Not all locals can live here. But MC-bandleader-all around solid individual Forrest Day is pretty much as local as they get, even if he does live in San Leandro. He’s into being able to pay his rent, but the guy’s grandparents met at Bimbo’s, for chrissakes.
And how’s this for San Francisco? “There was a pet monkey in my family that was like a brother to my dad. He lived until he was 33 and his name was Bimbo,” Day tells us.
We’re saying, all-around solid individual. Day’s grandma had a spot near Dolores Park when he was growing up, so SF got him on the weekends.
How he gives back to the community that influenced his upbringing: Day leads an eponymous band whose music veers from hip-hop, yes — but then back again into screaming punk, funk, ska. He’s well known for performing in a muu muu that he reportedly got from Mission Thrift (rumor unconfirmed, Forrest can you help us out on that one?). Basically, the man does what he wants.
“I just want to explore what I want to explore,” he explains, sitting up on the Guardian roof with a sixer of Prohibition Ale and an unexpected microphone shoved into it, suspiciously close to his face. After busting out of San Leandro after high school to hitch hike the country, Day actually spent awhile in punk’s high decibel climes. “I was mostly screaming then. When I quit my punk band, I missed that release.”
We ask him if he worries about his commercial viability, being strung between so many genres. “Sometimes I do worry that maybe I should be more focused and just create, like side projects or something. But at the end of the day, I just want to be a one-stop shop.”
It strikes us as very Bay Area, this unwillingness to cram into a sole genre. Why not just conquer them all? After five years with more or less the same musicians in his band, Day is ready to take the next step — more national touring, more sharing of the live show that he says can be “a cerebral experience” for people seeing it for the first time. (“After the third show they really start to get it,” he tells us.)
And hell yeah, more dance videos. We didn’t get him two-stepping for Tiny Town Production‘s dope video of our interview (by the way, thanks for the audio visual assist, Tiny Town) and — hell yeah — his impromptu a capella performance. But consider this self-made tour vid the action movie.
By the way, he’s got a real good show coming up. It’s no rooftop jam, but it’ll do:
Forrest Day
With Oona and Lavish Green
September 9, 9 p.m., $13-15
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421