Listen closely to Spencer Day’s Movie of Your Life and you just might be able to detect bits of everything from Gershwin and Chet Baker to Ben Folds and Joni Mitchell. While many peg him as a throwback for his clever, stylish, carefully crafted singing and piano work, Day’s songs owe as much to Icelandic alt-rock princess Bjork as they do the timeless compositions of Ravel.

“I believe there is a common thread between many genres of music,” he says. “I think they are more connected than we realize.”

It helps explain why Day’s music feels classic but modern. In his 26 years, the San Francisco-based singer has grown equal loves for Brill Building songcraft and more guttural, modern era rock passion. And that’s core to the ongoing evolution of his sound.

“I am constantly experimenting with different styles of music, the way some people try on different outfits. I think people like to see artists working things out, finding their voice and striving to be better. When you start thinking you’re the best you'll ever be, when you don’t think you have anything new to learn, THAT’S when you should be worried.”

Born in Utah and raised in suburban Arizona, Day grew up in a musical family, the son of an opera singer and the middle boy in a trio of talented brothers. Although he was exposed to everything from Puccini to Abba from his parents, pop from his brother and the likes of Sade, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday from a hip, older black couple next door, it wasn’t until after high school, while he was sort of bumming around L.A. and waiting tables, that music started to emerge as a possible career path.

After hearing him sing in the shower one day (it could have been Chet Baker, maybe a sad jazz ballad, Day can’t remember which exactly), his roommate suggested he try to hone his voice at a class at Cal Arts in nearby Valencia. While it was a step in the right direction, before the end of Day’s first semester, the class started to feel like a dead end, at which point the singer’s professor astutely told him, “If you want to sing, just go out and do it. You can’t do much with a degree anyway.” It proved sage advice.

After leaving the Valley and returning to L.A., Day’s confidence in his singing and playing began to grow, as he started gigging at dive bars in Hollywood—very nervously, he remembers with a laugh. He even cut his teeth in retirement homes in Palm Springs playing Gershwin and Billy Strayhorn tunes to senior citizens, many of whom were former early 20th century film, stage and radio actors and actresses. “Even though I wasn’t totally polished, they were incredibly supportive. I think they were just happy to see a younger person singing these songs, someone who cared about them as much as they did.” “I can’t imagine I was very good, because I had no experience at all,” Days laughs. “All I knew was that it meant more to me than anything I had done before. I was so nervous I couldn’t even open my eyes, but I poured all of my heart into it.”

At the same time, he was delving into the rave culture in Hollywood, and listening to a lot of electronica music by the likes of Underworld, and also discovering singer/songwriter records by the likes of Tori Amos and Fiona Apple.

When a chance to house-sit for six months in San Francisco arose, Day moved north, and started gigging on the sly in the Bay Area, with no real expectations. While playing a dive bar, he caught the ear of the owner of San Francisco’s noted Plush Room. It proved a crossroads. “I went from singing in dive bars where I was more or less background music to performing for an audience that was actually listening, an audience that I was actually supposed to entertain.”

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He auditioned locally for the CBS TV show Star Search—just on a lark. Loose and casual, Day swooned the visiting judges, who ended up advancing them to the actual show in L.A. What’s more, Day ended up spending two months back in L.A., winning repeatedly with covers of songs by Duke Ellington and Norah Jones and drawing now-irritating and outdated comparisons to Harry Connick Jr. The Star Search experience not only won him national TV exposure, but it also scored him an appearance on The Today Show, as well as several high profile gigs, including a stop at New York’s fabled Town Hall.

“Sometimes I wish that in the beginning I had a clearer idea about what I was trying to achieve,” he laughs. “I was just doing it because I really couldn’t do anything else. I was a mediocre waiter at best, and I started singing because it felt good and people wanted to hear me sing. I never consciously said, ‘I’m gonna be a singer.’ I was just doing it because it felt so damn good, which, in retrospect might have been a good thing, it kept it pure.”

Heading back to San Francisco, he started collecting rave reviews. Raved The San Francisco Chronicle: “Norah Jones and Michael Buble, meet your new competition: A young hunk who can croon the old tunes and some very solid originals.† This kid can sing!” Meanwhile, SF Weekly noted, “What makes the twenty-something's vocal stylings special is Day’s lack of affected cool, that Frank Sinatra/hepcat shtick that so many other male vocalists feel the need to mimic when singing selections from the American songbook.”

