Here I am in my back yard in the Mojave Desert in 2023. Photo by Caroline Lieber
Here's the quick and dirty:
I am a musician who plays guitar and keyboards (and bass guitar). In the late-1970s and early 1980s, I had two songs on the Dr. Demento syndicated radio show, “Giant Munchkin Dwarf” and “The Ballad of Ernest Angley” (as the Altar Boys; co-written with J.C.M.). I played in a number of bands including an R&B/Soul band called Torage with bassist/actor Michael Dorn ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"). Since the mid-1970s I've played in several musical ensemble incarnations with flutist/producer Ben Brooks and some high school buddies. Today Ben and I have a duo, Brooks & Day, which specializes in New Age instrumental music. We have recorded two albums ("Mystic Messages" and “Awakening”) with a third coming in 2025. Our projects have included several talented musicians including pianist Rob Mullins (Hubert Laws), who has mixed many of our songs and added his magical keyboards, percussionist Rich Mangicaro (David Crosby), producer/studio owner/guitarist Rich Mouser, who has mastered our albums and recorded numerous notable rock bands including progressive rock powerhouse Spock's Beard. Our music has been played on radio stations and digital streaming platforms worldwide with our song “Forgiveness” emerging as a New Age favorite.
Everything you needed to know about me, and more:
OK. Here we go.
My first memories of music were of my father, Larry Day, playing a boogie woogie or “Green Dolphin Street” on the family upright piano when I was a few years old in the 1950s. An insurance agent/broker who joined his father's decades old downtown Los Angeles agency after graduating from Stanford University, Dad loved music. He was a huge fan of the pop and jazz icons of the day, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, but in the early 1940s he heard the Nat Cole (before he became a star singer), and his life changed. He was taking piano lessons but then painstakingly learned Cole's version of “Body and Soul” by ear. He said his mother never got mad at him for going over and over and over Cole's melodic improvised lines and those of King Cole Trio guitarist Oscar Moore.
Living in Hancock Park -- an affluent community adjacent to Hollywood -- until going to college in the winter of 1946 (first he attended Yale University before transferring in his sophomore year to Stanford) he would enthusiastically sit at a piano during a party and play some of his versions of jazz or pop songs. XXXX came over and chatted with him at one such social event. After a stint in the U.S. Army during the Korean War (Dad served in Japan), he and my mom were married in the early 1950s. Dad's love of music grew, although he wasn't too keen on Elvis, but he love of jazz was strong. He was a huge fan of Dave Brubeck and tackled other jazz standards on the family piano.
My mother, Lynne Day, shared my father's love of music and after our family moved from Hancock Park to San Marino in 1962 joined the Larks, an all-female singing ensemble based in Pasadena. The group recorded an album. But seeing the local folk group, the Mother Minstrels, changed everything for the Day family. The Mother Minstrels was a San Gabriel valley based folk group which performed at the Ice House in Pasadena among many other regional venues. A light bulb turned on when my mother saw the female musicians playing the folk classics on acoustic guitar, so one weekend Mom and Dad drove down to Baja California and purchased a nylon-string guitar in Tijuana.