Admire Your Own Lawn (Forrest Day)
Artist and bandleader Forrest Day talks about re-making an album three times and why he scrapped a five-figure mix to release something that felt true to him right now. We also get into managing family life with touring and how a single Facebook post turned fans into investors.
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Transcript:
Mike: First, how are you?
Forrest: Good. How are you doing?
Mike: I’m doing good, thanks. I appreciate you taking the time. Did some hydrating right before we started—that is so important. I just had some tea to get fully hydrated. I appreciate you so much because you literally just got to the venue after going cross-country. You mentioned before we started you were on the road four days straight.
Forrest: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was pretty wild. Only two of us did the driving and the rest of the crew flew in. With more people we could’ve gone faster, but we also wanted to make a few stops and enjoy things a little. We didn’t have much time, though—pretty much 12-hour days. We did get to swim in the Ozarks at a little movie-style swimming hole, and we stopped at a really cool place called Knife City. My band warns me because I get attracted to shiny things and always want to stop. “Control Forrest,” you know? But I still had to go into this knife shop—spent too much money on a knife.
Mike: Touring is part of the job for a musician, but you have to enjoy the little things. If you’re out on the road, it’s great when you can take a break or go for a swim—even add a day or two if possible.
Forrest: Totally. I have an adventurous spirit. I’m very curious.
Mike: Have you toured much before, or is this the first tour back?
Forrest: We haven’t been on the road much since COVID, so this is us getting back out there, which I’m really excited about. This is what I like to do.
Mike: I’m sure it’s challenging because you’re also a father of two, so being away can be tough.
Forrest: Yeah—and it’s a challenge for my wife, too. But she couldn’t be more supportive, which really helps. She knows this is what I do. It’s the only thing I’m good at, and it makes me happy—and she cares about me being happy, which is amazing. Doing shows is my sanity keeper. If I don’t do it for long enough, I get a little stir-crazy. I have a big thirst for adventure—I need voyages—and then I like extended periods at home. I love my kids very much, but papa’s gotta go have a fantastic voyage once in a while. So I’m out here getting my kicks.
Mike: Family is clearly important to you. Your new single “Paint the Walls” feels like a representation of that, and the music video is a compilation of older family footage.
Forrest: Yeah. To be 100% honest, label services and publicists were like, “You need a video, dude,” and I was out of time. So I decided to make one. I started transferring old VHS tapes to digital and editing cool moments together. Then I wondered, “Am I going down the wrong path? Does this even fit the song?” And it dawned on me—it’s exactly what the song is about. Even if the lyrics are just elements of it, the big picture is dead on. The song is about preserving that feeling—those magical, charismatic people around me when I was growing up. Everything eventually fell apart after what you see in the video, but there was this moment in time where it was harmonious, beautiful, and fun. Part of that is being a child and seeing it through those eyes. The chorus idea is like: “Paint the walls whatever color you like, wake up the spirit that the weak undermine.” That feeling of freedom, love, innocence, and awe gets smashed and we lose our humanity over time. So the video ended up being spot on. The lyrics have some political statements because there are political and social ramifications to having our spirits crushed.
Mike: Was your family musical?
Forrest: Both of my grandmothers were jazz singers in San Francisco. My whole extended family were incredible dancers—at the swing clubs and jazz dance halls back in the day. Both grandmas sang at big clubs with notable bandleaders and big bands. Then it kind of skipped a generation. My parents can sing—my dad could’ve been a huge singer—but he never sang in a band. It hit me. I grew up on saxophone. Jazz is in my DNA. I took to sax, focused on it until about 18, then started tinkering on piano and writing songs. I realized I was getting more out of songwriting than sax, so I switched gears.
Mike: What made you decide to get into piano and songwriting?
Forrest: It was a safe space—self-soothing. I played to escape tumult in my life. On this drive, Benjamin Andrews (our amazing guitarist) and I talked about our childhoods and musical origins, and I realized that’s what bit me so hard—at 17 or 18, sitting at the piano putting chords together in a way that soothed me and took me away from unsavory things. It became a tool—almost a drug—I’ve turned to ever since. Here I am at 45, driving across the country 20 years later, and it’s still my way.
Mike: There’s something about finding peace in a creative outlet. It’s another thing to realize, “This is my life now.” Was there a moment you knew this would be your career?
Forrest: I think I always knew. There’s what we think and what we do. It’s what I was doing and never stopped doing. If it was a decision, it’s not a good decision—it hasn’t led to a life of luxury. It’s not advisable. But it’s what I’m put here to do, so I do it.
