Bangor, ME · singer-songwriter · pop-rock

Howie Day

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Loop-pedal singer-songwriter fare from the era when one guy and a guitar could still chart — 'Collide' remains the slow-dance evidence.

Howie Day, born Howard Kern Day in Bangor, Maine, and raised in nearby Brewer, started on piano at five after his mother bought one at auction, and by his teens had switched to electric guitar. His parents ran a restaurant that gave him a regular audience, and he made his first stage appearance there in 1996. Booking agent Shawn Radley discovered him the following year while Day was supporting Ziggy Marley at the University of Maine.

Radley began managing Day in 1998, and touring soon took over his life, costing him weeks of high school. Two self-recorded demo EPs and a showcase for 1,500 college talent buyers at the National Association for Campus Activities convention led to steady college bookings, and Day chose to defer college himself in favor of the road.

Onstage he built his arrangements alone, layering guitar, vocals and percussion in real time with a loop pedal, a method that defined his early solo shows. His self-financed debut, Australia, appeared in 2000 and won Best Debut Album at the Boston Music Awards; Day signed with Epic Records in 2002, which re-released it.

Stop All the World Now, released in 2003, sold slowly at first but was certified gold in early 2005. It produced the hits 'She Says' and 'Collide,' the latter becoming Day's first platinum single with 1.5 million downloads sold and his most successful recording to date, a fixture of adult contemporary radio.

An extended run of touring followed before Day stepped back to write. He released the Be There EP in 2009 and the full-length Sound the Alarm that same September. A 2014 PledgeMusic campaign funded Lanterns, issued in 2015, with Aimee Mann contributing backing vocals to several songs.

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singer-songwriterpop-rock