Today we’d like to introduce you to Tris Day.
Hi Tris, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started pursuing music seriously when I was 13, and Atlanta ended up being a huge part of my development as an artist. I’ve been releasing and performing music independently since around 2014, and over the years I had the opportunity to perform throughout Atlanta at places like Eddie’s Attic, The Masquerade, Atlanta Pride, and a lot of smaller venues and events. I also got to perform the national anthem for Atlanta Hawks games dozens of times with my harp, appear on *Atlanta & Company*, and eventually reached over six million streams across my music.
A lot of my growth happened very naturally. I started as a singer-songwriter just writing and banging around on my piano. I always had other producers around Atlanta but I moved back to Texas in 2024. I had no producers around me so I got interested in production as a neccessity. I really love having more control over the entire sound of a record. My music has changed with me over the years, but songwriting has always been very personal. It is a medium of catharsis and human connection for me. I tend to write about relationships, spirituality, identity, darker parts of life, and whatever I’m trying to understand at the time, sometimes I am trying to understand others and pain.
As I mentioned, I returned to my hometown of Lufkin, Texas, after spending 10 years away in Atlanta, and that opened up another chapter for me. I became more involved in the local arts community, started organizing and helping with shows, collaborating with other musicians, and continuing to develop myself as both an artist and producer. I teach music at the preschool for my church and I am the youth chair. I am working on hosting a charity concert October 17th at the pumkin patch!
I’m also currently pursuing my master’s in clinical mental health counseling and doing advocacy and community work, which probably seems like a completely different world from music, but I think it has actually made me a more observant writer. I’m interested in people and why we feel and behave the way we do, and that inevitably finds its way into my songs. I am also a CASA volunteer and child advocate with two foster kids I see very regularly.
At this point I feel like I’ve entered a new era of Tris Day. I’ve grown up a lot since I first started making music, and now I’m much more interested in creating something that feels completely authentic to me rather than trying to fit into one particular sound or version of what an artist is supposed to be. I go with the flow more now, I don’t feel the pressure of being a musician the same as I did when I was a child, and that has made this phase of my artistry feel more deep and comfortable. I ran away from music when I moved here due to this pressure, and now I feel as though I can never get away from my music because it is a part of me, like an appendage or something. It is like a best friend that will never leave, the ability to express and be understood by the world. Right now I am working on an album completely produced, written, and recorded by me. It is harp based and has a dark spiritual sound with organ, orchestral percussion, and other orchestral intruments. It is interesting though, because it is still pop. I honestly haven’t heard music like it before.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely hasn’t been a completely smooth road. I started pursuing music so young that for a long time it felt like there was a lot of pressure attached to it. When something becomes part of your identity at 13 or 14, it can be hard to separate the joy of creating from the expectations around success, numbers, performances, and what you think you’re supposed to become.
One of the biggest struggles for me was actually stepping away from music emotionally when I moved back to Texas in 2024. I think I was tired. I had spent so much of my adolescence and early adulthood trying to build something, and for a while I almost wanted to prove to myself that I could exist outside of being “Tris Day.” I ran from music a little bit because I associated it with pressure. Ironically, moving away from Atlanta and losing access to the producers and music community I had always relied on eventually pushed me back toward it in a much healthier way. I started teaching myself production because I didn’t really have another option, and that became one of the most important developments in my artistry.
Being an independent artist also comes with a lot of practical struggles. You’re often the songwriter, performer, producer, promoter, booking person, graphic designer, and social media manager all at once. There have been periods where I’ve had a lot of momentum and periods where things have felt extremely quiet. Learning not to measure my worth by streams, opportunities, or how quickly something is happening has probably been one of my biggest lessons.
I also balance music with graduate school, advocacy work, teaching, church involvement, and just being a person outside of my career. Sometimes that makes the path slower, but I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing anymore. Those experiences give me things to write about and have made me understand people and emotion differently.
I think the biggest change has been realizing that music doesn’t have to be something I’m constantly chasing. It’s already part of me. When I was younger, I felt like I had to prove that I deserved to be a musician. Now I feel much more comfortable letting the work develop naturally. There are still struggles, but I don’t feel like I’m fighting music anymore. I’m working with it and nurturing that part of myself.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, and I think the thing that has always defined my work most is that I’m very emotionally driven. I write pop music, but I tend to pull from darker, more spiritual, orchestral, and sometimes experimental sounds. I play piano and harp, and the harp has become a pretty recognizable part of what I do. For years in Atlanta I would perform the national anthem at Atlanta Hawks games with my harp, and I think that combination of something delicate and classical with pop music has always felt very natural to me.
I’m probably most proud of how I have built my career. From an early age, social media and numbers have seemed so straightforward to me. My music has reached more than six million streams, and I’ve had opportunities to perform at places like Eddie’s Attic, The Masquerade, Atlanta Pride, and a lot of other events and venues over the years. But at this stage of my life, I’m actually most excited about becoming a producer. I have fallen in love with performing again and connecting to the crowd, but a large part of that is being proud of what I myself have created. Music is very personal to me and it feels special to be able to share it. When I moved back to Texas, I didn’t have the same network of producers around me anymore, so learning production started out as a necessity. It ended up completely changing the way I see myself as an artist. Now, instead of having to explain a sound to somebody else, I can build the entire world of a song myself.
What sets me apart is probably the combination of everything I do. I don’t really separate the musician, songwriter, producer, counselor-in-training, advocate, or even the person who is fascinated by spirituality and human behavior. It all ends up in the music somewhere. I’m pursuing my master’s in clinical mental health counseling, and studying people, emotion, trauma, relationships, and why we behave the way we do has definitely made its way into my writing. Music has always been cathartic for me, but now I think I understand more clearly why I’m drawn to certain subjects.
Right now I’m working on an album that I’m writing, producing, and recording completely by myself. It’s centered heavily around harp, organ, orchestral percussion, strings, and other orchestral sounds, but somehow it is still very much a pop record. It has this dark, spiritual quality to it that I haven’t really heard represented in quite the same way before. It represent the darker parts of human nature people do not talk about and to me that is fascinating. Even the happy sounding songs have a haunting vibe about them. This project is probably what I’m most proud of creatively right now because it feels like the first time every part of the sound is coming directly from me. I’m not trying to make something that fits neatly into a category anymore. I’m trying to make something that sounds like Tris Day, and it is 100% created by me.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
Please follow me on social media @chilledtris and also keep an eye out for my album. I’d like to have it out by February of next year because I have to record the main vocals in the studio and then get it mixed. I have eight songs produced so far, and 2-3 to go, so I’ll book studio time for the vocals after I finish producing those and mix the tracks a bit. Mixing is a beast for these songs in itself because some of the songs have around 140 stems – individual intruments/harmonies (producers call each individual one a stem).
Pricing:
- To book a show with me playing just harp it is 400$ an hour.
- For me to perform my album onstage it is $200.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chilledtris/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chilledtris
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ItsaPhaze
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/tristiansday
