “Are you gay?” This was in New Hampshire. Taylor was 19 and never had even been asked that question so plainly before.
He answered “yes,” and worked for that employer for many years, but still felt like he had to explain himself when he wanted to publicize the AIDS Walk and other events for the LGTBQ+ community.
“The nice thing about KGAY is we can drop any inauthenticity and be our real selves. Back in the day, we were only allowed to be our real selves within the small community we created inside of our industry. With KGAY, we are free to be fully authentic,” Taylor adds.
It’s easy to appreciate the poeticism of these FOD members who once met on the fringes, getting to create their own station together today.
“I’ve done radio for decades, since I was a teen, and I never would have expected the third act of my career would be my favorite,” Taylor says.
My friend Niko first introduced me to KGAY. We were in the desert to see Beyoncé perform at Coachella in 2018, just two years after KGAY’s launch. In between parties, we blasted KGAY and had the time of our lives. As loyal fans of the station, I asked Niko to tell me about how she discovered KGAY in the first place.
“I was in Palm Springs on holiday and took a friend’s car to a local dispensary. The car was an older convertible and didn’t have Bluetooth or an aux cord, so I turned on the radio. Good old reliable FM radio. I stumbled across some amazing pop music. I was cruising down Indian Canyon Drive, wind in my hair, sun shining down on me, and the music was so fun and uplifting,” Niko says. “When the song ended, I heard their tag, ‘KGAY 105,’ and just hearing ‘KGAY’ was so cool and exciting. I don’t think I’d ever even heard the word ‘gay’ on FM radio before. For the station to be called KGAY and offer such queer content on mainstream radio was cool and affirming.”
As a frequent traveler, Niko didn’t just bring KGAY back with her to Los Angeles, but also started streaming the station online from hotel rooms and Airbnbs around the world.
“It’s so great to put it on and feel an immediate sense of home, the same way you do at any gay bar or club,” Niko says. “There’s a sense of belonging and acceptance at the most basic level, which we sadly don’t get everywhere. KGAY is a comfort. It’s a safe space that is precious and invaluable.”
In many ways, KGAY is a local station with international reach. Taylor mentions his joy seeing listeners tune in from Warsaw, Poland, and Moscow, Russia, but knows the safe space KGAY provides is just as important for listeners in the U.S., especially as anti-LGTBQ+ rhetoric and policies continue to rise.
“We all feel a sense of obligation and gratitude for what we’ve created,” Fuhr says. “We want to maintain the positivity and the fun, but we have to shine a light on the rest of the stuff going on right now too.”
KGAY has never been a stranger to political commentary.
In 2022, when Palm Springs Pride announced the theme “Say Gay” in direct response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, KGAY’s new on-air slogan became “Say Gay. Say KGAY.” The cheeky protest sentiment perfectly embodies KGAY’s spirit of resistance. This spirit has only become stronger since the beginning of the year 2025 when this administration ushered in a new era of American politics.
“We’re well aware that we could be erased,” Taylor says. “GAY is in our call letters. The federal government regulates radio through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), so we are well aware of the risk of being turned off by the current administration. We could be erased with everything else LGTBQ+ that the current administration seems to want to erase. The transgender community has already been dropped from the Stonewall monument. ‘Gay’ has been removed from the history books, including the aircraft that dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima, because it was named after the pilot’s mother Enola Gay.”
According to Fuhr, Taylor isn’t just speculating. He speaks with serious concern in his voice.
“A few months ago, major radio companies like iHeart Radio and Odyssey Media mentioned where ICE was going to be going after people in San Francisco on air. Trump ordered the FCC to look into taking their licenses away. That’s the broad version of the story, of course, but I’m actually concerned. KGAY is an FCC-licensed facility. They could find a reason to rescind our license,” Fuhr says.
According to Taylor, KGAY’s mostly Gen-X team is well prepared for this moment.
“We’re from a certain generation where there were attempts to kill us by omission. We all went through the HIV and AIDS crisis in the ’80s. Mainstream culture ignored HIV and AIDS because, in their mind, the people who had it were the people who they didn’t want around anyway. So I think we have some muscle memory when it comes to protest,” Taylor says. “The phrase about our community’s history is, ‘We bury in the morning. We protest in the afternoon. We dance all night.’ That was the spirit of resistance and resilience during the AIDS crisis, and us gays of a certain age still have that spirit built into us.”
Today, KGAY makes sure to extend that spirit to the entire LGTBQ+ community.
“We’re very intentional about getting beyond gay. We make sure we represent all pieces of our LGTBQ+ community, whether that means broadcasting live from trans pride or supporting other organizations and events. It’s important to us to be there for the most marginalized people in our community right now,” Fuhr says.
While KGAY supports countless queer organizations and events each year, amplifying social events and fundraisers almost every day, it also has a strong presence in the desert community at large.
Earlier this year, KGAY played music at the Riverside County Fair as part of its “Out at the Fair” initiative. In a space most associated with agricultural attractions and conservative family values, KGAY proved why the station earned its nickname as the “pride of the valley.”
And while KGAY supports various queer youth initiatives, the team is well aware the station caters to a slightly older demographic of gay men. After all, the desert is full of retirees who flock to the desert for their next act in life. For some of these transplants, Palm Springs offers the chance to live with a sense of visibility and community unavailable to them in previous iterations of life.
“When you move here, you get to extend your life,” Shebel says.
In curating KGAY’s sound, Shebel never fails to keep this community in mind. He says KGAY doesn’t go a day without playing some of the “gay anthems” his contemporaries love, even if he’s hesitant to pick a favorite of his own when I ask.
Instead, I ask him to describe what constitutes a song as a gay anthem.
“If I go to five parties a week in Palm Springs and a certain song is playing at three of them, that’s an anthem,” Shebel says.
Of course, these songs are danceable, but Shebel speaks of them like words of affirmation too. Songs with messages beyond partying, that celebrate gay liberation in the face of ignorance, hate, and even tragedy.
“I Am What I Am” by Gloria Gaynor is one (“It’s my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it’s not a place I have to hide in / Life’s not worth a damn / ‘Til you can say, I am what I am”).
“Small Town Boy” by Bronski Beat is another (“Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy. You were the one that they’d talk about around town as they put you down. And as hard as they would try they’d hurt to make you cry. But you never cried to them, just to your soul.”)
Fuhr is quick to name “Small Town Boy” as one of his own personal favorites.
“It reminds me of growing up. I didn’t come out until I was almost 30, and even though my parents were very accepting when that time finally came, I remember being a closeted kid back in the sixties,” Fuhr says. “I didn’t even know what being gay was, but I knew I felt attracted to men. The ‘Small Town Boy’ thing completely resonates with me. I’ll always remember Kelly, DJ Modgirl, played that song on the opening night of Palm Springs Pride during her first year at KGAY. I just started crying. She saw me and started crying too.”
In Palm Springs, the KGAY team gets to enjoy a small-town experience quite different from the one recounted in the song.
“I can walk through the gayborhood on any Friday or Saturday night and lose count after 50 or 60 hugs,” Taylor says. “It’s Gayberry, not Mayberry. It’s small-town America that happens to be half gay, half LGTBQ+.”
Meet the Palm Springs Radio Station Mixing Pleasure and Politics – Fodors Travel Guide
