Tyler Glenn has now become a familiar face for Gay Vegas readers. For a third year in a row, the Neon Trees’ frontman has graced our cover and granted us an exclusive interview. The out rocker and now ex-Mormon is back with new music, which he’ll release later this month when his solo album Excommunication drops. Tyler will be performing his hits and sharing his unreleased, LGBT-themed new music early with the Las Vegas community on Oct. 7 during Come Out Vegas Weekend’s NCOD celebration. We talked to him about his connection to Vegas, his new album, coming out, his relationship with the Mormon Church today and more.

I feel like this album is not only a coming out album, but it’s kind of like a breakup album. With singles like “Trash”, you’re kind of like breaking up with the Mormon Church. You guys are going through a hard time. It’s a violent relationship.

Yeah. And it may be a violent relationship, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t stem from a place of love for the Church. That’s why it’s so much more powerful when you have a breakup like that. So, what was your first coming out experience? I came out I think when I like knew who I was and I came out like confidently, it was to my producer, Tim Pagnotta, who I had done most of Neon Trees’ records with but I also did this last record with. So he would be the one that like when I was 29 and like had just written our record Pop Psychology and told him what the songs are about and came out to him in that way.

When you say in the song, “First Vision”, “I fell in love with a married man,” is that stemming from a real life experience? It’s a real life experience. It’s real. It’s the most real that I’ve ever been on an album about anything. I feel to the point where I haven’t been very vague on this record. It’s pretty specific. I don’t think I’m the only one that goes through this, but I have fallen in love with my straight friends. And some of them have happened to be married. But there have been relationships that I’ve had with men that were married that were very emotional and very confusing for the both of us.

I wrote that song at a bar in Tribeca drinking wine and like reflecting. So that’s just sort of a stream of conscious as the song goes on pretty much.

After your producer, who did you come out to next? Then I came out to my mom, and that was like a few days later. But I mean I came out to my producer and then when he reacted so positively, like I wanted to tell everybody. But I thought my parents, my immediate family, my bandmates, they need to know. And so it was sort of over the period of like a few weeks that I kind of came out to everyone in my immediate life.

How was it coming out to your mom? Scary, but also so warm and loving. Because she recalls looking over at me when I was coming out to her and seeing like her 10-year-old son needing his mom. Like I wasn’t the almost 30-year-old full grown man that she was in the car with. She realized I was being sincere. Ever since then it’s just brought us to such transparency, which I hope that more LGBTQ people feel, but I know that’s not the case all the time when they’re coming out, especially to their parents. 

In the coming out process, did you feel any rejection from anyone? Did you go through any difficult situations? It took some of my family members a couple weeks to just get used to the idea. But like I don’t think for them homosexuality was ever a thing in their life. I really had it mostly positive, to be honest. It’s actually been more crazy since coming out of Mormonism that I feel like a lot of relationships have either gone by the wayside, or have become strained, or some I don’t have anymore. So I think leaving the religion and coming out as an ex-Mormon has been harder almost for me than coming out as gay, which is kind of weird but the truth.

Did your bandmates know at all? In some of your early work with Neon Trees you would use words like “queer” and there were always these little hints. I had told my bass player Branden because we had a pretty close friendship. I had told him that I had those thoughts and emotions, but I was never like transparent about, “Yeah, I think I’m gay.” So he had kind of a clue. And I think my other bandmates always sort of like took it at face value like, “If Tyler says no, then he says no.” They saw me dating women and they saw me sort of comfortable in my own skin, never really addressing my sexuality. I always felt like they supported me either way. And they have. I think religion definitely has confused a lot of things because there are things that my bandmates, some of them as Mormons, believe. But I think for me personally and like my happiness, they are and always have been supportive regarding me being gay.

In one of your songs, “G.D.M.M.L. GRLS (God Didn’t Make Me Like Girls)” you say, “It’s hard for me to keep it up.” Is that about keeping up the charade? I think it was hard for me to keep up the image of being the gay Mormon and then it was hard for me to keep up the image of now being this, at least within Mormonism, anti-Christ. Like I live in Utah and it’s interesting. It’s interesting when you can scare people if you stop believing what they believe in. And if you’re bold and if you’re clear about it then people sort of get freaked out. It’s just sometimes hard to keep up the image of what people want you to be. And I think that’s the whole point with this record, is I’m trying to like say, “Yo, it’s okay to be very clear about where you’re at with things.” I want it to feel empowering versus like wounded. 

Also in “G.D.M.M.L. GRLS” you say, “I tried to kill myself and I’m not the only one.” Is that pulled from an actual experience as well? Yeah. The weekend that the LDS Church put out the policy against same-sex couples and their children, which was November 4 of last year, it was one of the most difficult weekends of my life because I was being faced with this institution that I had not only believed in, but preached and tried to make work my whole life. It taught me that my orientation was wrong and I tried to suppress it and I tried to fix it. And since the discovery of so many untruths within that religion, like that weekend was very, very dark. There were sincere moments looking at my window. And I still have them from time to time, which is really admittedly scary. Just because I’ve forged a new path and I’ve left a lot of my old belief system behind doesn’t mean that I’m like this whole saved individual. I’m extremely proud of who I am and I know where I want to be, but I still have those dark days too.

It’s damaging to go through that.It’s absolutely damaging. 

