It may only be the first week of March, but if Break of Day, the recently released LP from California-based Looking East is any indication, 2026 promises to be a great year for reggae music.

Consisting of only two members, singer Drew Gonzales and producer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Kearney who composed the music and lyrics, Looking East’s debut album deftly channels popular west coast reggae artists Stick Figure and Iration as a vehicle for moving, heartfelt sentiments.

After moving to California from Boston in 2011, Kearney began interning at Playback Recording Studio in Santa Barbara (now in Los Angeles), eventually working his way up to lead engineer. It was there he learned most of his production chops, and also where he met Cole Leksan aka Kip Nelson, who was a founding member of an up-and-coming Isla Vista band called The Olés. After playing in various bands and projects, Kearney eventually joined The Olés, serving as their bassist from around 2014 to 2019.

During the Covid lockdown, Kearney had spent a lot of time building out his home studio and messing around with the tools and skills he’d acquired while at Playback Recording Studio. He started bouncing ideas off of Gonzales, a member of Tripped Up, a San Luis Obispo band that The Olés had played gigs with. “We’d shared bills on many occasions but never wrote together or performed together outside of hopping up during the other band’s set here and there,” Kearney explained. “I was still in the Olés at the time, but the music I was working on wasn’t really a fit there, and they were on and off hiatus before ultimately breaking up. Drew was a local dude I knew with a great voice and great attitude who was down to make some music with me.”

In 2021, touring opened up again and Kearney joined Santa Barbara reggae-rock band, Cydeways, with whom he toured relentlessly around the country for the next several years. It was also around this time that he suffered a huge blow, losing his father to cancer. “I was very close with my dad,” Kearney shared. “He would, without fail, call me every week just to check in. He worked in the hotel industry, so he was always traveling. He probably visited me every other month. He was the kind of guy that if you were the son or cousin of a buddy or coworker and he happened to be in your town for work even for a day, he’d go out of his way to reach out and ask if you wanted to grab lunch.”

Continuing, Kearney recalled, “In late 2019, he was diagnosed with Glioblastoma, a very aggressive brain cancer. He had the best care and a successful operation removing the entire tumor later that year.”

Daniel Kearney

Unfortunately, brain tumors are “insidious fuckers” and by 2020 it had returned, this time inoperable. “My brother and I drove out to Wisconsin where he lived with his wife and we spent the summer there. It was bittersweet, but I’ll forever be grateful for the time we got to spend together.”

Kearney’s father passed in May of 2021 at age 59. “To be blunt, my dad was always my strongest moral compass,” Kearney said, “and after losing him so (relatively) young I dealt with a kind of numbing and apathy that I’m still working my way out of to date.”

Being on the road over seven months a year with Cydeways eventually began to wear on Kearney. Then, with the birth of his first child in 2024, as East Coast transplants with no family within 3000 miles, the musician needed time off to support his wife and newborn daughter. This led to his parting ways with Cydeways.

“Once I no longer had the outlet of playing music on stage every night for hundreds or thousands of people, I rediscovered my passion for creating and producing music,” Kearney said. While his newfound time at home would allow him to focus on his own music in earnest, the demands of raising a toddler without the help of extended family nearby did impact his creative process in an unexpected way. “It’s removed some of the thinking around, ‘I need to be in my creative space with my flow and the right head state to be creative,’” Kearney reflected. “If you have kids, I’m sure you’re aware you get so little time to yourself, so realizing that creativity doesn’t have to be this magical, delicate thing that you have to set up space and time for has been crucial.”

Inspired by a complex mix of emotions spurned from the loss of his father and the birth of his daughter, Kearney started writing and recording. For several months, he bounced around a lot of ideas for the name of his project, eventually naming it after an album from singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, whose music reminded him of his father. “Jackson Browne was my late dad’s favorite artist, and some of my earliest memories – or even fragments of memories – are of him rocking me to sleep while singing along to songs like ‘Only Child,’ or many of the tracks off of the studio album The Pretender. Another of Browne’s albums, Looking East, was one of my dad’s favorites as well.”

