Spencer Day’s New Record is All About Los Angeles

In order to make his new record, Angel City, singer/songwriter Spencer Day found himself without a record label and facing the very real prospect of going it alone. Which is exactly what he did. With crowd-funding he could make exactly the album he wanted to make and do it exactly the way he wanted to do it.

Day, who is originally from Utah, grew up on MGM musicals and great singers like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. His previous recordings include The Mystery of You and Daybreak. He currently has a hit single with 72 and Sunny from Angel City.

This Saturday, Spencer Day will be performing with the Budman/Levy Orchestra at Catalina Bar & Grill to celebrate the release of Angel City. The theme of the album is Los Angeles and his own experiences and observations about our fair city.

I recently spoke to Spencer Day via phone about the project and fascination with LA.

How would you describe your relationship with Los Angeles?

Very complicated. (He laughs). I feel like over the years I got to see it with its make-up off. It would beat me up and then give me flowers – the way a Joan Crawford character would. When I left home and quit my Mormon mission and headed to California, I used to draw pictures of the Hollywood sign on the walls of my bedroom. I don’t know why. I was staying with relatives in Villa Park and one afternoon I took three buses to get up to Hollywood to see the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I was obsessed. I left LA when I made this album so I could continue loving it. It’s a place where dreams can be made, but they are built on bullshit. It really exists more as a state of mind than any place I can think of. Even when I was a kid, I knew San Francisco was prettier, but LA was the fantasy.

What inspired you to create an entire album about Los Angeles?

I had actually been wanting to do that from when I was first writing songs when I was 21-22. I started playing around with the idea of it. My time in Silver Lake was my most formative time when I was younger. This was an amazing bohemian time. I stumbled onto this amazing community and I loved LA passionately – like a lover. I’ve never lost my fascination with it. La La Land has been constantly inspiring for so many people. It’s a mystery that people are trying to figure out. Ultimately we are projecting our ideas on this blank slate and seeing what we want to see.

When writing songs, what hasn’t been said about LA that you felt needed to be addressed?

That’s a very good question. I guess for me it’s almost, I don’t want to say on a spiritual level, that LA really represents the human race as a whole and this desire to find this place that is so big and could never really exist, but it doesn’t stop us from wanting it. It feels like the final frontier and the end of the rainbow.

You recorded with a big band and did some of the recording in Studio A at Capitol Records. Tell me about those sessions.

Because I crowd founded a decent amount of money, I actually wanted to go and do it right and go to Capitol Records. It managed to fit the budget for what we were doing. I was floating on air that day. I had help on the arrangements with the Budman/Levy Orchestra – they helped flesh them out. I was able to outsource these things and see what a difference it made. The quality of the musicians and the charts were so good we could do them in the old Frank Sinatra way. Exactly as I had hoped.

I’m glad you brought up the crowd funding. You’ve been with major labels, what is the state of the industry that requires you to go on your own?

It’s in complete free fall. Nobody knows where it is going. The business model is unsustainable. All this content is expected to be free. I think the public is just not aware that there are real people on the other side who have landlords who won’t accept a song as payment. I was amazed how many people were sympathetic to this. It’s a very tough time. For someone like me, I’m not the safest bet. I’m not a shoe-in for guaranteed pop success. My hope is if I keep creating, eventually I’ll create something the world will remember. I don’t need to be famous, but would like to leave something of lasting beauty that will remain with people.

Sinatra once said “My you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mind.” If you were to live to 100, what would the last voice be you’d want to hear and what would he/she be singing?

That’s the toughest question in the world. There are so many beautiful voices. I really do like The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack. I find the recording so simple and beautiful. I was initially dismissing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but that might be a really nice last thing to hear, as overplayed as it is. Not the Hawaiian dude, he gets the lyrics wrong and it drives me crazy. If I’m about to die, I’m not going to care if it is overplayed or not. That or the last three minutes of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

Photo Credits: J. Van Evers, Brian To