“Come lay down at the feet of angels, eyeing you in a northern sky.” Word Sorcery? For many people into emotionally-charged lyrics, it is. Twenty-three-year-old Howie Day, folk musician from Maine, will headline tonight’s music festivities at Bulldog Bash on University Drive. This artist does something notable when producing an album in today’s mainstream music-he writes his own lyrics.
Most listeners are not aware that Starkville airwaves, save WMSV, broadcast musicians, who make millions singing someone else’s words and melody. Coldplay, Radiohead, and John Mayer seem to be the only high-profile artists that perform self-written art.
But since Day’s 2001 debut album, Australia, critics have classified him in the same categories as all three. With Thom Yorke, Jeff Buckley, and John Lennon as his inspirations, it is apparent that he relentlessly studied their styles, incorporating his own.
As a preteen, he fluently learned to play the piano; at 14 he discovered the guitar. Elvis Costello and The Beatles turned on record tables in his house while he mastered rhythm and song.
By high school graduation he was touring the Boston coffee shop scene, and without enrolling in college, he toured campuses along the East Coast.
His get-the-word-out strategy consisted of letting fans come to concerts for free if they sold ten copies of Australia, which he financed himself.
After the year it took to record the heralded Best Debut Album by Singer-Song-writer (Boston Music Awards) and selling 30,000 of them out of a car and via the Internet, Sony’s Epic label signed him on.
“Ghost,” the first song released on the album, is a hopeless farewell to a muse he found intimacy with for a single night. A moaning guitar mood and reflective poetry infects the listener’s heart, capturing the despair of unwanted separation.
Though the remaining nine songs aren’t as melancholy, this raw romantic knows conflict and writes of heartache well. After hearing “She Says,” a fully acoustic composition to an ex-boyfriend of a new girlfriend, it’s easy to closely identify with its frustration and feel his insecure undertones.
That is the power to be expected of Day this evening, the power of injecting his sentiment into an audience. Such a gift is uncommon in pop music’s success stories today. But Day wouldn’t attribute the same flavor to his music- pop, that is. Freddy Mercury’s prophetic warning of disposable mainstream doesn’t seem to uphold Day’s style.
His second album may surprise Day die-hards, but he declares it the “next natural step.”
In London, Stop All The World Now, his 2003 album, was fully produced with a 25-piece orchestra pulsing through two out of eleven songs.
He tells Hear/Say: America’s College Newspaper, “I think this album sounds more English than the songs are English. I can’t put my finger on it.” These contagious ballads can’t help but clutch a critic, and tonight they will certainly “Take you On.” Yes, song number six, “I’ll Take You On,” includes a verse as the CD title.
Trying to meet a deadline, the artist took out a single phrase that he thought clutched his tone for the album. “Collide,” a favorite of WMSV, is an innovative and atypical of a love song.
Although the words have underlying tension, classical instruments carry it smoothly. A new orchestrated version of “She Says” was finally conducted the way Day wished the song to be upon writing it. Although Day has two acclaimed albums to live up to on stage, he grabs audiences live as well. The peddle looper’s performance, similar to that of Keller Williams, is an impressive conglomeration of a full band by one man running instruments through 10 effects peddles.
Influenced by tours with Tori Amos and O.A.R., Day has now interlocked a few techno waves with the foundational Takamine acoustic-electric guitar.
In an exclusive interview with VH1 Day talks trivially of layering echoes, “As soon as I got comfortable with one effect, I’d buy another and hook up the chain.”
Tonight, Bulldog Bash’s featured musical poet, Day, will enrapture fans and students for no financial inconvenience. Playing, singing and charming wit are to be anticipated from the spiky haired, T-shirt-and-jeans Maine native.