DAY6 See The Light Of My Days During Their New York Live & Meet Stop

DAY6 made their way to New York City during the third stop on their Live & Meet in North America tour on October 24. MYDAYs packed the sold-out Town Hall, an ornate theater in Manhattan’s midtown. The band’s first fan meet tour in North America proved to be a hybrid of a fan meeting and a concert, with song performances mixing in with game corners.

The 10 songs on their setlist spanned the lengthy list of singles that has rapidly expanded ever since the band launched their ambitious Every DAY6 project where they release new songs every month for a year. But they also played a few fan favorites like “Man in a Movie.”

If they ever deviated from sounding like CD eaters, it was because they were putting a new spin on their songs. At the end of Young K’s rap during “Letting Go,” instead of sticking to the breathy delivery of the lyric “I’ve got to say goodbye right now” from the recording, he offers up a more soulful rendition of those words.

The members were at their most energetic during the encore. Young K served up some body rolls during “Dance Dance,” then Jae, the resident hype man, pumped up the crowd on the first floor audience’s level during “Freely.”

The band’s sound has a lot in common with arena rock – if they can sell out a 1,500-seat theater during their first solo stop in New York, it’s only a matter of time before their choice in venues match up to the name of their music genre.

But the layout of the theater offered fans an intimate glimpse of the group. During the “Tell Us DAY6” corner, the members each answered a question from a board full of post-it notes.

First up was Wonpil, who picked a question asking where his interest in music came from. “It’s all My Day,” Wonpil said, adding that he liked 50 Cent.

Young K made everyone laugh when he reminisced on the funniest moment in his life.

“Starting from Korean Thanksgiving time … I started eating a lot,” he said, referring to the recent Chuseok holiday. “Right before I came up on this stage, these pants … I needed to extend this probably a good more than two inches, and it’s still kind of ugh.”

Dowoon’s question: If you could learn any skill, what would it be?

“I would want to learn how to talk to the animals,” he said. “I had a cat when I was in college.” He said he left the cat alone a lot. “My cat was a little bit wild, and I think it was because of me. So now I want to learn how to connect with animals.” Fortunately, his cat grew attached to his mom.

When Dowoon was asked which animal he’d want to connect with, he chose a bear.

Sungjin responded to a question asking what the hardest thing he had ever done was. “I think our debut,” Sungjin said. “It was a long time before we could debut, so I think the hardest time was waiting.”

Jae got serious when he talked about what made him want to do music. “I started doing a little music [in high school] … I was watching all these artists on a site called YouTube,” he said, referring to YouTubers like AJ Rafael as sources of inspiration. “I really started feeling their music.” Then he met the filmmakers behind Wong Fu Productions, and Phil Wang asked him to sing. He ended up singing Maroon 5’s “Sunday Morning.” “[Phil] was like, ‘You’re pretty good, you should try it.’”

When Phil heard about Jae’s experience, he tweeted, “Some encouraging words I gave to a fan at a meet&greet 7+ yrs ago inspired him to pursue music. Now, he’s a kpop star in @day6official ”

Some encouraging words I gave to a fan at a meet&greet 7+ yrs ago inspired him to pursue music. Now, he's a kpop star in @day6official 🤯

— philipwang (@philipwang) October 26, 2017

Jae responded, “Will never forget brotha thank you.”

Will never forget brotha 🙏 thank you https://t.co/TZCXZ04mzc

— eaJ (@eaJPark) October 27, 2017

Article and photography by special contributor Caitlin Kelley, an editorial intern at Billboard who accidentally dedicated her life to K-pop. She can be found testing the boundaries of fangirling while being a journalist on Twitter @catrkelley.