Episode 113 - Happy Now

In this episode I talk about my album "Happy Now?" which came out in May of 2021 and all of the influences and other stuff surrounding it, mostly while the album distractingly plays in the background! Enjoy!

Also feel free to email me at db@derekbrink.com with your questions, comments, objections, rebuttals, and spam!

No time index since it's all just one topic, but here are some photos!

Here's the cover. Which is also pretty much the cover for the album...with a podcast logo on it.

Mentioned my trimmed beard in the episode and promised a picture. So here you go! It's weird being able to feel air on my neck!

This is the E-Bow, which I reference several times in the episode. Thought some folks might want to see what it looks like. There's supposed to be a border separating the two pictures, but I don't know what the hell happened to that.

Something I didn't really get into in the episode (see? following the blog gets you extra stuff!) is the stuff that influenced the tone of the record. These aren't so much musical influences...they're more like "I want the album to sound like THAT" type of influences that went into the mixdown and production. These albums were in constant rotation while I was mixing and mastering and I think the album benefitted from it. In the photo are Elvis Costello's "Get Happy," Jason Isbell's "Here We Rest," Guided By Voices' "Alien Lanes," The Tragically Hip's "Day for Night," Sloan's "One Chord to Another," The Velvet Underground's self-titled album, and Bob Mould's "District Line."

Here's a picture of most of the albums I mentioned in the episode--although I'm realizing now I mentioned Sugar's "Copper Blue" and it isn't in any of these photos.  Oops.  Also the E-Bow in the foreground and a Telecaster in the background, both of which featured heavily on the album.

A few of the albums mentioned - Queen's "A Night at the Opera" (heavily influenced "Denouement"), Alanis Morissette's "Flavors of Entanglement" which I mostly mentioned in hindsight, Drive-By Truckers' "The Dirty South," and The Tragically Hip's "We Are The Same."

More albums! In this case we've got the Replacements' complete collection in a box set Rhino issued a few years ago, Mr. Big's "Hey Man" which is highly underappreciated and most clearly catches the vibe I'm talking about on "Fight to Win," Michael Manring's "Thonk" which is referenced when I'm talking about the E-Bow, and Bowie's "Heathen" which heavily informed "Lonely" and is maybe my favorite Bowie album.

How many more albums could there possibly be??? (Eight. There are eight.) Here we have Old 97s' "Drag It Up," My old band Uncle Dick's semi-album "One" which I mention several times in the episode, the soundtrack to the movie "Hard Core Logo" which is kind of a left-field choice...and Bowie's "Heroes" which is mentioned in "Blue Tattoo" alongside the "Hard Core Logo" soundtrack. This is a weird album, I'm just realizing...

And last buy certainly not least...  I'm just now realizing that these photos posted in almost exactly reverse order from how they're referenced in the show. But I'm not fixing it! Here we have Cheap Trick's first (self-titled) album, Bob Mould's "Silver Age" (maybe his best album, IMO), The Hold Steady's "Stay Positive" which incidentally is when I first jumped on board with that band, and The Get Up Kids' "Something to Write Home About" which heavily informed the tone of the whole thing, not to mention the second track on the album.