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And then it’s that question of self-acceptance. I think acceptance is the start, but we still have to walk it. We still have to live it. I also know that I’m not the only one who either tried or had those thoughts. Many have acted on it. And within the LGBTQ religious community many have acted on it because they felt their self-worth wasn’t there. So that pretty much is that line, that lyric.

You talk in your album about losing your faith. Do you feel like you’ll ever get that back? Do you think there’s change coming for the Mormon religion? It’s weird. I believe that I’m faithless as far as I don’t totally know how to label my faith in things like the afterlife or a creator. But I’m not hopeless and that’s the difference. I’m not a hopeless person and I have hope that things can change within religion. I have hope that there’s something bigger than me. I have hope that families are forever. The things that I know now is what is happening right now. I know what is true is life and the present is important. So that’s sort of my belief system at this point. I’m not anti-religion, I’m not anti-God. I just don’t know because I discovered that things that I thought I knew with sureness weren’t and didn’t have a space for me. So it’s complicated, and it’s still so fresh. Like it’s not even a year into this whole journey.

You’re on a journey and we’re all on that journey with you. As well, we’re really looking forward to seeing you perform in Las Vegas for Come Out Vegas Weekend’s NCOD celebration. Yeah, that’s awesome! 

In one of your songs you talk about driving to Vegas in your car. So how much has Vegas been a part of your life? Vegas was always this scary place to me growing up. And then when we started playing shows, it like became this whole other thing to me and I really started to value it. Especially in more of my adult life. That’s where Neon Trees really got like our first big break, getting to open for The Killers. Ronnie [Vannucci Jr] saw us perform for like 10 people at a show in Vegas and then got us the support gig. 

Branden, our bass player, is from Vegas. We always seem to play there. Really good shows. So for me, Vegas is like integral to Neon Trees.

And we look at you as one of our own. There are a lot of Mormons in Vegas. So where do you stand right now with the Mormon Church? Your album’s called Excommunication. Have you been excommunicated? Have you excommunicated yourself? Or does the name mean more than that? I haven’t been excommunicated. I’ve been contacted, but in ways that are less threatening than you’d think. They’re wanting to meet with me and hear what I have to say, but I’m sort of hesitant right now. Just because I want it to be meaningful. 

So it’s really exploring how I’m sort of excommunicating myself from this identity crisis that I think I’ve always gone through. Whether it be me trying to fit into the mold of what a gay man looks like or what a gay man is, or what a religious man is, or what a gay Mormon is. And so it’s essentially me taking the scarlet letter and empowering myself with it instead of having it as like this curse or this sign of weakness. It’s also sort of a play on words because I am sometimes speaking to my ex relationship. Some of the lyrics and some of the songs were inspired by that as well. I think the word “excommunication” is sort of like scary and intense to a lot of people, and I’m I guess reclaiming it and trying to take the fear out of it.

There are certainly different shades of Mormonism that allow for LGBTQ acceptance today. What would you call them? I’ve learned that yeah the Mormon spectrum is like way larger, as is the case for most religious people. There’s not one look. I guess I would call them progressive Mormons. I don’t know. A new order Mormon or something. 

Now we need to talk about your songs “Gods and Monsters” and “John Give ‘Em Hell”. What was the inspiration for them? “Gods and Monsters” is completely about my sort of breaking up with my ex-boyfriend. It just ended really sad and poorly. And he was sort of my first open love after coming out. I had introduced him to my family and we dated for a year. We had been making lots of plans. He gave me a lot of confidence. I had never really been publicly affectionate with another man. So there were all these like milestones that I had had with him. 

The first verse and the second verse in that song is basically like calling him out and telling him, “This is how I felt when I discovered that you were not being who you said you were.” And then I kind of tied it in because in that weekend was sort of the same time I was finding out about all of these false claims within my religion that I tried to live for my whole life. So that’s what “Gods and Monsters” is. I even call out the club/bar that he went to in LA, called Faultline, so that’s kind of like a little nod to that as well.

And then “John Give ‘Em Hell”, John’s an actual person. He’s this really popular religious podcaster and me and him really forged a friendship after I left Mormonism last year. He was also excommunicated from Mormonism, but publicly. And getting to know him really gave me like a lot of encouragement and insight, but also like insight into the pain that it causes when you’re excommunicated from a religion. Your life is totally flipped upside down and sometimes a lot of people, especially within the Mormon community, turn you into a heretic. So I wrote the song basically just to give him support, and didn’t plan on putting it on the album and then just ended up loving the song so much so I included it on the record. But I think in a sense it’s an empowering song, like, “Go give them hell. You got this.”

Fortunately not all Mormons see you as a heretic. No and that’s the thing. When I say the Mormon Church, I don’t even think of Mormons. Like I love Mormons. I think I’ll always be a Mormon in my core because that’s me. It’s more at the system that’s set up right now and I think there needs to be change. And when they acknowledge that, and they acknowledge and make a space for LGBTQ people, then that will be great. But I know like so many Mormons, including my family who are still Mormon, that are wonderful and supportive and do love gay people. So this isn’t an anti-Mormon record, but it’s a sort of look into the struggle.

If there’s one thing Excommunication is, it’s a kickass album. And you can get a copy of it on Oct 21. Visit TylerGlennMusic.com to keep up with the latest on that.

To keep up with the latest Come Out Vegas Weekend news, including details on Tyler’s performance, visit ComeOutVegas.com.