Stephen Day

It was when Stephen Day started playing guitar in high school that the Georgia native, and current Nashville resident, first decided he wanted to make a self-titled album. Even then, he knew that an album bearing his name would require certain demands: complete vulnerability and total honesty. The songs on his self-titled record, due out October 2, portrait in-focus snapshots of Day’s deepest emotions, and intricately weave together who he is as a songwriter, musician, storyteller, and craftsman.

Now over a decade since the release of his 2015 debut EP, Undergrad Romance And The Moses In Me, Day knew it was time. “It just kind of hit me that this was the moment to do it,” he explains. “I feel like I’m stepping into this confident space of emulating my heroes versus imitating them, and I wanted to have that as a flag and a marker, to be able to say ‘What you’re hearing is Stephen Day. It’s not Stephen Day doing something else.’ If somebody wants to know what I do, this is it.”

The 13 songs that bear his name show he’s an uncategorizable artist who moves between soul, R&B, rock’n’roll, and pop. He cites Stevie Wonder, John Mayer, and Frank Sinatra as influences. Co-produced by longtime collaborator Micah Tawlks and multi-GRAMMY winning producer Ian Fitchuk, the album begins with the dreamy, hushed contentment of “It Is What It Is,” eases into the infectious groove of “Rock Bottom Baby,” then travels back in time with the impassioned pop-rock of “Annie Breakdown” and “Yes I Do.”

“Annie Breakdown” and “Yes I Do” sound like classic songs from the ’80s yet are contemporary and fresh. “Back In My Bed” is a gloriously upbeat rock’n’soul lament, while “You Wouldn’t Know” is a power ballad that commands you to sing along. The album aims to carry the essence of who he is, both as a storyteller and a musician: timeless.

“Mama, I Found Your Guitar” gives Day’s origin story. His father is a pastor, and his mother was a nurse practitioner who sang at church on Sundays. One afternoon he found her guitar in a closet and asked her to teach him a few chords. The song, recorded on that same nylon six-string, brings the story into the present day and romanticizes the difficulties and uncertainties of being a musician.

“It’s made way for really beautiful things to happen, and it’s also made way for really heartbreaking things to happen,” says Day of his career to date. “Pursuing something like this feels like a very vulnerable thing to do, so that song is both admiration for my mother, while also being inspired yet confused about why I ended up on this path, how I ended up here now that I’ve been doing it for a minute, and questioning what its mean for the rest of my life. You know, am I doing the right thing? All those kinds of existential feelings.”

Those existential feelings were compounded by a deeply fraught personal time. After Day’s wife endured “some very intense medical surgeries,” the couple prepared themselves for the absolute worst. For a few months they were, as Day puts it, “living under the idea that she may not really be around that long.” Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. The fear of loss is addressed by the plaintive, searching “Don’t Leave Me Like This.” “It was a great way for me to work through these emotions that I had about the fear of losing my partner,” he remembers, “while giving someone else a way to read the story that might not be as heavy.”

The album was tracked live in the studio to keep it as human as possible, working with Matt Chancey on bass, David Crutcher on keys, Ian Fitchuk on drums, Kevin Daily on auxiliary guitar, and Scooter Spicer on percussion. “We had two separate chunks of recording days to knock out the entire album,” says Day, “and it was the most amazing experience. It was how I had always dreamed records would be made in that sort of old-fashioned way. One of the things I wrote down and kept on a piece of paper in the studio was the phrase ‘In with the old, out with the new.’ I wanted to take the old way of doing things, but with the hope and prayer that whatever came out of the speakers didn’t feel like a retro album, but like 2029 or 2030.”

He’s already seen more than 200 million streams to date, received co-signs from peers like Teddy Swims, Allen Stone, and Cory Wong, and earned a major motion sync placement in Universal Pictures’ Strays. The self-titled album is presented as vulnerable, honest, in-focus snapshots of a generational songwriter, musician, and storyteller. As the album closes with the wistful and bittersweet “Picture’s Perfect,” it sounds like the closing of one door and the opening of another.

24Tix STEPHEN DAY - at Metro Music Hall - All Ages (Salt Lake City)