Kearney explained, “A lot of my music revolves around a few main themes: my relationship with my Dad, his passing and its effect on me; my relationship with my daughter; the California coast and it’s natural beauty; and finally, my relocation west — my wife (then girlfriend) and I packed up and moved after college with no job, no place to live, and just dreams of pursuing music and better weather. I wanted a name for my project that encompassed these things, so when Looking East popped up, I almost immediately decided on it. Partly a homage to the music that filled my childhood and partly a reference to my journey up ‘til now…standing on the California shores looking back at how far I’ve come – looking east.”

Drew Gonzales

To create Looking East’s music, Kearney has two distinct ways he writes, and it’s about a 50/50 split between these approaches. “One is, I’ll start with a chord progression that I stumble across in the studio, often on keys, and I’ll quickly build a simple 4-8 bar loop, adding in various elements before duplicating that and removing/adding different things. Then, loop that and just kinda pace around my space, rhythmically mumbling half words until they fall into place and I get a concept I can write lyrics off of.”

Kearney said the other way he writes starts with strumming his guitar, often in his backyard. “I’ll kinda write a couple of lines with an acoustic-y chord progression. I’ll then take that into the studio and translate it into a song.”

Break of Day kicks off with “To the Ends of the Earth,” a love letter to Kearney’s wife and partner of 17 years, who he met while in school in Boston before moving out west together. This luscious homage raises the hairs on the back of the necks of anyone who can relate to having a ride-or-die companion with lyrics like, “I will be by your side until we breathe no more, to the ends of the earth I will follow you.”

The title track, “Break of Day,” follows, a song that revels in waking up before the sun rises to take advantage of alone time before daily demands commence. The stirring music aptly conveys a sense of optimism and fuel for the day ahead. About the genesis of this song, Kearney shared, “I never was a morning person until maybe a year after my kid was born. Sometime in that first year, I realized if I wanted some peace and serenity to start the day, it was coming at 5 am and not an hour later – take it or leave it.”

Kearney said he had never been excited to wake up before sunrise but, now in his late 30s, he’s really come to appreciate the early morning hours. “I wrote this one maybe a month or two after I started waking up around 4:45-5:00 am consistently. Sometimes I wouldn’t even need an alarm, I’d open my eyes and be so excited for my coffee and the quiet in the house, plus the stillness of the world.”

According to Kearney, “Break of Day” came together pretty quickly in the studio. “It was one of the tracks that I started with a chord progression and built around it. I’d just finished ‘Spark’ and I’d been re-listening to a lot of Stick Figure’s stuff, mainly Set in Stone and World on Fire. I wanted to do something that was heavy with some haunting leads and dub sections. Once I started this, it fell into place pretty quickly, and when I sat down to write the lyrics, I was, like I mentioned, fully in my newfound ‘I love mornings’ phase, and the lyrics I was finding fit the instrumental I’d just made really well.”

Given “Break of Day” is the title track and especially since it’s about the start of each day, it seems like it would have been the optimal choice to begin the album. In fact, Kearney had originally planned for it to be up until about a month before the release, but then he had a change of mind. “I had written and finished ‘To the Ends of the Earth,’ and I was figuring out where the non-single tracks should fit in, so I was re-listening to it and I fell in love with it again. But on top of that I figured, ‘Break of Day’ is the title track and it’s already out and doing well, so people are gonna listen to it anyway, even at number two on the album. Plus, the intro to that song is slow and ‘sunrise-y’ which is why I initially thought of it for the album opener, but the huge drums that start ‘To the Ends of the Earth’ leading into that four-on-the-floor hook ultimately felt like a better, high energy start to the album.”

