Meet Greg Dayton

We were lucky to catch up with Greg Dayton recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Greg, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
My biggest influences in terms of work ethic were family, friends and school. I’ve always been surrounded by overachievers. Both of my parents were self-employed. My dad started his own small but very successful financial planning business with three friends right after a couple of years in Naval officers training school by first selling insurance door to door. He was very much 9-5, incredibly practical and organized and never late for anything. While I never really knew the details of how his business worked, I watched him create a very large clientele by being diligent, trustworthy, and building solid personal relationships. My mom was an artist, and though my dad carried the more significant financial load of the family, she was always creating new work and seeking new avenues through collaboration, research and travel. She joined several Art associations, won countless awards and had works in multiple exhibitions every year. She eventually became the President of the New England Watercolor Society where she earned a lifetime achievement award. Never content to do the same types of works time and again she spent hours in her studio experimenting, creating, and teaching workshops for both children and adults. Her mastery of color was bold, fearless, in often abstract interpretations of landscapes, which were her forte. She prioritized her children over her work but found a wonderful balance, always taking advantage of time she had to paint, always growing and enjoying the process. She would commit to creating a show and over a few months would just make it happen, creating a thematic body of work.
I am definitely more like my mother, being in the creative field, but I certainly drew from both. I was the youngest of three and observing my older brother and sister was also a huge influence. They both worked hard in everything they did and though we had a lot of fun there wasn’t much tolerance for screwing around or making excuses. We were expected to get things done.
Luckily schoolwork came pretty easily to me, but I went to an a small all boys private school from grades 7-12 (Belmont Hill School) where sports and academics were intensely rigorous and competitive and there was no escaping 2 hours of athletics and 3 hours of homework a day. Playing ice hockey, football, baseball, and rowing crew all taught me about training, teamwork and commitment. My hard work there got me to the top 3 in my class and into Harvard.
Music was always intensely important to me on an emotional and visceral level though it was never part of my early schooling, and I basically learned on my own after a few years of piano lessons and a couple more of guitar. I always felt I needed to practice songs until I had them memorized before performing them for anyone. When I decided to go to Berklee College of Music after finishing my B.A. in History at Harvard, I practiced guitar sometimes for 7-8 hours a day. While a working life even as a musician makes that time commitment pretty much unsustainable, I always feel better the more hours I practice, write and perform. It’s awe inspiring to see the remarkable things that my friends and classmates from every institution I attended are doing in their fields after so many years.
There is never really enough time in the day to get to all I’d like to do, but that is a fortunate place to be in. Finishing an album is a huge amount of work, but it is really only the beginning of the life of the songs we create, and as soon as I finish one, I want to start writing the next one. I’m now much better about enjoying my personal life without feeling anxious. The balance of love, friends, fitness, health and work is a wonderful discipline in itself. Staying happy means going with the flow some of the time, and that happiness brings out great music. Teaching also helps me feel connected to people in a special way, week after week.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a singer/songwriter for Ropeadope/Modern Icon Recordings. My primary instrument is guitar, I also play piano, harmonica, bass, mandolin and ukelele. The music I write is influenced by blues, rock, jazz, soul and Americana. I perform weekly either solo or with a band everywhere from small clubs and private parties to small theaters and festivals. I am on all streaming services (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, etc.) and have released two solo albums, Lonesome Road (2016), and Sailing for the Sun (2020) under my own name, Greg Dayton. Both have received significant critical acclaim from radio and press including the BBC and Elmore Magazine. My third album, Here to Stay, is set for release on October 20th, 2023. I am very excited about it. The first two singles “See My Baby,” and “Break the Chains” were each selected as Track of the Day in All About Jazz magazine. the album was all written and recorded during the COVID lockdown and beyond. The tunes span a wide territory of the kinds of music I love, some introspective, others more bluesy. I will be performing lots of album release shows in California, New York, Arizona, and Massachusetts over the coming year. Those shows will include many favorites from my first two albums as well. Follow me on my website (gregdaytonmusic.com), Spotify or Apple Music for current music and news!

I am blessed to work with world class musicians. The album features my New York based band of many years (producer/drummer Adrian Harpham (Leo Nocentelli, Henry Butler), bassist Dave Inniss (Jazzhole), keyboardist Anthony Robustelli (Bo Diddley, Gloria Gaynor)) and special guests including Marvin Sewell (Cassandra Wilson, Lizz Wright) on guitar, Steven Bernstein (Levon Helm, Little Feat) on horns, Bobby Sparks (Snarky Puppy) on organ and clavinet, vocalists Clayton Bryant (Elton John, Valerie Simpson) , Marlon Saunders (Stevie Wonder, Sting, Billy Joel), Biti Strauchn (Tears for Fears, Chaka Khan).

Over the years I have been the teacher and mentor to hundreds of students of all ages. I offer private instruction online on guitar, piano and ukelele, songwriting, music theory and improvisation.

Apart from performing, writing, and teaching I also curate and produce concerts for special events and fundraisers for non-profits. My next dream project (partially under way) is to start my own music festival.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
First: develop good personal relationships and always work with people whom you trust. Second: stick to doing what you love regardless of what others may tell you.
Third: work hard at being the best you can be in your field, never forgetting your strengths, and always being yourself.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Right now I am most interested in connecting with music supervisors and directors in the film and TV industry to get my music out to a larger audience. I’m also interested in performing at bigger music festivals.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Kristina Zaidner Skyler Dayton

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