Mike: It’s fulfillment. I’ve been reassessing the “not advisable” line. Entrepreneurship is full of risk—emotional and financial rollercoasters. Maybe the better framing is: understand the risks. If you choose this life, know there will be hard times. Some are okay with that; some aren’t—and that’s okay.
Forrest: Yeah. Sometimes I look over the fence—someone’s got a boat, retirement—things look guaranteed. That looks nice. I wrote an instrumental about it: “The Road More Traveled.”
Mike: You also don’t know how they got the boat—or if they’re fulfilled. They might be looking at you wishing they were on the road playing music.
Forrest: The grass is green on both sides of the fence—you’ve got to admire your own lawn.
Mike: I love that. Might be the episode title. We compare a lot; we need to be grateful for the life we choose.
Forrest: You just said it: the life that we choose. We chose it. If you want to change it, you can choose something else.
Mike: And many artists do—some eventually choose a different path and are happier for it.
Forrest: Life’s a journey. Don’t lock yourself in unnecessarily. We’re not stuck. People write their first bestseller at 50, write a movie—we’re free to do things. We should play with this life as much as we can.
Mike: You’ve been doing this ~20 years. There was a 10-year gap between your last full-length and the one you’re about to release. That takes patience—and a full-length is a feat.
Forrest: It really is. This one was a mind-bending journey. I kind of made the album three times because I’m a psychopath. Now it’s finally almost out. I’m excited, but it’s also torture when you’ve spent so much time. If I’d only spent a year or two, it’d feel like dropping a kid at preschool; spending this long feels like dropping a kid off at college—with baggage.
Mike: You mentioned you redid it a couple times. I understood you started around the pandemic?
Forrest: I started in 2017. I had it pretty much done—a big-shot producer mixed half; I planned to mix the rest myself. Then COVID happened and I got stuck in the Philippines for two years. Had two babies there, wrote a bunch of music, and ran out of money—had to do a GoFundMe to get home. Part of the deal was to release music I wrote there—that became Limbo (2024). That pushed back Right on Time. When it was finally time, I went to mix the remaining tracks and thought, “This feels old. This isn’t me anymore.” I didn’t want to put out an album that wasn’t me now. So I tore it down—threw away five figures of work, re-recorded, added musicians, dismantled it, spent a year making it current. Whether people like it or not, I believe in it—it’s me right now. I ended up with a super mixer, a top mastering engineer, and cut vinyl. Hearing the vinyl before this drive was a dream come true.
Mike: I admire that. Walking away after five figures is not easy.
Forrest: Everybody told me not to. Now those same people say it was a good call.
Mike: If you’re not proud of the work, it almost guarantees failure—you won’t feel inspired to promote it, tour it, or talk about it.
Forrest: Exactly. It’s like showing up to a barbecue contest with ribs you know are whack. You can’t look someone in the eye and say, “Try this.”
Mike: Right—you want to be excited: “You’ve got to hear this.” That expensive first step was still a learning step you needed to get the record you have now.
Forrest: Yep. That’s how I rationalized it—cost of doing business. One of my superpowers—or flaws—is I’m not afraid to burn it all down. I’ll throw away five years of work. Maybe I live so in the present that past work feels like a dream. All that matters is right now.
Mike: You mentioned fans also helped invest in this record. How did that come about?
Forrest: Honestly, it was just a Facebook post. I wrote something like, “I’m making a new record, and I’m looking for investors.” I expected maybe a couple of people, but the response was huge. We ended up raising a significant chunk of the budget from fans—people who had been following us for years. They really wanted to be part of it.
Mike: That’s incredible. That speaks to how much your fans believe in you and the music.
Forrest: Yeah, it blew me away. I had people say, “I don’t want to see a contract, I just trust you.” I still made contracts, because I’m not going to leave it loose like that, but it was amazing. We’ve had people invested in the band emotionally for a long time, but now they’re literally invested. That’s a big motivator for me too—I don’t want to let them down.
Mike: And you’re building a stronger community in the process.
Forrest: Exactly. It’s not just money. They’re part of it now. They’re going to get to say, “I helped make that happen.” And that’s special.
Mike: That ties back to one of my favorite parts of being in the creative space: it’s about relationships. Whether it’s fans, or brands, or collaborators, those connections matter.
Forrest: Yeah. There’s the music, and then there’s everything around the music. The connections are what make it real.
Mike: Shifting gears a bit—what advice would you give to younger artists who want to pursue this path?