“Break of Day” is a very strong song, and it’s made even better with the contributions from Hunter Wilson, aka Hunter the Oracle, an independent producer and former member of Houston-based reggae band, Th3rd Coast Roots, who played drums and who penned a verse perfectly on point with the song’s theme:

When I rise up
I breathe in the stillness
But I’m steady in the flow
Before the sun meets the sky
Connected to the music
Like the moon and the tide
It’s a blessing to be alive
I find a lot of peace
In the still and quiet
Where your soul can find release
When your heart is in riot
You just got to believe

Kearney didn’t know Hunter before the collaboration, but he was listed as a similar artist to Looking East on Spotify for a while, and he saw Hunter had a ton of collaborations. “I liked his style and it seemed like a good fit for that song, so I reached out cold and he was super receptive,” Kearney said. “Hunter is awesome. He’s great to work with. What’s funny is he was telling me he used to do mainly reference vocals for some of his older projects and people kept telling him he had such a unique, nice sounding voice that he should do his own projects, so he did! He’s a great writer and a super good dude.”

The third song, “My Way Out,” has themes of missing someone, disillusionment and perhaps depression. It contains a vocal collab with the previously mentioned Kip Nelson, who performed in the Olés with Kearney and worked in the studio with him during his first 5-10 years in California. As a long-time friend, Nelson was one of the first people Kearney had invited to contribute to the album, and beyond his vocal feature, Nelson also provided tips and feedback about the tune.

Musically, it strongly brings to mind another Santa Barbara reggae act, Iration, maybe with a beefed-up low end. “This one is about losing my dad and the loss of faith so to speak that accompanied it. I’m not sure how universal or not that is, but I wasn’t prepared for it.” Kearney revealed. “Not faith in the traditional sense, but more like my faith in the world and fairness and good vs evil. For a while, it felt like my moral compass had been completely smashed, that nothing happens for any reason and there’s no purpose, etc.”

Kearney references a recent post on social media about this song hitting 200,000 spins, saying he thinks he “encapsulated the ethos of the song pretty well” in the caption:

This was the first song I ever wrote for Looking East, I’m glad so many ppl resonate with it. I wrote it a couple years after losing my Dad, when the initial grief had subsided but I was still struggling to adjust to a new, irrevocably altered world. A lot of really cool, exciting things had been happening in my life recently but I still felt that knot and emptiness almost daily. My Dad was my earliest and most steady moral compass and I feared that his death had broken that light inside me. For those of you who’ve lost someone I hope this song can provide a little catharsis.

 From here, Kearney incorporates his reggae-rock roots with, “Passerby.” The song starts out with some acoustic guitar chords, and then a bubbly bass line gives way to a hard-rock chorus that celebrates the joy of touring. “This one is absolutely a love letter to the road,” Kearney agreed. “Touring is often such a weight on relationships, friendships, and the body and mind. But there’s a reason we do it. And it’s not just being on stage. The roadies, managers, drivers, lighting directors, etc. are all out there too. There’s a wanderlust in us.”

“Fun fact,” Kearney continued, “I’d recently heard of Beach Fly when I wrote this and I was listening to some of his stuff right around that time. I wanted to incorporate the modern take on Jack Johnson vibes he has with the acoustic guitar mixed into reggae. The song obviously did not turn out that way but the intro and then background acoustic guitar throughout the verses is a vestige of that.”

Next up comes the delicious banger, “Icarus.” It starts out with a steady skank of keys and some guitar strumming before monster drums and thumping sub-bass drop in. Whereas previous songs brought to mind Stick Figure or Iration, this one kind of feels like the two artists mashed together. The song poetically paints a vivid picture of riding a beach cruiser in the evening down along the seaside boardwalk, appreciating the coastal locale and the little things in life. These sentiments are amplified when juxtaposed with the Icarus reference in the chorus, given that it is a cautionary tale against hubris or recklessness and balancing one’s ambition with reality.

Kearney recalled that he had written the first line to “Icarus” one Saturday while riding the beach cruiser featured on the single’s artwork to the corner liquor store while still nursing a hangover all the way into the evening:

Cruising under streetlights tryna get my head right

“I’ve definitely partied more than my fair share in my youth, and probably for longer than I should have, especially while on the road,” he admitted, “but that one particular night was becoming a less frequent occurrence. I grabbed a couple beers and got home and wrote the majority of the song. I was appreciating the weather and scenery in Santa Barbara…I try to make it a habit to never take it for granted even 15 years in. I was also somewhat fresh off the road and beginning to kind of embrace the slower paced lifestyle, thinking about my old bandmates doing lines and shots and staying up way past last call:

See the last ones stumble from the bar

“The hook is meant to convey that peaceful, settling down feeling where you’re realizing a lot of your crazier times may be behind you and that’s for the better,” he explained, “but also we really can’t know what the future holds or why things happen and, for me, I try to just go with the flow and stay working on the things I want to without trying to guess why. Then the Icarus component is recognizing that part of me that still yearns for the craziness of the road and the late nights.”

