Happy music is just that… it’s happy. Sometimes it might worry, sometimes it might be a bit bashful and sometimes it might even sound a wee bit sad. But there is this hopeful whimsy that is ever present and it cannot be denied. When I sat down to write the songs for my first solo album, I quickly found a pattern to all of the ideas coming out. Although there is a time and place for sorrowful music (and there is a huge space on my iPod dedicated to such), this album needed to be happy because happy is where I live.

There was a long time when happy was a foreign concept to me and it took a lot of work to get here. I was diagnosed with a terminal illness. I was paying for chemotherapy, operations and pain medications out of pocket because I couldn’t get health insurance. I was alienated from friends and family due to depression. I had a couple really bad haircuts. During most of the darker times, I didn’t sing… not publicly and not even in the privacy of my shower. When I started working on getting happy, I also started humming, improvising, serenading. I hadn’t even realized just how unhappy I was until music brought me to such great heights that I couldn’t deny how deep I had fallen. I sang my way to where I am now: this place of daily joy, planned nonsense and not-so-planned pratfalls.

Whether it is love ballads, protest anthems or kids’ songs (and oh boy, do I write some great kid songs!) I want the listener to take away the idea that bliss is theirs to find and make their own. And so I sing happy music. I hope you’ll clap and sing along.

– 2 March 2010