Howie Day is a talented musician who started writing songs of his own at an early age. This show is from 2000 when he used to play solo shows with an acoustic guitar and use pedals to make the performance richer. It’s a soundboard recording, so the sound quality is very good. On the other hand, you won’t hear audience at all.

Howie Day at the Calvin Theater in Northampton, MA in 2004. (Photo by Javier Izquierdo)

The recording is available only in the shorten format, which the media players can’t play by default. I use the shorten tool to convert the files to WAV. Then a program called Switch can be used to easily convert the WAVs to MP3, if you wish. There are also some plugins available for music players to play shorten files. For more information, see this page. It’s a bit complicated this time.

Howie Day Live at Carthage College on 2000-09-09

Howie was only 19 years old at the time. He already had many songs of his own, but plays lots of covers in this show as well. He self-released his first album Australia two months afterwards, and most of the songs on the album are played here.

The most famous cover he plays is Toto’s song Africa. Howie says he doesn’t like the lyrics, still plays it, and so passionately that it brings a smile to my face. He also plays David Gray’s Babylon, sounding so much like the artist himself, but still somehow doing it in his own style.  Other covers are Paddy Casey’s Fear and Joseph Arthur’s In the Sun.

He also plays three Dave Matthews songs, the first one being DMB’s big fan favorite, #41. He’s so much like Dave when he sings it! Somebody asks him to play Crash Into Me, but he refuses to play such a hit song and plays Minarets instead. From All Along the Watchtower he makes a smooth transition into another Dave song, Halloween. (Watchtower is originally by Bob Dylan, but Howie plays it in DMB style.) He’s got to be one of the best artists to cover Dave Matthews. I think this is the only time I’ve heard someone cover Halloween, at least successfully.

Howie’s own songs here are good too. He plays everything so passionately. Some of my favorites out of them are Ghost, Secret, and She Says, which ends the show. She Says was later released on Howie’s both albums as well as a single. 

If you’re getting just some of the tracks, notice that there are incorrect song names in “Audio Files” section. #41 is in the recording though it’s missing from the names, it’s the fourth track. The file called “Sorry” is really Secret, and everything in between is incorrect.

Howie had a nice start to his career at the time. He got signed to a major label and released his second album in 2003, but hasn’t released one since then due to his problems with drinking and violent behavior. In 2008, he did some touring and has been working on a new record, so I really hope those problems are past him now and he can continue making great music.