here’s our next Knead To Know interview, with the amazing Days Are Done! 🤘
over the past year or so, they’ve been doing loads across Manchester, performing at various venues across the city and releasing tunes – we love their 80s-inspired feel with so many vocal harmonies lacing the soundscape and so much passion put into their music. ⚡️ their newest single “I’ve Tried” sounds absolutely gorgeous and we thought we’d get em for an interview! Find it in full below! 😎
Hey guys, thanks so much for doing the interview with us here. Tell us a bit more about yourselves!
Heya, we’re Emmy Kay – I’m a songwriter, singer, composer and actor originally from Manchester and Adam Lewis- singer, songwriter and BAFTA-winning composer originally from Wales.
The new single sounds superb, can you tell us a bit more about it?
Adam – It’s called “I’ve Tried” and it came out a couple of weeks ago. It’s a stream of consciousness really, thoughts about relationships and love. It’s half of a person’s conversation. Some things are hard to say but easier to say in a song. The last single ‘Say You Might’ was the other side of the conversation! It’s stuff one of us has really said for the most part. Musically it’s Pop- Classic Soul but with our own flavour. Influenced by a lot of our favourite artists like George Michael and Luther Vandross but it’s very much us. We’re creating our own sound and pushing it further every track we release.
What inspired you guys to start making music together?
Emmy – It sort of happened by accident. We knew each other through mutual friends and we just sat down with a “let’s see what happens” attitude which pretty much sums us up as a band. Adam was already in a band at that point and as that folded we just ran with this.
How do you go about creating your music? Do you home record, or use a studio?
We record everything at home – we have a very tiny home studio so we really are self-contained. We tend to slip into our own little world. But yeah everything’s done by us. We occasionally will get drums or a few other bits recorded remotely if we feel the track needs it but “I’ve Tried” is all us.
We’ve seen you take a little break from gigging – what have you been up to in the meantime?
We have! We’ve been writing, recording and much like everyone else, having the odd extentensial crisis. You know how it goes! We try and lean into remembering why we’re doing this now and again. So we don’t get caught on the music industry treadmill. Also living life, so we’ve got stuff to write about obviously.
Your previous singles sound absolutely brilliant, we love the harmonies and orchestral-sounding production on them. Who produces the music and what do you look for when producing?
Thankyou. We do is the short answer. It’s the both of us and it’s taken a long time to find a sound we were happy with and work out the journey we want to go on with the music. We started off doing acoustic stuff and we’re proud of those early singles but as our sounds developed and our writing has matured we wanted to move on. Embrace all our influences. For us it’s all about finding the right sounds so we do spend a decent amount of time on that. We love harmonies, like you said. Stacked vocals and making just the two of us sound like an entire choir is our jam. We’re lucky in that we have an amazing mix engineer – Steve Power ( Robbie Williams, Womack and Womack) and he really gets what we’re trying to do. We’ll send him the finished track and he’ll add this amazing shine to it. He really fills out the tracks and understands us.
What are your main inspirations for your songs?
Lyrically – life . We have the joke that all our songs are based on a true story but it’s really true. Whatever happens, whatever we experience or we see other people experience we write about. A lot of it is “ I’ve felt like this, have you?”. We try not to censor or edit in the sense that we try to be as honest as possible. Musically – a mash of a lot of our favourite artists. We both love D’Angelo and 90s r and b but we also love Hall and Oates, George Michael, Crosby, Stills and Nash. In terms of modern artists – we love H.E.R, Leon Bridges, Snoh Allegra, Marina Diamandis. We’re Pop, Classic Soul but in our own way. You can still hear our Americana influences if you listen carefully too. But we also take influences from other stuff – fashion, movies, architecture. We try an absorb vibes from as much stuff as possible.
How do you write? Do you write together, or do you bring lyrics and melodies to the table separately?
Emmy – Musically we always write together. Adam will come up with some chords or I’ll hum a melody. Then we’ll see where it goes. We usually decide fairly quickly if it’s going in the bin or not. Lyrically – it’s me. I’ll run lyric ideas by Adam now and again but I write them.
Over the past few years, how have you been spending your time musically? (recording, writing etc)
Lockdown had the biggest influence on us. We really went into a ‘burn it down and start again’ moment with the band. Adam lost his Dad during that period and just being inside, everything was very emotionally overwhelming. It made us stop and take stock. Why are we doing this? What do we want out of it? We wrote a crazy amount of songs while everything was shut and our sound started to evolve.
When you’re performing live, what do you each find best about it?
Emmy – We both love being on stage. In fact that’s where you really find the songs cause you can feel them evolving. It’s funny cause the old more acoustic version of the band we were gigging sometimes 5 times a week but with this version we’re still tryna navigate our way through how to best convey these songs as best we can to an audience cause at the moment there’s still just the two of us.
What music do you listen to? Which artists inspire you to make music?
Adam – that’s a complicated question because we both have different tastes but overlap in the middle somewhere. I love Leon Bridges, disco (I’m a big Donna Summer fan), but I’m also a huge Guns and Roses fan, I love Metallica. But also Crosby Stills and Nash, 90s r and b…
Emmy – I also love Guns and Roses! I maybe have a bit more of a pop lean than Adam- I’m a long term Marina Diamandis fan, I love Ariana Grande, I listen to a lot of Jorja Smith but we’re named after a Nick Drake song (Day Is Done) cause we both love him, I’m a huge Joni Mitchell fan. I love Kate Bush. I love 90s r& b too. TLC is my jam and I think Babyface is one of our greatest living songwriters. It’s definitely complicated!
Have you got anything else planned for the rest of the year?
Writing and writing. We’re not sure if we’re gonna release anything else this year yet. But certainly, there’ll be new music soon and gigs. We may do a launch gig in Manchester next year for some new music. Stay tuned.
we love doing these interviews, it’s so great to have an insight into each act’s writing processes, their inspirations and the such – fantastic to see what makes each act unique! we also really enjoy the fact that they do the production themselves, being able to have that creative control is something we often enjoy here at the label so it’s nice to see artists taking a more personal approach! it’s well worth checking out their new tune as well, another incredible release under their belt! a big thank you to them for partaking in this interview, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did! 🍞
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