UPDATED 6/14 12 p.m.
Fresh home from the band’s very first tour, the boys of Yr Glow are finally relaxing, headed back to day jobs and trying to ease back into the routine of things. Two members sit in an empty bedroom FaceTime-ing the other two members who live hours from Tampa Bay. Co-founder D’Angelo Casanas ruminates on the things learned from playing out of state for the first time.
“It was more fun than I expected. People were telling me that spending all that time with the same people every day could be annoying, but it was honestly such a great time,” Casanas tells CL. “Playing our songs in new cities was almost like playing them for the first time.”
Yr Glow started in Fort Myers, but members of the surf-garage band now live in St.Petersburg, Brandon, Fort Myers, and Port Orange.
Two of its members, D’Angelo and drummer Beau Dick, teamed up with Tito Smith from hardcore band Joshua Creek to self-book the band’s 12-date tour, which went as far as Kansas City while hitting Baton Rouge, Nashville and San Juan (Texas) along the way. Having just enough money to get itself from state to state, Yr Glow drove about 5000 miles in a windowless work van. The junkyard bench that served as a back seat wasn’t bolted down and had no seatbelts. Bassist Luke Janke refused to sit on it, and rode in the passenger seat the entire time.
Inspiring inside jokes, new songs written in shared Super 8 motel rooms, and the occasional shower, the tour (partially hydrated by Topo Chico, which hilariously sent Yr Glow eight cases of sparkling mineral water after a pitch from Janke’s girlfriend) was absolutely worth it — except for one slightly intimidating, but understandable, pit stop.
“We drove through the border patrol checkpoint in McAllen, Texas, and that was pretty scary for us since most of us are hispanic,” Casanas says. “We knew [that] all they’re legally allowed to do is just question us, but it was still scary. Throughout the whole tour, that was the one time that I genuinely panicked a little.”
Aside from that hiccup, the Yr Glow tour was a learning experience and full of the knowledge that only long drives and the peculiarities of multi-state booking can teach a band. It also forced the boys — including two members who joined the band in the last six months — to bond.
The current Yr Glow lineup is not the one that released a collaborative EP with Charles Irwin in 2018. The original bassist and drummer have since split from Yr Glow and were replaced by Beau Dick, who impressively did most of the driving on tour, and Janke from Port Orange, a small town right outside of Daytona Beach.
The new members introduced a completely different dynamic to the songwriting and brought new energy to live performances, elements that all of the members are having fun adapting to.
“I’m really happy with Beau and Luke in the band,” lead guitarist James Moore says. “The biggest thing is that they’re sweet, open-minded people — they just wanna play music. That’s all I care about.”
Yr Glow, like any group of young musicians, is a constantly changing entity, with songwriting and musical inspiration evolving as the group maneuvers the void of young adulthood. D’Angelo, who handles rhythm guitar and vocals, started Yr Glow as solo project three years ago and honored his adolescent angst by naming his first band after a Teen Suicide song. The rapid changes happening to his band coincide with the change he made moving from Fort Myers back to Brandon just a few miles from where he was born. At the moment, Yr Glow shares a similar sound with bands like Surf Curse and The Frights, but members have also been influenced by Together Pangea and Tijuana Panthers as of late. There are seven releases on the group’s Bandcamp page, but there’s no predicting what the next one will sound or feel like.
“No one is moving forward with a preconceived notion of what we have to sound like,” Casanas says. Yr Glow is even changing how it plays old songs in the live setting; everything that D’Angelo and James have written is getting completely reworked. You might even call it a renaissance period for Yr Glow.
Despite the four members of the band living in four different cities, their similar work ethics and ideals drive the band forward as a unified front, in whatever direction they decide. It’s not so much a fresh start, but a renewal of sorts, as they combine their old sound with their new sound.
“The four of us have very different personalities and different music tastes,” Dick adds nonchalantly. “I think it helps us write better songs.”
Yr Glow is a band that has recently undergone a massive amount of change that has benefited the band in terms of growth and development. The band is already planning an even longer tour for the fall.
“With the way things are going now, and how everyone is bringing in new ideas, we’re headed in the right direction. It’s only been a couple months, and the vibe of our music is definitely shifting, but we’re all committed to this direction we’re going in, wherever that is,” James says. He’s traditionally the quiet one in the band but gets particularly talkative when the future of Yr Glow is in question; the anticipation in his tone rises and his voice cracks, slightly, from excitement.
“We’re honestly just going so hard,” he says with a smile.
Hello Joyce w/Fever Beam/Photo Fire/The Dog Apollo/Yr Glow/A Rainy Night In/Youth Antics. Sat., June 15, 5 p.m. $5-$10. Crowbar, 1812 N. 17th St., Ybor City. aespresents.com.
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This article appears in Jun 13-20, 2019.