Peter Frizzante and Abby Amaya met seven years ago in New York City on the dating website OK Cupid. They were a musical match from the start.
“We’ve always been jamming and writing things together, but it wasn’t until 2018 when we really got serious,” Amaya said.
“It’s 2018. We said ‘This is it, we’re on the hunt for musicians and we’re gonna get this done,” Frizzante said.
Amaya and Frizzante are the core of the band Day and Dream, and their debut album is called “Every Breath You Die.” Frizzante plays guitar. Amaya sings and plays keyboards. Day and Dream are performing May 8 at the Mothlight and May 22 at Fleetwood’s in West Asheville.
The couple embrace the description of their music as shoegaze-dream pop.
“In the beginning, different musicians we would audition, they wouldn’t even know what shoegaze was,” Amaya said. “And so just having to explain that and talk about bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive and talk about bands we grew up with and expose that, it was super eye-opening for me.”
Frizzante was a film major in New York, Amaya studied music and mass media at UCLA and, before meeting, both had played in fuzzy, atmospheric rock bands. The couple moved to Asheville in 2014.
“It’s been so refreshing coming from New York and California where there are so many bands that we feel sound similar to us,” Amaya said. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it has been an interesting experience.”
They pointed to the song “Nocturnal Creatures” as particularly influenced by this region.
“We named it that because of the letters ‘NC,’ which is a hidden meaning to North Carolina,” Amaya said. “On that song, I play the dulcimer, which I never would have played in any other band I was in. So that song, in particular, has an Asheville feel to it.”
Despite being a new band, Frizzante and Amaya are in their late 30s, and their more recent songwriting reflects their reckoning with age.
“The song “First in Flight” is about going for it and, specifically for music, and taking the leap,” Amaya said. “Most of our friends have kids and aren’t doing music at all. While that’s all good and necessary, I think we want to represent the two people who said ‘Screw all that. Life is short. Let’s go for what we want.’”
While Day and Dream have just released their first album, they had already seen thousands of listeners come to their songs online through Spotify. They said they look closely at their numbers to steer them toward writing songs people are more likely to connect with.
“Peter and I are actually quite happy, you know, just being newlyweds and buying a new house and just having a peaceful, happy way of life,” Amaya said. “And that definitely is a change from past shoegaze bands I’ve been in and written songs for, where it’s mostly about a sad love song. But I’d say this album is quite positive and optimistic about us returning to music. I think it’s just a self-reflection that, yeah, things are good at the moment.”
