THE DANNY EVANS BENEFIT EDITION: A Conversation with Febuary
by Danica Guan
Photos by Randy Rodriguez Guzman
The last five years have been huge for emo, this year, femme-fronted screamo band Febuary became the first of its generation to play Coachella–a move that hasn’t come without its share of controversy.
Hailing from Las Vegas,members Rila Ogawa, Abby Walker, Airon Gauff, and Italy Jones formed in 2023.They quickly rose to fame after the release of their debut album ‘February,’ before re-debuting in July 2025.
In November of this year, the band made their way east to Ridgewood, Queens. Famed local venue Trans Pecos hosted a benefit show for Danny Evans of Cash Only Tony’s and OLTH, a beloved member of New York City’s hardcore community, alongside bands Krylon, Silk, and Cash Only Tony’s themselves. The event raised money to pay for Danny’s cancer treatment.
The band originally met Evans through their Midwest Brawl Tour with Cash Only Tony’s in July of 2025, where the two bands hit it off immediately.
We were trying to tour with OLTH and it was our first tour, hella hype, so I hit up Danny and was like,”I’d love to tour with OLTH but if Cash Only Tony’s is down then put me on because I knew that you guys (the other Febuary members), would fuck with Cash.
We just clicked immediately and I was so thankful to have been able to do these things with them for the first time on both sides and we became best friends. Danny was not only just a great friend, but a great mentor. They’re like a big brother to us.” - Walker
Evans, alongside other members of their other band OLTH, were prolific tattoo artists, mainly serving the local hardcore community through the art before starting the band, which eventually led to the formation of Cash Only Tony’s in 2023 as a two-piece between members Annika and Declan before becoming a fully formed band with Danny, Alex, which became an immediate smash-hit for both its gritty emoviolence, embodied in songs like xDANNYx and Rosa, alongside the bittersweet softer hits like ‘Seymour Waits for Fry,’ an instant New York emo hit. Holding bits of the city’s unique essence, the band’s name is also a reference to Brooklyn pizza joint, Tony’s Pizzeria, that only takes cash.
The band played a secret set at the night’s show, playing a short and sweet eight minute set, consisting of songs from both their demo and the split released with Autumn Sonata in May of 2025, in a beautiful moment of community love that was released back in order to support one of the New York scene’s most adored members.
However, the night would not come without controversy for Febuary, in the light of the band’s booking of Coachella in May of 2025, following the release of their first EP, Run Like a Girl earlier that year, that garnered criticisms of selling out, which the band addressed.
“I think it’s sort of contradictory how people find a band that’s from their own town or something–and want it for their own. You find a band that’s really cool and you want it to be for you.”
You see bands like Knocked Loose still playing the Midnight Hour, and it’s fucking awesome. I think it’s really easy to call out bigger bands and call them sellouts–It’s so easy to call them sellouts. What bigger bands are doing–what good bands are doing, we’re still ourselves. We still have trash to take out on Fridays or something you know?” – Gauff
For Febuary, playing the festival was about more than money, but about taking the chance to grow an audience, an idea that the band sees as a perfect opportunity to bring emo into the mainstream as an opportunity for D.I.Y.
Gauff maintained that alongside himself, he and his bandmates’ in their own respective other projects like The Ritornello Form and Dreaming Maria still play D.I.Y shows, and that the band still manages itself.
“We’re not under a label, we don’t have an agent, we don’t have managers, we bought our plane tickets here by ourselves, we are still D.I.Y, Vs. Self was still D.I.Y when they played Coachella, and they still are. If it’s selling out, then call me a sellout!,” - Ogawa
Ogawa, referencing fellow screamo band Vs. Self, who also booked the festival alongside Febuary, also recently addressed similar criticism from fans, explained to the Coachella Valley Independent the clauses that playing Coachella entailed, which bars musicians from playing what is considered ‘hard ticket events,’ such as other festivals, that actually hurt smaller musicians who rely on the constant flow of ticket sales from other shows in order to support themselves. Guitarist and vocalist of Vs. Self, Kyle Schlenker told CV Independent,”When we got the contract, and I saw the radius clause, I was like ‘Oh God, this is kind of fucked. The only reason it didn’t completely scare us off is because we were already planning on taking a step back from shows for a second to try to finish writing an album.”
The event, which came about through the band’s touring manager Christian, was in the shadows of the band’s controversies regarding the removal of the band’s ex-bassist Steph Webb, in light of the release of their first EP ‘Run Like a Girl.’
‘Run Like a Girl,’ was promoted to be a reflection on the misogynistic nature of a male-dominated music scene, containing deep contemplations on marginalizing experiences in womanhood and a reclamation of feminine anger in the face of patriarchy that is still deeply pervasive in spaces that are endorsed as equitable in nature, guided by leftist aesthetics.
The bands’ debut album February, which spurred on the band’s initial fame, was defined by a sound in twinkly emo riffs and iconic breakdowns accompanied by exasperated spoken-word passages wrapped in references to 2010’s internet culture shifted into a more overtly emoviolent sound, a different emotional lens to place over the plaguing misogyny that hardcore spaces can embody and a reminder of the liberation of feminine anger.
“The reality is we are all in our early 20s and we have all these eyes on us and publicity, and it’s not always good publicity, It’s so easy to hate what you see. I just didn’t want to write about something that didn’t matter.” – Ogawa
Accompanied by merch and marketing around the bands’ now-iconic ‘Girls Do it Better,’ slogan, the band has never shied away from making its political affiliations loud and clear.
“Punk is politics. Conservative punk is not a thing. You should be loud about what you believe in, especially marginalized folks in the scene, it’s hard to do what so many other bands have done. ” - Gauff
At the bands’ set at Dilly Dally Fest, which happened not too long before the Danny Evans benefit show, not unlike many of the bands that played the fest, they opened up with a,”Fuck ICE,” and,”Free Palestine,” before jumping into their first song, a reminder of the sanctity that many gather in emo and hardcore spaces for.
However, on a night like this one, their controversy came second to what would become a successful benefit for New York’s hardcore community. Local showgoers, even with dragged feet, were once again ready to throw down for a cause, the same reason the band came to the city to play this show in the first place.
Trans Pecos was packed from wall to wall, with the venue selling out at maximum capacity that night, an occurrence that happened almost instantaneously as soon as the show was announced.
In an interview with local showgoer Violet Johnson, in spite of her personal distaste for the band in regards to their controversies, shared this sentiment.
“I can give flowers to Febuary for being able to cause mass amounts of turnout. Even if I dislike the band, I can still give them props for being able to get that much money for someone in need,” – Johnson
Johnson, a local fanatic for emoviolence and beatdown subgenres, has been going to shows like this one since 2024, hailing from the deep suburbia of Queens Village, a neighborhood notorious for its lack of accessible public transportation into the rest of the city in order to have a good time in the spirit of uplifting a community she believes in.
This sentiment is shared by many showgoers across the city, who are willing to carve out time in order to keep the D.I.Y space thriving in a changing age, no matter the distance or time it takes to get there.
As it stands, Evans is back to playing alongside Cash Only Tony’s, in their most recent show in Los Angeles in June of this year.
Article adapted for webpage by Zoey Knipstein