In this place that I call my home,

I found peace and I made my home

But the sun keeps calling

Wings are melting and I’m falling

“Icarus” pivots to one of the sweetest tracks on Break of Day, “Satellite,” a touching tune about missing a loved one and looking for a sign from that person. The lyrics also reference past struggles and express gratitude for overcoming them.

What has been and what will come to be

I’m losing ground but I landed on my feet

I spent years at the bottom

I lost track of time when you walked out

It’s been so long since I′ve heard your voice

And I know that you′d love my noise

I’ve got that pass for you in the next life

I′m tuning in to your radio tonight

I’m looking up at the empty skies

Hoping for a satellite

Gonna guide my way when the time is right

I′m hanging on to your every word tonight

“This one is also mainly about my dad. The walking out is him passing, not actually walking out – he was always there for me. ‘I lost track of time when you walked out’ just flowed well and I liked using that phrasing there. He was a semi-religious person and definitely became more so towards the end, so part of that phrasing is maybe me imagining him walking over the threshold to an afterlife…which I don’t necessarily believe in, but he did, and I like to think sometimes that he was right.”

Continuing, Kearney expanded, “The ‘I lost track of time’ is a reference to the disillusionment and de-anchoring almost from time and space that succeeded his death. As a non-spiritual/religious person, I guess this song is the closest I come to that…I’m looking for, though not expecting, a sign from him.”

What’s interesting about this track is that, to me, the music suggests that this song comes from a place of acceptance and peace, making it poignant but not mournful. However, the song was not written from that perspective.

“I think I wrote this when I was at my lowest (in regards to feeling lost and disillusioned) after his death,” Kearney shared.  “The empty sky symbolizes a universe lacking in any meaning or spirituality. A random, cold, callous nothingness. I was feeling like I was certain after my experience that this was the way the universe was. And there was a small part of me that was still there that wrote this song; ‘hoping for a satellite,’ or hoping for something, anything in the vast nothingness that was swallowing me to show me, ‘Hey, what we do matters, being a good person matters. Even if it feels like it’s all for nothing. What my dad taught me, it still matters…’

“Hanging onto the morals he instilled in me since I was a kid, trying not to lose myself to the darkness. So, the hook is not quite acceptance and peace,” he laughed, “but the verses definitely lean that way.

I keep moving like a trade wind from the east

Got a fire in my soul, a brand new melody

Surrounded myself with hollow souls

It’s in the past, yeah, I′ve let them go

When everything keeps changing

It’s the real ones by your side

Keep that fire burning

And pay attention to the open sky

Kearney said the above passages reference his determination to keep doing what he loves, and the birth of Looking East after parting with Cydeways. “The first verse touches on this as well,” he explained. “I felt like I was taking a big step backwards in my musical journey when I stopped touring, but I also felt that I’d found something new and worthwhile with Looking East. I’d spent years playing bars or not at all, I can do it again and build back.”

Finally, Kearney told me, the last line of the second verse “Keep that fire burning, and pay attention to the open sky” is a direct reference to a Jackson Browne’s song, “For a Dancer,” also about losing a loved one. The line in the Browne song goes, “Keep a fire burning in your eye, pay attention to the open sky, you never know what will be coming down.”

The next track, “Spark,” focuses on the impact that the birth of Kearney’s daughter had on him as well as how following his creative muse eases his pain. “The hook is about the feelings of loss and darkness surrounding me after my dad’s death and also after losing the ability to tour for a living (a dream since I was a teenager), but my daughter being able to break through that fog or ‘tall trees,’” he said.

Kearney added that the titular line, “all it takes is a spark” is about how creativity, however it may originate, allows him to “enter that kind of flow-state at times,” and “how writing and music in general provide a soothing almost drug-like effect.”

