Steve Porcaro Discusses ‘The Very Day’

Los Angeles, CA (November 12, 2025)—Steve Porcaro has lived a life of music and has no illusion of becoming the next superstar. He has come to the realization that he just wants to be in his studio, writing and recording his songs. If someone like Bruno Mars were to take one and run with it, like Michael Jackson did with “Human Nature” in 1982, well, that would be great, too.

He has nothing left to prove, as he has pretty much done it all: founding member of Toto, songwriter, film and television composer, first-call session musician on thousands of records, touring artist, synth pioneer. Now, he says, he plans to “stay in his lane.”

“My family has suffered enough with me being the workaholic I’ve been for most of my life,” Porcaro says. “It’s time for me to be somewhat of a human being.”

Slowing down, however, didn’t mean retirement. In the first week of October, Porcaro released his second solo album, The Very Day, nine years after his first, 2016’s Someday/ Somehow. This time, however, technology allowed him to mostly stay at home while still collaborating with longtime friends.

For example, he spent very little time programming drum sounds, knowing that he was going to end up recording them live. Instead, he found a loop to write to and then talked with the intended drummer, most often Shannon Forrest in Nashville.

“He would just intuitively know the kind of things I wanted,” Porcaro says. “I would send [the song demos] to him in Nashville, and he’s not only an incredible drummer, but he’s an incredible engineer and has a state-of-the-art studio and really knows what he’s doing. It’s a gorgeous-sounding studio, and when you get tracks back from Shannon, they sound incredible.”

Porcaro’s piano is also recorded live. “I’m actually able to send MIDI into it,” he says, “but sometimes I’ll just sit down on the piano, play the part and record it. I’ll embrace my imperfections, which make the tracks a little more human than they would have been.”

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Singing lead vocal, however, has always been painful for him, Porcaro says, and for The Very Day, he took full advantage of technology. “I would record the individual phrases of the song and it would loop, and every time it would loop, it would mute the previous track and record to a new track,” he explains. “I could just keep going as long as I wanted until I felt like I sang it decently. Then I would stop that and I would put that in Melodyne.”

Although he was tempted to use programmed horns on the first single, “Miss Jane Sinclair” (co-written with David Kamp), he decided to write the horn parts and call in ringers such as Chuck Findlay, Mark Pender, Larry Williams, Joe Sublett and Andy Martin. “You can tell those first couple Chicago albums are in my DNA,” Porcaro says. “I always loved those horns and James Pankow’s arrangements.”

The low end on the track, meanwhile, was not recorded live, as Porcaro found what he liked in Spectrasonics Trilian. “I just love their Modern Pick sound,” he explains. “I love the sound of pick bass, and there’s not that many bass players who play with a pick like there used to be. I was very spoiled in Toto, where I first had David Hungate and then my brother Mike, who both played with a pick.

The sounds were really defined and you could hear the bass part, but it wasn’t taking up a lot of sonic space in the low end. It would leave a lot of room in the track for what I did.”

After assembling all the stems sent in by the musicians—which also included guitars from Mark Bonilla and Mike Landau, percussion from Lenny Castro, Forrest’s drum tracks, and various vocalists—and adding his own parts, Porcaro would do a rough mix in Logic, establishing the balances, then record stems to send to the mix engineer.

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Veteran engineers Bill Schnee and Mike Malchicoff mixed The Very Day, though Porcaro’s assistant, Mitchell Miller, ended up mixing the longest song on the album, “Water From the Sky.” “There were so many sections, and I really wanted to have my hands on that mix,” Porcaro says with a smile, “so I worked with Mitchell on that one.”

Porcaro is finally doing exactly what he feels he’s supposed to be doing, now that he’s able to devote all of his time to song crafting and recording. “I’m lucky that I’m able to do what I enjoy, which is being in the studio, playing with my gear and finishing my songs,” he says. “It’s really what I love the most.”