Sometime in the mid-2010s, Jes Morales was in the crowd of a local music show, whose lineup included an emo band named DISPIRIT.
In that band were Christian Resendez, Toni Ordaz, Austin Barrientos and Homero Solis.
“That was a terrible first show,” Resendez recalled, laughing alongside Morales and Ordaz. “We were so bad.”
At one point, the band decided to change their sound and their name with it.
“We changed our name to GLARE,” Resendez said. “We changed our sound to a darker, more ambient kind of sound.”
“It just sounded badass,” Ordaz said with a laugh when asked why the band chose the name GLARE.
Around 2018, Morales officially joined GLARE: a decision that she says lined up perfectly.
“It kind of worked out because at the time I was in three bands and they all broke up almost at the same time,” Morales said.
GLARE asked Morales if she wanted to join the band for a few shows, like a tryout, and that it went well from there, she recalled.
“I feel like after three shows or so, more people started asking us to play and we were all so down because the opportunity didn’t really come up,” Morales said.
Now, GLARE consists of Resendez and Ordaz both on guitar and vocals, Barrientos on guitar, Solis on bass and Morales on drums.
THE BEGINNING
Resendez said when they first started, it was difficult to book shows. On the shows that they did play, Resendez recalled their band sticking out like a sore thumb compared to the other bands they were playing with.
“We were the only soft band,” he said. “We were playing with a bunch of hardcore and punk bands at the time, so it was really interesting.”
Patrick Garcia, a local show promoter with the booking agency Tiger’s Blood, recalled meeting DISPIRIT around 2014-15.
“I’m always looking for new bands and bands that I think are doing interesting things considering the sonic landscape of the RGV,” Garcia said. “I wouldn’t call it a deep friendship, but it was more of a mutual respect because they were from Brownsville”
He noted that there are less opportunities playing alternative shows there, especially since the music venue B.A.M. (Brownsville Artists and Musicians) closed down.
Resendez, Ordaz and Solis are from Brownsville; while Barrientos comes from Los Fresnos and Morales from Weslaco, though currently resides in San Marcos.
“I feel like they’re kind of outliers because they’re literally all over the place,” Garcia said, when asked how he’d describe GLARE’s presence in the local music scene.
“They probably hate this word,” Garcia laughed, “but that sort of shoegaze, late 80s/early 90s showgaze guitar driven sound, that dreamy rock sound, a lot of bands don’t do it and they don’t do it that consistently in the RGV.
“I’m not saying that there haven’t been bands that have done it, but as long as GLARE has been doing it, I think they’re doing it great,” Garcia said.
SUNDAY DRIVE RECORDS
In April 2017, GLARE released their first two songs after the name change: “Into Me” and “Blank.”
While they were recording it, Resendez said they sought help from Texas-based independent record label Sunday Drive Records in putting the songs out, so they reached out to Jonathan Lee Gonzales, who runs the record label.
“We sent him the songs and everything, and I remember him saying it was really good, but they were already booked for the whole year in terms of releases,” Resendez said, adding that they ended up releasing it themselves.
When GLARE recorded their next two songs “Do Not Answer” and “Void in Blue”, Resendez said Gonzales was on board with putting those songs out, which were released in August 2018.
“Since then, we’ve been with Sunday Drive and they’ve been nothing but good to us,” Resendez said in regards to signing with the record label. “We love them so much and they help us out a lot.”
Ordaz echoed that statement, adding that the record label has a diverse catalog of music. Resendez mentioned that the collective, which has more than 40 artists signed to the label, are other bands they know and love.
GLITTERER
As a promoter, Garcia has booked so many shows that he says “it just becomes a blur.”
Yet, Garcia has a specific memory between late 2018 and early 2019 of a memorable moment that ended up helping GLARE.
Indie rock band Glitterer was going to tour around Texas; the band consists solely of Ned Russin, who is the bassist and vocalist of Pennsylvania-based band “Title Fight.”