On the heels of the new attention, Day began playing bigger, more notable rooms, such as The Algonquin and he began writing more often, branching out with darker material in hopes of busting out of the smooth, velvety Harry Connick Jr. box he was finding himself stuck in. In 2003, he debuted with Introducing Spencer Day, a self-financed collection of one-take recordings that straddled the line between jazz standards and originals.

Written at a time when he was listening to a lot of Kurt Veil and Gershwin, as well as contemporaries such as Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley, his follow-up, Movie of Your Life, is “somewhere between cabaret pop/jazz fusion,” he says.

Recorded in San Francisco in early 2005, Movie of Your Life features appearances by bassist John Evans (Tori Amos), Scott Amendola (Norah Jones, Charlie Hunter), members of the noted Turtle Island String Quartet and the lauded Bay Area horn section The Realistic Orchestra.

“This record is kind of a musical tour. Rather than slot myself into one genre, I hope to take the listener to many different and exciting places. More than that, it has been my first chance to showcase my abilities as an arranger, a songwriter, and a lyricist, and to be able to say, ‘This is what I’m going to do.’”

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SPENCER DAY: Introducing Spencer Day A debut CD that combines jazz, pop and country western styles with well known standards and new original songs.

SPENCER DAY: Movie Of Your Liife Sophomore CD that combines jazz, pop and country western styles with well known standards and new original songs.

What the Press is Saying…

Awarded Discovery of the Year 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle (Music Editor: Joe Brown)

“Norah Jones and Michael Buble, meet your competition, a young hunk who can croon classic tunes and some solid originals! This kid can sing!” - San Francisco Chronicle

“Day delivers original cabaret pop with the elan and confidence of a crooner much beyond his years. Think Michael Buble without the shtick or Rufus Wainwright without the affectations.” -Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Watch for the name Spencer Day, and take it from me-you won't need to watch for long. This ingénue faced lad from out Utah way has a natural music-making affinity. Looking and listening to Day, I thought I was being exposed to the male Norah Jones.” -NYC Backstage Magazine

“…there’s little doubt that this is a young man with amazing talent. His warm, rich baritone is music to the ears… [he’s] the next young jazz/cabaret singer slated to make it big….” -Napa Valley Register

"A pianist, singer, songwriter, and arranger, he is a fresh and engaging performer, with a quiet yet assured presence that spells 'star'." -Cabaret Scenes

“He had the place rocking… The audience was almost in a stampede. He’s going places…” -SF Examiner

“The 26-year old Utah native… has so much stylistic range that its hard to anticipate what he’ll do next.” -Where Magazine

“Cabaret singer and songwriter Spencer Day is terrific. Having performed at the Plush Room and New York City’s Town Hall, he displays a comfortable ease with his audience while he croons his gorgeous songs.” -San Francisco Bay Times

“The brightly handsome, hugely gifted 26-year-old vocalist/songwriter pianist/bandleader captured our hearts...”
-Bay Area Reporter

“What makes the twentysomething’s vocal stylings special is Day’s lack of affected cool, that Frank Sinatra/hepcat shtick that so many other male vocalists feel the need to mimic when singing selections from the American songbook. Whether he’s covering Billie Holiday or the Beatles, crooning his original works or merely improving, Day pulls together shows that are memorable for their tight sets (performed with his awesome backing band).”
-SF Weekly (excerpt from Best Crooner of 2004 award)

“Day has charm and vocal talent in abundance… honey-coated pipes and [an] easy-on-the-eyes mug…. “Someday, Love” is often great fun, often terrifically entertaining…” -San Francisco Chronicle (Live Review of Spencer Day’s musical “Someday, Love” 6/8/05)

“San Francisco-by-way-of-Utah crooner Spencer Day got his big break via the oft-unsophisticated spotlight of the reality TV on the 2003 season of Star Search, but that probably shouldn’t be held against him. His debut, Introducing Spencer Day, wafts comfortable through the lite pop/jazz territory of Harry Connick Jr., Norah Jones, and, reaching further back in time, Chet Baker.” -The Onion (Minneapolis, MN edition)

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