Gracie Day is 2017’s “Best New Act” according to the New England Music Awards, an organization that acknowledges independent artists across all six states. Based in Hartford, and recently named “Best Folk Band” in CTNow’s Best of Hartford Reader’s Poll for 2017, Gracie Day is coming onto the music scene hot. The genre “Folk”, though a large influence on Day’s lyric writing, doesn’t quite describe the mixture of rock, soul and country her band has. Currently in the works, the highly anticipated debut E.P is scheduled to be released in October. Three years ago, most people who knew Gracie Day as a person did not know she could sing, write and play guitar. She kept that part of herself private for so long, scared that she might ruin a pure joy of hers if she wasn’t well received. Even though guitars were always laying around her house growing up, her own family members did not know the extent of her passion for music. Her dad and brother played recreationally and her aunt Judy had been a locally-famous folk singer in her youth. Despite her family being pretty musical, Gracie was too shy to sing in front of people, so she would wait until no one was home, or hide in her family’s basement to hone her craft. As a teenager, Gracie says that music helped battle her depression, feelings of aloneness and being different. Somber emotional music often helped the most and she would listen to a lot of Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake, Radiohead, Saves the Day, Jenny Lewis and the Smashing Pumpkins. Once it became clear that she would be too shy to sing in front of anyone to try and start a musical collaboration, she picked up a guitar at age 15 knowing if she wanted accompaniment in the late hours of the night, she’d have to do it herself. Gracie studied creative writing in college and made a book of poetry for her senior thesis. In addition to music, she always found a comfort in stories and how a voice could come through so clearly in words. JD Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” is the book that made her really want to be a writer when she read it at age 15. Although she had always filled notebooks with stories and poems, Gracie Day didn’t write her first song until age 19 after she moved away from home for the first time. A lot of her earliest musical influences were heavily lyric-based because her parents spun a lot of 60’s and 70’s folk and singer-songwriter music like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel and James Taylor. When she graduated college, Gracie realized that for the first time in her life she was free of society’s expectations. After choosing to professionally battle her depressive disorder, she started seeking out to play music, tell her stories and sing everywhere she could and share with people the thing that had always brought her happiness. After a few evolutions, Gracie has come up with a fantastic line-up for her band including Lee Sylvestre on guitar and vocals, Jeff Belcher on bass and vocals and Nick Dickinson on drums. The core four have brought to life Gracie’s songwriting on her upcoming debut with other special guests all-stars from Connecticut including Craig Struble of Bronze Radio Return, Ben Dean of The Caravan of Thieves, Mike Oehmen of Dopapod, Ed Iarusso of the Kerri Power’s band, and many more. The album was recorded at the venerable CT-based Telefunken Elecktroakustik. Gracie Day is on the map now and will be planning on furthering her reaches out of Connecticut and New England as she spreads her sound to a growing fan base.