Forrest: Never give up. I know it sounds cliché, but that’s it. People fall off because life gets hard, but if you just keep going, something will happen. Maybe not what you thought would happen, but something good will happen. You have to be persistent.
Mike: And I think it’s also about defining what “success” means for you.
Forrest: Absolutely. Success for me is when someone sings my lyrics back to me. That’s the best. You can’t put a price on that.
Mike: Do you remember the first time that happened?
Forrest: Yeah—at a show in Berkeley, actually. We were playing, and suddenly the crowd was singing the chorus back at me. It gave me chills. I thought, “This is it. This is why I do this.”
Mike: That’s the kind of moment that sticks forever.
Forrest: Totally. It’s better than money. Better than anything else.
Mike: And now you’ve got a new album, tours lined up, and people singing along. That’s the dream, right?
Forrest: Yeah. And I don’t take it for granted. Every show, every fan—it all means something.
Mike: How does your band handle the balance of being on the road, making music, and everything else that comes with it?
Forrest: Honestly, it’s tough. Everyone in the band has lives, families, jobs, so we have to plan carefully. But they’re amazing. They show up, they give everything. We’ve been playing together for years now—it feels like family.
Mike: And you’ve got a five-piece lineup now, right?
Forrest: Yeah, five core members. Sometimes we bring in horns or extra players for bigger shows, but the five of us—that’s the nugget, the center. We can pull it off just us, and that feels good.
Mike: When you’re writing, do you write with the band in mind, or does it start solo and then expand?
Forrest: Most of the time it starts with me—just piano, maybe some vocals, maybe a rough demo. Then I bring it to the band, and they add their magic. Sometimes I’ll have a very clear idea, other times I just let them run with it. The song tells you what it wants.
Mike: You mentioned saxophone earlier—does that still make its way into your writing?
Forrest: Yeah, sometimes. Sax is still in my blood. But it’s funny, I’ll often hear a sax line in my head and then think, “Nah, let’s try a guitar or synth instead.” I want it to serve the song, not just throw sax in because it’s my instrument.
Mike: That’s a great way of looking at it. Let the song lead the way.
Forrest: Exactly. If you start forcing things, it shows.
Mike: What about the business side of things? Do you enjoy that part?
Forrest: Not really. I mean, I do it because I have to, but my passion is the music and the performing. I’ve learned a lot over the years, but I’d rather be on stage than behind a spreadsheet.
Mike: Same. I’ve found that a lot of creatives feel that way. But the business side is what makes the art sustainable.
Forrest: Yeah, totally. You can’t ignore it. But if I could, I’d just live on stage and let someone else handle the rest.
Mike: If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice when you first started out, what would it be?
Forrest: Don’t worry so much. I wasted a lot of energy stressing over things that didn’t matter. Just focus on the music, focus on the people, and the rest will sort itself out.
Mike: That’s solid advice. And I think younger artists need to hear that—because it’s so easy to get caught up in the noise.
Forrest: For sure. It’s easy to get distracted. But at the end of the day, it’s about the songs. That’s what lasts.
Mike: With everything you’ve gone through—the pandemic, rebuilding the record multiple times, being a dad—what keeps you moving forward?
Forrest: Honestly, it’s the love for it. I can’t not do this. Even when it’s hard, even when it doesn’t make sense financially, I have to. It’s how I stay sane. And it’s about legacy too—leaving something behind for my kids, for anyone who connects with it.
Mike: That’s powerful. Do your kids recognize what you do yet?
Forrest: A little bit. They know Daddy plays music. My daughter sings along sometimes, which melts me. They’re still young, but one day they’ll understand more.
Mike: That must be a full-circle moment, seeing your own kids pick up music.
Forrest: Yeah, it’s beautiful. I don’t care if they become musicians or not, but I want them to feel that joy, that release.
Mike: Do you think being a parent has changed the way you write?
Forrest: Definitely. There’s more depth now, more weight. I think about the world I’m leaving for them, about the kind of stories I want to tell. It’s not just about me anymore.
Mike: That makes a lot of sense. So, final question: if you had one piece of advice for other creatives listening, what would it be?
Forrest: Don’t give up. Whatever it is—music, art, whatever your thing is—keep going. You’re going to hit walls. You’re going to want to quit. But if you push through, you’ll find moments of magic. And that’s worth it.
Mike: Love that. Forrest, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. Excited to see where this new record takes you.
Forrest: Thank you, man. I appreciate you.