Album Notes

About Happy (by David Carn)

I called the CD "Happy" because I kept saying that that was what I wanted the songs to sound like. So I felt that it was an appropriate name. It was also appropriate because we had a lot of fun making it. The first three songs were recorded in August 2007 and the last seven were recorded in January 2008 (with some additional recording in February and March).

Keeping the budget pretty tight, we cut pretty much all the instruments in about seven hours overall in the studio (combined, both August and January). So most of the songs were done live, with only a few overdubs. Also, there was no producer on this project, but Pat McGrath--who was the band leader for the session musicians--and I met twice, each time before going into the studio, and we talked about arrangement. That was pretty much the only production. Everything else just kind of happened, with Pat steering the way and with me trying to explain what I was hearing.

Then I did vocals for a few days. They took a while because I was getting used to the studio experience, and I had to get comfortable. At this point, it was just the engineer and I just doing it ourselves. We also had a couple of friends and musicians in Nashville come lay down some extra vocals.

Then when I got back to Macon (where I was still attending law school) buddies of mine from law school helped me to do a few more overdubs using my home Pro Tools unit. We spent many, many hours in between classes trying to figure out the best way to do things. Ultimately, we got some really great sounds on five of the tracks (background vocals, fiddle/violin, viola, xylophone, electric guitar, percussion). Then we sent everything back on a DVD to Nashville and Stoker (the engineer) mixed everything in.

After some more magic, there was a CD called "Happy."

Now go be happy.