The dust on Skylar Day’s boots, almost always present due to her day job at the Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk, goes nicely with her folk music sensibilities. But there’s so much more to her than dusty boots and folk chords — there’s a fire, too, befitting a heavy metal guitar player.
Ms. Day, who lives in Sag Harbor, is both a singer-songwriter and the lead guitarist in a metal band called Gravitywell that just returned from a month-long cross-country tour.
“This genre has been a big part of my life,” she said. “When you like this kind of music you can’t help but make it part of your life. It’s othering — it’s not mainstream. Once you listen to this, you kind of commit, or you don’t.”
One of very few female heavy metal guitarists out there, Ms. Day, 22, was about 10 years old when a friend first introduced her to heavy metal. She said she immediately identified with it.
“One of the things that this music gives me is a right to my anger,” Ms. Day said. “As a woman in this world, anger is not a thing. Society does that, and it’s really frustrating. Once you let your anger out, you’re a bitch. This music just gives me my power. It channels it into a good space, a creative space, something I can hold my own in and not let it hold me.”
She joined Gravitywell at the invitation of its founder and lead singer, Daniel Stoddard, just a couple of weeks before it left for its tour. The two had met on Instagram several years ago and first played together in a band called B.T.K. before Ms. Day went off to college.
“She’s super talented,” Mr. Stoddard said.
Gravitywell’s sound is not exclusively grinding guitars and aggression, many people’s stereotype of metal bands’ sound. There’s a distinct musicality to it, with melodies that were influenced by the classical music and opera that Mr. Stoddard listened to while growing up. He describes Gravitywell as a “love-core” band, as opposed to death-core or hair metal or hardcore. Its first album, an E.P. called “String Theory,” offered songs themed around the emotions that comprise psychology’s five stages of grief.
Ms. Day’s own folk style “plays insanely well with the metal stuff,” said Mr. Stoddard, who also plays in a band called Hex Mob. “In my opinion a jazz drummer is the closest thing to a metal drummer, technique-wise. Skylar may have listened to metal, but she plays folk. A lot of listeners do the same thing, as much as they don’t admit it. Their parents may have raised them on something else. You never know who will be at the shows.”
Despite all her musical capabilities, Ms. Day has a hard time considering herself a true musician. “I don’t know how to read music. It comes from here,” she said, tapping her chest over her heart, “and from my ears. I can hear something and then play it.”
It’s not not-musicianship — it’s just a different kind of ability.
“I started playing guitar at age 8,” Ms. Day said. “I have a very distinct memory of living in Sag Harbor above Sen with my mom. I touched a guitar and that was the moment I knew.”
Her mother, Minerva Perez, is a powerhouse, too. She is the executive director of Organizacion Latino-Americana (OLA) of Eastern Long Island.
Ms. Day’s influences are diverse, including Billie Eilish, Norah Jones, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Daughter, and Sylvan Esso. Her metal tendencies come from listening to bands like Bring Me the Horizon (“the band that started everything for me,” she said), Like Moths to Flames, A Day to Remember, Acacia Strain, Fit for a King, and Pierce the Veil. The latter is known for including Latin rhythms in its music.
“That’s a goal,” Ms. Day said. “If I have the platform to do whatever the hell I wanted, I would love to mix Spanish music, metal, pop, and folk into an album.”
She describes herself as a deep thinker, but said going on the road with Gravitywell and its tour mate, Scream Blue Murder, allowed her to release her thoughts.
“The old me, a year ago, would never have gone out on tour with only two practices beforehand,” Ms. Day said. “This tour really kind of ripped me out of that. It wasn’t a bad thing, you just have to go with it in order to move forward and make something happen. It helped me get past my judgments of myself and other things. It forced me to put some level of faith into something else.”
Touring was “better than I ever thought it would be,” she said. “The people I was with were fun. I thought I was going to feel like I was in danger, but it was nothing like that. I was expecting it to be up in the air the whole time, and it kind of was, but in a healthy, adventurous way.”
Gravitywell also features Jalen Alvarez on bass and Stephen Sor on drums. Next up for the band is a month of rest and occasional rehearsals, as well as writing new songs. Then it will gear up for another tour in the summer — this time overseas.
“I’m so excited,” Ms. Day said. “I’ve been feeling like this is the time. What else is there? I just need to do this thing I’ve been talking about doing my whole life.”
