The words "musician" and "artist" are used interchangeably in our parlance. It's a tacit acknowledgement that music is an art form, but not in the way we typically think about art mediums like impressionist paintings and marble sculptures.
Singer-songwriter Amelia Day challenges that by wielding a sonic paintbrush to create art worthy of gilded frames and museum walls.
Raised in Sumner, Washington, among ever-verdant evergreen trees near the base of Mount Rainier, Day is a Pacific Northwesterner through and through. Her childhood consisted of piano lessons and short stories scribbled into journals, two things that created a solid foundation for her career as a singer-songwriter.
Her music career began in the greater Seattle area, playing shows for family, friends and locals, but Day's world quickly expanded once she moved to Nashville for college in 2020. She's since collaborated with other artists, served up viral hits on TikTok and shared her songs with audiences across the West Coast.
"I've always been drawn to music more than anything," she says. "But I never really believed that being a musician was an attainable career. There's a ton of dialogue around that growing up. When teachers would ask what my dream job was, I would always say 'author' or 'inventor' because I just didn't believe that [being a musician] was super feasible."
Thanks to a feisty explorative spirit, during those early piano lessons Day increasingly began to ignore sheet music altogether and turned to improvisational sessions with her teacher instead. This led to her writing her first songs, joining a worship group at church and performing for the first time.
It wasn't until a hard-hitting middle school crush that Day picked up a guitar.
"I both really wanted to learn guitar for myself, but also my crush played guitar, and I wanted to relate to this person in that way," she says. "I was always drawn to this old guitar my grandparents had. It was so hard at first, especially with little hands. Every chord was painful and sounded so bad. I couldn't imagine being able to play and sing at the same time, that was unfathomable. So I'm glad little me kept at it. I guess crushes are great motivation."
"I kinda turned to songwriting in middle school as a way to get out my angst in journal form," she continues. "As much as I loved it, I'd say college was really when I put a bigger focus on it and started actually thinking about releasing my own songs."
Day released her first songs during her freshman year at Vanderbilt University in 2021. The first, "valentine's day blues," was completely self-produced, where Day played every instrument on the track.
After putting out that first song, Day decided to write and record a multitrack project to release the next year. That effort became Eastward of Eden, a six-song EP featuring fantastical storytelling through Day's remarkable lyricism, rich soundscapes, and vocal timbre rooted in the realms of jazz and folk.
"Looking back, I promoted it with the intensity of somebody that people are listening to," Day says. "I guess there is something powerful in that. In believing your stuff is worthy of being listened to."
After posting consistently on TikTok and other social media sites, the acoustic version of the EP's titular track gained traction online, and Day saw her hard work pay off in the form of hundreds of thousands of streams and eyes on her music.
With the bridge of her song "Therapist's Wet Dream" going semi-viral on social media and the release of her 2023 EP Little One, Day has only seen positive growth and reactions from her listening base.
Gracing Spotify playlists with titles like "Narnia vibes for reading," "goblin core" and "sapphic songs for your talking stages," Day's music is upfront about what it is: honest and relatable storytelling.
"As a queer person, I feel like a lot of my music revolves around an idea of otherness," she says. "My last EP really revolved around this idea of just trying to be unapologetically yourself, both in genre, life, relationships, and career."
It wasn't until about a year and a half ago that Day says she finally felt at ease being openly queer in all areas of her life.
"I've grown a lot more comfortable with being open about my queerness and really honestly talking about that in relation to my music," she says. "I definitely do think about my queerness when writing a song. But, I think there's a boundary there, too, because sometimes you can get caught up in the niche of 'people are resonating with this because it's queer music, so I'm going to write a song specifically meant to be queer music.' I feel like that can get away from the heart of people's experiences."
Day says her inclusion of specific details about her life in her music, like "Therapist's Wet Dream," resonates with listeners the most.
On that track she sings, "I left your heart out to dry on a clothing line stretched over Central Time" and "I'm a triple-threat, ball of stress, panic attack," reaching an audience that surely relates to heartbreak and being stressed out about life.
"I absolutely want it to be a core part of my music and something that's reflected in everything that I put out," she says. "But, I never want it to be a tokenized niche."
After graduating from Vanderbilt in June 2024, Day embarked on her first headlining tour titled "A Girl, A Car & A Guitar." It was entirely self-booked and given the apt name because Day drove herself and her gear in her trusty Subaru across the West Coast.
The tour included stops in Tacoma, Boise, Nelson, B.C., and Spokane's own Chameleon. Now, Day is back at the Chameleon on Jan. 10 with local support from Vika & the Velvets and Landon Spencer of The Bed Heads.
For the last four shows of "A Girl, A Car & A Guitar," The Bed Heads joined Day as co-headliners, promoting the band's then-unreleased song "Strangers," on which Day lends her voice to an ethereal second verse, chorus and the song's spirited bridge. She also played plenty of unreleased tracks, showcasing her recent songwriting ventures that lean into a sound reminiscent of fellow Western Washingtonian singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile's early career.
"For me, 2024 was a lot about building a live scene," she says. "Now, I've been preparing for new releases and more touring. I think 2025 is going to be a very, very big year for me in that regard."
This year, Day has plans for an East Coast tour with fellow Nashville artist Miki Fiki, hitting major cities like Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. — the first shows she will ever play on the East Coast.
Day also has tracks recorded and ready to release through the beginning of 2025.
"It's some of my favorite songwriting and recording that I've ever done," she says. "Usually when I get to the end of a mixing process, I've felt like I'm conceding things that I want, but this is the first time that I've come away with final mixes that I genuinely have no qualms with."
For the past year, Day has focused on honing her live show, writing music that feels authentic, touring and connecting with her audience. Her plans for 2025 don't indicate she'll lose any steam.
"I feel like I've been trying to balance them all," she says. "But now I'm getting to the point where I can actually share all of this stuff I've been working on over the past six to nine months, and I've never been more excited to put it all out into the world." ♦
Amelia Day, Vika & The Velvets, Landon Spencer • Fri, Jan. 10 at 8 pm • $15-$20 • The Chameleon • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. • chameleonspokane.com
