The ladies of the San Diego based band Lady Day have a soft and sentimental sound that makes me tilt my head and smile while somehow triggering this tiny ache in the pit of my heart. No worries, it’s a good thing. The way you feel when you hear a good song about lost love, makes ya feel wise. Ariel Pemberton, Nichole Stiles, and Sara Swanson may be young and fresh to emerge from the Southern California music scene but their harmonies and shared instrumental responsibilities are captivating, dreamy and their songs feature sexy guitar riffs and a slight underlying folk vibe. I have a feeling Lady Day will continue to blossom throughout the summer and soon this lovely trio will win all of your hearts!
Lady Day- “Imaginary Boyfriend”
After their show last Saturday at Moniker Warehouse I snagged some info, read the interview with ALL of Lady Day below:
MWL: First things first, what did you eat for breakfast and what is the first song you listened to today?
NS: Mac n Cheese, Eleanor Rigby (the dubstep version)
AP: Well, I woke up at noon so I just went straight to lunch-angel hair (Trees and Trust by Kye Kye remix)
SS:Girl Scout Cookies (Eyes Wide Open by Gotye)
MWL: Wait, wait. What type of Girl Scout Cookies?
SS: Savannah Smiles I think they’re called?! The lemon ones. FREAKING AMAZING
MWL: Mmmm. Where did you ladies meet and when did you start playing music together?
SS: Ariel and I met at a scrapbooking party in 7th grade, I met Nichole at an 80’s party at church in 10th grade, and Nichole and Ariel met at a pool party in 10th grade. Apparently we like to party. We started playing together almost a year and a half ago.
MWL: Are you all originally for LA?
NS: We’re all kind of from different places, I grew up in Boise; Sara grew up in Alaska, and Ariel in San Diego. We’re based out of San Diego, and Sara just moved to LA last year to finish school at UCLA.
MWL: How did you come up with the name Lady Day?
AP: Billie Holiday’s nickname, and she’s someone we all love. Also, you get to a point in the name choosing process where you’re just over it and come up with so many ridiculous names that you just have to choose one.
MWL: Did any of you have music lessons? When did you decide you wanted to pursue music?
SS: Ariel and I have both had a couple years of kind of informal guitar lessons, and I couldn’t stick with piano lessons. Nichole’s one of those lame self-taught people.
AP: Individually we’ve all wanted to purse music for a long time, and had been talking about several individual projects, but the story of how the three of us came together is kind of funny. We were at a show in LA one night, which happened to be 21+ and we weren’t old enough to get inside. After several failed attempts at sneaking in, we finally found a way inside (we can’t share our sneaking-in secrets). While inside, listening to the band that really wasn’t worth all the trouble, we jokingly suggested we should just start our own band so we could get into these shows easier. The idea stuck though and we decided to give it a go. The shows are still not easy to get into, and apparently we can’t even stay at our own shows if it’s 21+.
SS: Yeah if we had only known that then we could’ve saved a lot of trouble. But we’re in it for the long haul now.
NS: I’m in it for the music I don’t know about those twerps.
MWL: Who writes your songs? Do you all write together?
NS: We don’t have one main songwriter. Up until recently we’ve written songs almost entirely collaboratively, sitting in the same room. It can be a very long, tiring, painful process, but we keep going until we’re practically bald.
MWL: What is your writing process?
SS: We don’t have a really consistent process, but it’s very collaborative. We all have certain strengths and we just get together in a room and throw them in the middle. Nichole usually brings some sort of musical element, whether it is a riff or chords or whatever, Ariel is genius at cranking out melodies, and I usually bring or add the lyrics. That being said we try to switch it up so we don’t get stuck in perpetuating those roles.
MWL: “Gathered” is a deep song, can you tell me what it is about and what it means to the writer, to all of you…
SS: What’s funny about that song is that we never had a clear concept or direction for it. It’s actually the first song we wrote together, and we just had no idea what we were doing, and it kind of follows our writing process at the time…we wrote different parts of the song in different parts of my house and relied on our collective stream of consciousness to write the song. The literal meaning I guess is open to interpretation, to us it represents this day and night we spent as a band, but we don’t want the personal meanings of our songs to mess with the listener’s perception of it.
MWL: How would you describe your music?
AP: We have yet to figure that one out. We’re so varied in influences and what we want to sound like, right now we’re just trying to hone in on that and really refine what our sound is.
MWL: Do you have a favorite song to play?
NS: California Love
SS: Catch Me Up
AP: Imag Bf [Imaginary Boyfriend]
MWL: You have 4 songs on the web, are you working on anything new?
NS: We’re in a transition stage right now, where we’re focusing on writing new stuff, defining our style, and making changes to our old stuff, so it’s put a hold on recording anything more official. If we release something we just want to do it right and not unnecessarily rush the process, so we’re working towards getting to that point. Hopefully soon though!
MWL: Who are your musical and non-musical influences?
NS: Musical influences have always been somewhat inconsistent with us, and they’re always changing. The list could go on and on, but some main ones are Justin Vernon, Grizzly Bear, WHY?, Talking Heads, Lauryn Hill, Laura Marling. If you asked us this next week the list would probably be different.
SS: Besides musical influences, literature really influences my writing, everything from Dostoevsky and Fitzgerald to the Hunger Games.
MWL: How do you feel about the music industry as it stands today? What do you think the future of the industry holds?
SS: I’m not really sure where the industry is headed, but I feel like the importance of being signed to a major label is fading, and the opportunities to have more control of the various aspects of the music, whether it be recording or releasing, are becoming easier, and there are more opportunities to be creative within that independence. With that, yeah, questions of income are raised, but I think we’re part of a collective that is just happy our music is out there for people to have.
Lady Day- “Catch Me Up”
You can add the lovely trio on facebook + reverb. XX
By: Katie McVeay| Beat-Play Ambassador New York| crookedsunshine|Music Without Labels & Beat-Play, LLC
