Happyness’ third (and best) record, Floatr, is out today and available for you to stream or buy anywhere. In celebration of this special day, I’d like to share my experience in watching this album evolve into the beautiful piece of career-defining art you’ll hear today.
I first met Jonny and Ash when I was working at The Shacklewell Arms, one of the best and most important venues in East London. If you’re a band and you haven’t played the Shacklewell Arms, are you even a band? Doubtful. It was the beginning of a long Friday night shift, and I was preparing for the usual onslaught of entitled drunk hipsters. Two unsuspecting young men approached the bar. ‘Hi!’ said one of them. ‘Hello…’ I replied cautiously. When someone doesn’t immediately order a drink from me, I feel confused and out of my depth, like I’m about to get punched in the face.
‘What can I get you?’ I asked.
‘I think we’ve met before,’ said Jonny.
‘Oh really?’ I replied, searching my mind.
‘Yeah, we’re in a band called Happyness,’ he said, with the familiar embarrassment of having to say your own band name out loud to someone. ‘I think we’ve played together before.’
‘Oh yeah, I think so…’ I said. I couldn’t really remember, but of course I was aware of Happyness. I knew they had released their debut album, Weird Little Birthday Girl, in 2015, and then their follow up, Write In in 2017. I poured them 2 pints of Guiness and gave them little hearts in the foam, which I do for people I like, or for people that look quite menacing, just for my own amusement.
About a year later, I had made some merch for Elena Tonra’s solo project Ex:Re, and was delivering it to her show at Union Chapel. I was at the merch stand, and from a distance I saw Jonny and Ash approaching again. This time I recognised them immediately. They were there seeing their friend’s band Herbal Tea who were supporting. We got talking about Happyness after the show, and they mentioned that they were rethinking their live set-up and were looking for a new guitarist. At that moment, in my slightly drunken mind, there was absolutely no other guitarist who could fill this role apart from me. It would be an absolute travesty if they didn’t get me in the band. I sort of gestured at myself and said ‘Ok I’ll do it.’ They hadn’t asked, but I accepted.
A few weeks later, we met up for a ‘jam session’ at a studio in Peckham. I don’t really ‘jam’ so to speak, I find it really weird and unnerving. I meticulously craft demos, and then we all learn the song in a systematic and probably quite boring way. I brought my guitar and pedals down, and we fucked around for a few hours. It was strangely fun — no one was worried about song structures or guitar sounds; we were just making loud noises. We put down our instruments for a bit to rest our ears. We started sharing stories about sleeping on floors, terrible shows, amazing shows, fights with bandmates, service station food, etc. They would finish one story, and I would cut in saying that the exact same thing had happened to me. We discovered we had a huge amount in common, not just because we both play in indie rock bands, but because we were both in bands with our childhood friends, which can come with an overwhelming amount of emotional baggage.
So they had a new guitarist, but now they needed a bass player. They recruited Anna Vincent, my bandmate (now girlfriend) from another London band I played in called Heavy Heart. Last to join was Scott Roach on guitar & various other instruments, who played with Blaenavon and Social Contract. We would meet up once a week and rehearse in the same tiny room in Peckham until it became too hot, then we would go outside for some air, get pizza, rehearse a bit more, and go home at about midnight. Happyness rehearsals weren’t like any other rehearsal I had been in. Normally in rehearsals we would learn the songs, then play them again, and again, until we got bored. In a Happyness rehearsal there was a lot of fucking around. When we would approach learning a song, we’d usually start with the weird noises and work backwards from there. I had a small notebook where I would write down the song structures, which would prove to be useless. Playing Happyness songs are less of a rehearsed and structured performance, and more about communicating and playing off your bandmates onstage, something which I’d never done previously. One thing that was guaranteed to happen at a Happyness rehearsal was that I would leave with a headache and sore throat from constant laughter. The way Jonny’s mind works is something that to this day never ceases to amaze me, to the extent that I felt inclined to start a Twitter account to note down his various musings, Jonny Out Of Context (@jonnyooc).
Learning about Ash’s experience up to this point was also something that I felt privileged to be a part of in some way. Early on we found out that we grew up in the same neighbourhood in London, which was a huge coincidence considering that I thought I knew everyone my age in my area, of which there were only a handful. Ash had only come out relatively recently, and learning about his long, arduous journey to find his identity through drag was inspiring and admirable.
Soon enough, we had to think about playing an actual show. It seemed none of us had actually thought beyond the tiny sweatbox in Peckham. Reality was sinking in. We were set to play two ‘comeback shows,’ one in Bristol and one in London. We spent the week in Bristol before the show, rehearsing, eating, drinking, and hanging out. It was the end of summer in 2019. The weather was still warm, and we were safe in our weird, insular, hilarious new world. The show was at The Old England pub, a tiny venue in Montpelier area. The capacity was probably only about 50, and trying to fit 5 people onto a tiny stage with an insane amount of instrument switching, tiny keyboards, laptops and guitar pedals was a challenge I had never known. I ended up right next to the toilet door. Looking back on it I probably should’ve played from inside the toilet, although the amount of piss on the floor would’ve been problematic for my guitar pedals.
We were supported by Lazarus Kane, who very kindly lent us their guitar amps. Tensions were high — this gig meant a lot to Jonny and Ash, they hadn’t played live in over two years, and this was a brand new incarnation of the band. But it meant a lot to me too. I had gone through all of this before, and it didn’t have a good effect on me. This time, everything was going to go right. The venue was packed. We all had tequila shots upstairs before the show, and then we nervously headed down to the stage. I started the long, distorted drone of Anvil Bitch. The swirling waves of distortion enveloped the crowd. In the distance, a small light. No, two small lights. Ash walked through the crowd in full drag, 10-inch heels and a flowing blond wig, armed with a bright sparkler in each hand. After some compromising poses, he carefully made his way behind the drums, avoiding laptops and beer bottles.
The show finished with a bang of confetti. To this day I still find tiny bits of glitter in my pedalboard. It was a true celebration of everything we had worked towards together, and a line under everything Jonny and Ash had gone through to get to this point. Happyness was real again, the engines had started, but the car had a brand new, sparkly pink paint job.
Buy Floatr HERE