Interestingly enough, Resendez said when they first started DISPIRIT, that they were a “Title Fight kind of band.”
Nevertheless, Garcia believed that GLARE complemented Glitterer’s sound, but because the group was a touring band with booking agents, it was slightly complicated because that meant Garcia would have to run things through the booking agents.
“I can’t just throw whoever I want onto the lineup, so I really pushed for GLARE,” Garcia said.
After reaching out to the booking agent, Garcia recalled the agent liking GLARE’s music and said they’d pass it along to see if Glitterer wanted to take them on the entire Texas tour, which included Austin, Dallas and Houston.
And it happened. From Feb. 7-10, 2019, GLARE joined Glitterer and Zeel for the Texas tour.
“It felt really cool knowing that the touring act picked up GLARE and took them on the road with them,” Garcia said.
“I can’t speak on behalf of GLARE, if they had a good time or not, but I think every promoter has that sort of dream of creating this cultural exchange with a touring act and a local act,” he said.
HEAVENLY
While working on a different record, the band was forced to stop due to the lockdowns put in place after COVID-19 hit. The lockdown prevented GLARE from not only seeing each other, but from also finishing that record.
With the lockdown came various feelings: not being able to see people, having to be alone, anger at the current state of the government and world. With a culmination of all those feelings, the band had an easier time writing their official EP “Heavenly,” which consists of five songs.
“We didn’t really talk about what we were going to write about,” Resendez said. “We just did it, we figured it out and it came together pretty well.”
“Yeah, it ended up sounding more cohesive than we planned,” Ordaz said.
Morales noted that it took different time periods, depending how the band was feeling, so when the EP was released, there was a wave of loneliness, anger and happiness going up and down.
GLARE explored and communicated these feelings onto the dreamy-sounding EP, which was released in December 2021.
Morales loves the track “Heavenly,” with Ordaz adding that particular song took them forever to decide what the sound would be like as it was written a few years ago.
However, Ordaz’s favorite was the only song written in a day. The third track “Soft” came into fruition when they had been at Resendez’s house, who played them a riff of a song and asked if Ordaz wanted to add anything to it.
“I think that one was probably the easiest one to write, it literally took us like a day,” Resendez said. “Not even a day, like maybe a couple of hours.”
But for Resendez, he joins Morales in naming “Heavenly” his favorite, but says he’s most proud of the second track “Floating”, which he said he wrote with the help of the band, but took charge of since most of the songs on the EP were written by Ordaz.
RELEASE SHOW
GLARE reached out to Garcia for help to coordinate their release show for “Heavenly.”
“They reached out to me, to help them coordinate it and it really meant a lot that they reached out to me,” Garcia said.
From picking out the lineup to the selection of the venue to the flyer design, Garcia said it was neat to be able to do all of that with the band.
Originally, the show was scheduled for New Year’s Day, but due to the omicron variant, Garcia said they didn’t feel comfortable putting the show on.
“We didn’t feel good about it and nobody really knew what was going on,” he said. “It weighs on your conscience and I understand that a lot of people rely on that income, but we felt it was the right thing to do and to postpone it.”
Four months later, on April 1, the show was ready to go.
At McAllen’s The Gremlin, GLARE performed “Heavenly” live in its entirety for the first time. Other bands in the lineup for the show were Gusto Gusto, Worst Behavior and High Regard, groups that GLARE say are also their friends.
“It was a great, rowdy night,” Garcia said, adding that there were more than 200 people in attendance.
The future looks bright for GLARE as the band hopes to play more shows and go on tour soon while also focusing on writing more music.
Resendez circled back to the record they were working on before the impromptu nature of “Heavenly.”
“That record was postponed for ‘Heavenly,’ so we’re gonna try to go get back into that one and finish it up,” Resendez said.
To find out more about GLARE, here’s where you can find them:
BANDCAMP: https://glaretx.bandcamp.com/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/glaretx
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/glaretx/
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/glaretexas/
