Some of you may have seen Amelia Day opening The Foundry for Elio Mei on “Halloweekend” of last year… And later this week the Nashville-based singer/songwriter will return to the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection under additional somewhat spooky circumstances when she headlines MilkBoy on Friday the 13th. “I didn’t realize that! I’m gonna have to play off of that at the show!” Amelia tells me during a recent phone chat, before going on to admit she’s a big fan of the holiday, while having a lot of catching up to do. “I wasn’t really into horror when I was younger because I wasn’t really allowed to be [laughs]. I grew up in a pretty Christian family, so Halloween was always about the whimsy and the costumes, and never really leaned into the spooky, or gore, or witchcraft side of it, so that’s all so new to me,” explains Day, before we go off on a tangent about our favorite horror films…
Amelia Day and I are chatting during an off day of The Ego Trip Tour, a headlining run in support of her upcoming Ego Trip EP. According to Day, the EP is tentatively set to drop in early June, with the songs already recorded and currently in the mixing process: “You only have one final recording, so I want it to be the best possible recording; I’m pretty obsessive about that [laughs].” However, the EP will definitely include Amelia’s four latest singles: 2025’s “Lady Los Angeles,” “Margie,” and “False Prophet” (featuring Sydnee Conley), along with “LOVE ME / LOVE ME NOT,” which dropped February 27th. But she makes sure to clarify that the finished EP will certainly not contain all previously released material: “There’ll be at least two, maybe three, bonus tracks. There’ll be a choral arrangement of the last song on the EP and maybe a live version.” She says that the final product will likely be eight or nine songs, but explains that, despite the length, won’t be what she considers her “debut album.”
There is, however, a debut album in the works… at least theoretically: “I’m actually getting into writing my debut album… although when I talk to my friends and people about it, I say it’s definitely my hypothetical album at this point [laughs]. It really is at the beginning stages of everything, but I do have a guiding concept.” Day says that the LP will ultimately be determined by early manifestations of that concept: “I think this album is going to be guided by the songs and the title, and vice versa.” While eager to embark on the composition and construction of her first full-length, she also admits that it can be a bit scary: “It’s gonna be really interesting. I’m excited, but I am kind of intimidated by the size of that kind of project.”
Day’s music has been noted for embodying elements of folk, rock, and pop, so I’m curious as to some of her very favorite albums, a question that she apparently loves… “I would probably say Led Zeppelin IV, because I think it’s just phenomenal, so fun, and Robert Plant’s vocals are just so insane, obviously, but there’s a lot of whimsy in it,” she explains, saying that she even feels like whimsy’s something that seems to be making its way back into the best kinds of pop music courtesy of people like Chappell Roan. She tentatively continues, “Sheryl Crow’s self-titled album, if I had to pick just one album, that might be it for me… Her lyrics are so cool and so evocative, and I have no idea how she did it,” before going on to note the album’s insanely impressive production. Day also adds to the list of albums Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which would seem to be a relatively concise summation of her musical interests and inclinations, which also seems to factor into her fandom…
“A lot of the people that listen to my music are like me, early-mid-twenties, queer, in the alternative scene, but there are also people who are middle-aged or older, who grew up listening to classic folk and rock, like Fleetwood Mac and Queen and the Eagles,” Day tells me of the crowds that tend to turn out to her shows. Despite her debut album still being in the “hypothetical” stages at this point, Amelia Day has performed a plethora of notable gigs, including sets at Bumbershoot, Capitol Hill Block Party, Folklife Festival, and Seattle PrideFest, along with a number of sold-out headlining shows (The night after MilkBoy will have Day performing for a sold-out crowd at Pie Shop in DC.) And she tells me she’s often surprised by the locations with the most enthusiastic turnouts, including an especially inspiring recent stop in North Carolina, a region where the artist apparently has few-to-no connections.
While MilkBoy can frequently be one of the few barroom venues for our phavorite artists of the “singer/songwriter” variety to visit on jaunts mostly comprised of “listening rooms,” they seem to be the most common spaces for Amelia Day performances, something that she enjoys, while also appreciating the nuances of less traditionally “lively” spaces.
“I think there’s a different energy with each. With a bar or nightclub, they’re moving already, they’re closer to the stage, they’re already interacting with each other. The listening rooms can be more sterile. But for solo acoustic shows, I love when they’re sitting and listening to the words and the stories, because my lyrics are so important to me. In a listening room, people are intent and locked into everything you’re doing. A bar/club is more about the energy of it all. There’re pros to each.”
“I switch up how I interact with the crowd and the songs we play depending on the setting. For this show, there’s a lot of energy,” Day says of her current jaunt, but notes that the individual shows do seek to evoke a broad spectrum of emotions: “I try to really run the gamut. There’s so many different genres we explore, so many different energies. Some of it’s very reflective, and then there’s rock stuff, and dance around moments.” Helping her bring all of these different energies to life on her current run is a band that she’s ineffably impressed by: “My band is ridiculous; they’re so, so tight. For people who are into the technical side of music, they’re some of the strongest instrumentalists I’ve ever played with.” And apparently the person behind the kit is someone who has been working with Amelia for quite some time now: “I’ve played with my drummer for five years now. We played college dorm lobby shows for nothing [laughs].”
I’m surprised by the enthusiasm with which Amelia Day discusses performing live considering that a major part of the 23-year-old’s musical backstory is a paralyzing stage fright that followed her until quite recently. “I had really, really bad stage fright up until about three years ago,” she tells me, but when I ask how she overcame the obstacle, she says it wasn’t an exact formula: “It truly was just making myself get up there and keep doing it.” However, she does say that a lot of what proved to be helpful was early performances in a rather uncommon setting.
“Early on, I played at a lot of farmers markets, where no one’s obligated to watch you, but you have a built-in audience. You perform for the sake of performing and loving the music. It was a good way to desensitize myself in some ways. You forget the lyrics sometimes and you have to restart sometimes, and you realize that’s not really a big deal, and you can make a moment of it. That really helped me with learning to get less afraid of it.”
*Get your tickets here.
