Dust devils swirled in a dimly lit lot outside of Brighton, Colorado, as a prison van with Oregon plates tore across the otherwise vacant gravel in early March. The side doors flew open, and the stuffed interior exploded like a clown car, packed to the brim with instruments, bodies and a Costco-sized box of Pop Tarts. Out stepped Portland’s angsty, reverb-driven, blue-hair-fronted Glacier Veins, arriving for the second show of the group’s March tour.

It was a garage gig at KappaWaves Audio, LLC, a strange series of buildings in the middle of nowhere outside of Denver, featuring a makeshift venue, a recording studio and a very green garden. The night starred a line-up of six groups of various niches of punk rock, four local and two (separately) touring.

The Glacier Veins quartet and accompanying tour photographer were among the first to pull into the dusty lot that evening. The white van — a penitentiary relic, purchased just before they left — took them all over the western United States in March. It’ll be the same tight-quarters ride (lovingly named “Connie”) which will take them on a Midwest tour next month.

“It takes patience,” laughed Malia Endres, founder and singer/guitarist for Glacier Veins. “We have a fun time and there’s not any tension in the van. We help each other out.”

Endres, of Southwest Portland, is the heart, soul and blood running through the Glacier Veins. She founded the group in 2015 after her first band fell apart due to a member going to college. Beginning as a sort-of feeling-out experiment, she played small solo acoustic sets in an effort to find like-minded musicians and build it into something more.

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“I didn’t want to be in another band where that same thing might happen again,” she said. “I played acoustic and put out some demos. Just started playing shows by myself in hopes that I would meet people who were interested in making it a full band. Gotta start somewhere.”

Glacier Veins, now signed with LA’s Common Ground Records, played its first show as a group in October 2015. In 2016, they played the Portland Warped Tour after winning a battle of the bands. Through a whirlwind rotating cast, Endres has remained the primary songwriter and framework.

“I feel like when I perform, I’m in my headspace, in the moment, not super focused on what everybody is playing specifically, kind of just how it all feels as a whole. They all bring good energy to our live performance.”

The current group, consistent for at least the duration of this 18-show tour, includes Kyle Woodrow on bass, Jesse Beirwagen on drums and Jason Espinoza on guitar. Although it’s a new configuration, Endres said each member has brought something unique to performances, like Woodrow’s harmonies.

“Playing music, and also personality-wise, we vibe together really well,” Endres said. “Jason has been able to write a part to one of our new songs that we don’t have recorded yet, so to see the way that he writes and how he hears our music and what he can bring to it. Jesse is a super high-energy performer, and he kills it every night. I feel like this is a good group.”

Energy and chemistry are a necessity in their niche. The DIY scene, more a denotation of touring style and set-up than genre, is populated by groups just barely making things work. In the span of one tour, Glacier Veins played garages, bars, pool parties and a dozen other miscellaneous locales — all the while sleeping on some floors and, from the sound of it, more beds than Endres expected.

“The community is really cool because even if we didn’t know anybody, we’d be playing a show with a band or a promoter who offered a place for us to stay,” she said. “I think that’s the DIY thing, regardless of your genre. When bands are setting up shows for each other on a smaller scale, it’s a community-based thing and people want to help you out.”

The nature of this approach usually means shows and tours are packed tightly between day-jobs and other responsibilities. Endres, a liberal studies major at Portland State, was juggling online classes between sets.

“I actually finished up my winter term while we were on tour,” she laughed. “We were in San Antonio and we had a big sleepover on the floor of the house we played at and in the morning I started taking my final.”

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Although they carry the DIY flag, Endres described her music as “dream punk,” citing the reverb and ambient style of their sound. “It has a level of high-energy and also emotion built into the ‘dream’ aspect,” she said. Without much planning, the nightly lineup on tour usually paired well. “Everybody kind of, for the most part, fell under an alternative-indie genre. The most important part is the bands having the same mindset as a community with a passion for music and connection.”

Back on familiar Pacific ground now, the tour took Glacier Veins as far as Houston over three and a half weeks of March. “Being able to drive to a new place and play a show every night makes things go faster,” Endres said. “It’s good to be able to adapt to the different settings and roll with the punches.”

The trip ended with a show at Portland’s Analog Theater, and one more stretch of highway to Seattle for the finale. Still caught in the flurry of the tour on that homecoming show, Endres said timing made it the site of a reunion as well as a performance.

“Portland was probably my favorite show of the tour. We’d been gone for almost a month and we got to come back and a lot of our friends were there and I saw my parents for the first time,” she said. “I was excited to play and show everyone what we’d been doing and we definitely improved our set from the first time we played it. There was a lot of energy surrounding that.”

On the horizon in May is a host of shows through Middle America en route to Bled Fest in Howell, Michigan. Endres isn’t certain what the line-up will look like moving forward but, for now, she’s got a group in the van that she can stand. They’re all just looking for respite before another stint in the clown car.

“We honestly haven’t even had a chance to collect our thoughts from the tour yet, because we just jumped back into life, but I’m sure the next couple weeks we’ll do that — start preparing for our next adventure,” Endres said. “I’m excited to go back out again but, for right now, I’m happy to be here.”

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