During the summer of his sophomore year, Kabir Mehra ’26 decided to reach out to some of his friends to “jam out” some of the songs he had been workshopping on his guitar. By week three of summer term, the group had fleshed out a repertoire of songs and formed a band: Day Drooler. This band is more “just a group of friends,” Mehra said. Christian Smith ’27 and Nathan McAllister ’25, who play lead guitar and saxophone respectively, had done gigs with Mehra the spring before Day Drooler’s formation. Grant Foley ’25, who plays the drums, and Ian Glick ’26, who plays bass, both became friends with Mehra through the Dartmouth music scene.
Bands were in high demand sophomore summer, so Day Drooler was off to a head start booking a line of gigs, particularly for fraternity and sorority events, according to Mehra. Yet, once they established that they were playing original music, they were met with pushback, and gigs began to vanish. Day Drooler was dedicated to pursuing their own music, however, and decided to move away from Greek life and towards performance spaces that allow them to freely explore their creativity. The band decided to book One Wheelock in Collis for themselves and invited a group of their closest friends. This first performance was what motivated the band to pursue their music further, Mehra said.
“We knew we had to do something with this,” Mehra said. “We could feel an energy in the room. People were really listening. Our friends, the audience, were so engaged in a way that is hard to do on a college campus with casual music.”
Mehra recalled that friends began to suggest that the band try to record some of their pieces, an idea they had been previously toying with. They picked a single day in August to dedicate to recording everything they had. According to Mehra, it took the band four hours to record their first song before things began to click.
“It was bleak,” Mehra said. “But, we all went to get coffee and bagels, came back and churned out about seven songs back to back.”
From there, the group began mixing and producing eight songs that they plan to slowly roll out, starting with their first single “Oak Cupboard” released last week. Mehra said that it was a very collaborative process. The band’s goal is to release a song every month, hopefully culminating into a full album by the end of the year.
Mehra explained that Day Drooler is interested in alternative rock and indie folk music, trying to find a sound that was “timeless.” According to Mehra, in “Oak Cupboard” the band wanted to develop a song that was temporally ambiguous — a song that could be released right now or could have been released in the 1940s. McAllister explains this goal as creating a feeling of “getting lost in the music,” in the listener.
“The one thing that I heard or thought over and over while we were in the process was this idea of getting lost in the music,” McAllister said.“You want to be able to forget about everything else while listening to it. It’s a difficult thing to measure and know how to do. It’s somewhat subjective … There are many different elements of the song that could play into that dynamic.”
“Oak Cupboard” is divided into two parts that contrast in tone; the first half is cheerful and light, the second half is heavier. For Glick, the “dreaminess” of this record embodies the feeling of getting lost and is an element that he loves the most.
“I particularly really love the second half of ‘Oak Cupboard,’” Glick said. “It’s dreamy… we have other songs that have a similar spacey, trance-like vibe, and those are some of my favorite songs.”
Though some of the band members, including Glick, had previously been a part of other student bands and music groups at Dartmouth, Day Drooler gives them an opportunity to explore a different mode of making music. Recording music is a “very exciting” experience for everyone in the band, Mehra said.
“It was a very cool and novel experience for me,” Glick said. “When you play live, mistakes are very ephemeral; you get to make a lot of choices that are intuitive and unplanned and improvisational. In recording music, it was definitely more intentional and planned and meticulous.”
Mehra described Day Drooler’s songwriting as a “very organic” process of trial and error. They fiddled with different sounds as a group and tested out songs in rehearsal and shows before they started recording.
“The songs are a little bit different every time we play them,” Glick said. “The cool thing about doing original music is that there is no right or wrong. There is no reference we have to go off of. It is like we are making a living thing.”
Through this process, the band has found a sound that is unique. Mehra emphasized that the original songs are no longer just his own but a reflection of the band’s work as a whole.
The band looks forward to sharing more of their work including their next single “Mt. Moosilauke,” which will drop in late April.
At the same time, the band members emphasized that there need to be more spaces for student artists and bands outside of Greek life.
“I don’t think original music at Dartmouth is super wide spread, and it takes people wanting to tap into it to have a presence on campus,” McAllister said. “This is very different from just [performing] in frats. It’s really, really special, and I think there need to be spaces where this can exist.
Despite these challenges, Day Drooler found its sound inside and outside of the recording studio, in local spots such as Sawtooth and at the HanUnder Arts Festival this weekend. Amidst their growing success, the band’s work comes from a deep appreciation for music and artistry.
Reflecting on his favorite Day Drooler gig at 8 School St., where they performed for a group of friends, Mehra said he learned to value the quality of his audience over the quantity. He said he is always brought back to their first gig in One Wheelock.
“Numbers don’t matter if there are people who are really listening, which is a shift I had in my mindset,” Mehra said.