Kearney pointed out that he also references his daughter’s ability to “break through” his negative feelings in the title track. “I felt like even as a baby her eyes disarmed me and saw the child in me…saw me for who I felt I truly was before the world molded me. The walls I’d built up to protect myself, she could see through that. It felt like someone had found me when I was lost in the void of  meaninglessness after my dad died.”

The song features another perfectly executed collaboration with Greg Shields of Kash’d Out singing a verse. For his part, the Florida reggae-rock band frontman chose to focus on the agonizing conundrum of missing your family while touring:

And I know I’m not the first to say it

But I feel it, yeah, they grow up fast

Make every moment last

It’s crazy how much time can pass

I can’t be ever present

So all the minutes and the seconds I been getting

They’re a blessing

We don’t get those back

These are the times when I find inspiration

In my creation, or the separation,

It’s crucial building progress

One day I can stop this,

But that ain’t anytime soon

Baby, it’s a process

Next, “Salt Water,” a massively enjoyable homage to the ocean/beach/coast, departs from the rest of the sound of this album. It’s more of a traditional reggae song, prominently featuring brass, and it’s a bit more stripped down compared to the rest of the production.

Kearney explained that “Salt Water” is one of the songs he wrote during Covid and bounced off Drew, prior to forming Looking East. It’s the only one of the songs from that time period they ended up bringing over to Looking East, and it was the very first song they released together.

“In my opinion, my production has come a long way since, mainly from the hundreds of hours I’ve spent head down in the studio after getting off the road,” Kearney reflected. “I initially was not going to include it on the album, but I kind of wanted an even 10 songs, and people seemed to actually really like that song, so I figured we should throw it on there at the end.  Harry Trexler, one of the Olés horn players, did the trombone, and I added synth trumpet. It’s actually one of only two songs on the album with a live drum kit (‘Break of Day’ being the other), primarily because I hadn’t honed my digital drum skills at the time.”

Break of Day picks up the pace with the ninth track, “Nose Dive,” 2:29 worth of punky reggae rock about relapse into addiction. “This one’s pretty straightforward,” Kearney commented. “I was fresh-ish off the road and partying a bit more than I should have been still. I knew I had to leave that lifestyle behind, so this was kind of a goodbye to that toxic line of thinking. There was a bit of frustration in there about leaving the road and feeling a bit of cabin fever which was part of why I think I was overdoing it with the substances.”

Finally, the album concludes with the chill-inducing, “A Place Among the Stars.”

This heartical roots song features the relatable line in its chorus, “In a world devoid of empathy, and cruelty that I can’t unsee,” timely commentary for the dark times in which our society finds itself entrenched in. While the lyrics may be a bit bleak, they sadly reflect our current reality, and on the contrary, the music feels uplifting and comforting, providing hope that there may be something better that awaits us in the afterlife.

Kearney said that “A Place Among the Stars” was his favorite song to write, “hands down,” and that “there are a lot of different things going on” with the track. “I think this one has more than one meaning, and even evolves over time, so what I write today is my current take on it, plus my take on what I was thinking about when I wrote it,” he explained.

“This song was inspired by the two Alien franchise prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant,” Kearney begain. “The movies and the song deal with themes ranging from what it means to be human and what separates us from non-human life, whether animals or androids/AI, if anything. The hook describes my yearning for a far away, less cruel world after witnessing senseless violence and cruelty during my years here. The verses deal with elements of destruction and rebirth and the indifference of the universe (and creator, for those that believe, whatever that is for you) to mass suffering on individual planets. They also touch on our hubris as a species and the destruction we’ve wrought on our only planet.”

Inspired by major life-changing events and using the skills he developed and honed over many years of studio experience, Kearney, along with Drew Gonzales adding the perfect vocals, have created an impressive debut they should be extremely proud of. Fans of California reggae who appreciate music with lyrical depth should really embrace this album.

Editor’s Note: Our current Rootfire Select playlist has been curated by Daniel Kearney. Check it out before its updated again this weekend!