IMPORTANT!
This event has moved to Saturday, 5/9!
Still located at Rickshaw Stop
Original tickets still valid for the new date
Thank you
Live 105 x Popscene Presents:
SOUNDCHECK NITE!
featuring
FORREST DAY (Oakland)
+ Treasures (SF) and The Crooked Stuff (SF)
Saturday, 5/9
@ Rickshaw Stop
8pm doors, 8:30pm show
All ages
$20.00 advance, $25.00 day of show
FORREST DAY
When Bay Area musical fixture and noted bandleader Forrest Day named his new, independently released album Right on Time, it is with tongue firmly in cheek. More than 10 years have passed since his sophomore record The Second, the follow-up to the highly acclaimed self-titled full-length in 2011. A pair of EPs, “Familiar Company” and “Limbo,” appeared in 2014 and 2023, respectively.
“You could say it’s been a long journey,” acknowledged Day, who met his now-wife in the Philippines and had two children all while being in covid lockdown in the country for two years before organizing a GoFundMe to bring them home. “I’ve been working on this album for the past eight years, which is crazy.”
The 11 songs on Right on Time were completely reworked by Day, who also produced the album at San Francisco’s famed Hyde Street Studios, then paid from his own pocket to have it mixed by Mark Needham and mastered by Howie Weinberg, a pair of post-production industry legends. The tracks show a remarkable jump in maturity and growth in his songwriting palette, with elements of classic and alternative rock, punk, folk, soul, jazz and even country with some of the patented funk and sped-up hip-hop rhyming that has led his eclectic approach to be dubbed “attention-deficit-disorder rock”
From the vow that “you fake gatekeepers will respect [me] when I’m through” in the opening “Say They Say” and the apocalyptic warnings of “Big Wave,” to the Beach Boys-meets-Arcade Fire paranoia of “Paint the Walls” and the loping, Hall & Oates yacht rock of the autobiographical “Asinine,” Forrest Day proves a rock troubadour for today’s turbulent times. His political anger and frustration come through in “Sweatshop Cathedral,” where he talks of being “Betrayed by leaders and big corporations/Reducing our freedom with each generation... They’re farming us like animals, a tax paying nation.”
“I’m pretty much an optimist who believes the individual can still make a difference,” said Day. “Community and relationships are important to me. That pretty much sums it up.”
With the holy roller verve of a Bruce Springsteen, Day insists in “Red Rock,” he’s neither right nor left, but “While the whole world is putting on a show/I’ll be the realist idealist I know.”
“It’s a little bit country, and there’s things about the song that I hate” he explains. “But for some reason, I felt compelled to put it on the album.”
In “Drought,” Forrest talks of spending the lockdown in the Philippines, “It’s been a weird year, a strange year/It’s like the world is all choked up/But holding back tears.”
“I wrote that one after a long dry spell when the rains came,” he said. “I played grand piano and brought in a string quartet. I really spared no expense doing that one.”
Both “Completely” (composed while riding a motorcycle the day after meeting his soon-to-be wife) and “Will I Ever Learn” explore the complexities of romance, the former with reckless abandon, the latter, circumspection and hope in lyrics like “So I throw myself into my work/It takes the death of an era to give birth/There’s no way around all the hurt,” as Forrest’s smoky sax provides the requisite heartache.
“That’s my take on serial monogamy, and life in general” said Day. “One chapter has to end before another begins.”
The burly, bearded Sf Bay Area-born Day first became interested in the saxophone during a school presentation, offering his mom he’d take up clarinet instead because it was cheaper, though she told him it was OK. He began playing in several groups while still in high school, including the Boogaloo Cats, reflecting influences as varied as Frank Sinatra, Stan Getz, and Jay-Z.
“That was actually an awesome band,” remembers Forrest. “We had 300 people coming to our shows, and it was absolute mayhem.” Making his reputation and gathering a local following at local Bay Area clubs like Slim’s and the Independent, Forrest Day’s five-piece band attracted critical accolades and major label interest, but their hard-to-categorize music made it difficult to find a niche.
“Don’t confuse me with these here-today-and-gone-tomorrows... I don’t do this for the money, the women or fame,” sings Day in “Asinine,” “Cause I get none of those/And I don’t complain.”
Forrest Day’s new album, Right on Time, is set to launch the next phase of his career. Now a husband and father, Forrest Day is more focused than ever on providing for his new family.
As he sings in “Pillars,” “A lifetime is short/And it’s hard fought/These relationships/They’re all we got.”
Always ahead of the pack, Forrest Day believes the moment is now for his music to finally make its mark.
“Things happen for a reason,” he said, admitting that the long delay might have even helped him. “Maybe now people will be ready. I’m so excited for everyone to hear this. It’s all coming together for me... Right on Time.”
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