Happy Rhodes

THIS IS AN AUTHORIZED **FAN-RUN** PAGE

Music's the way, the only way I know
It's time to let the brooding heart
Choose the way to go

Hello, welcome to Happy's MySpace page. Just so you know, this is a FAN-RUN PAGE, but with her blessings and helpful suggestions. ALL COMMENTS ARE READ BY HAPPY, AND MESSAGES DIRECTED TO HER WILL BE SENT TO HER - Vickie

Happy Rhodes (her real name) has released 11 albums in her 20+ year career (her 11th, Find Me, was released in late 2007). Happy lives on a beautiful farm in upstate New York with her husband, musician Bob Muller. She has a day job building pro audio equipment for Dangerous Music, and lives her life. She appreciates people who listen to her music, and thanks all her fans for supporting her over the years.

CLICK HERE TO HEAR MORE MUSIC BY HAPPY RHODES


Yet even MORE song samples, by album and in chronological order, can be found at wretchawry.com


ALL 11 of Happy's albums are on YouTube as audio-only files.
http://www.youtube.com/user/happyrhodesalbums

Watch this live clip of "Collective Heart"
Live at Martyrs in Chicago, with Project Lo 11/11/99.

VIDEOS! VIDEOS! VIDEOS!

Ok, not actual videos, since Happy's never made a video to any of her songs, but there are several dozen live clips (audience recordings), interviews, in-studio performances and full-length live concerts on YouTube and MySpace.

They can be found at k8 fan's channel,
xenussister's channel,
In the video section of the profile you're currently reading,
the video section of this profile,
and the video section ofthis profile (those are mainly interviews).

This was being recorded at the same time it was filmed. This is the acoustic version of "Temporary and Eternal" that ended up on her album The Keep. Happy's never made any videos of her songs so this is as close as we'll ever get. It was never released to the public. That's Carl Adami on bass and Kevin Bartlett on electric guitar. This was recorded in 1995. This is a better-quality version that was up previously.

If the video isn't showing up (it comes and goes), the direct URL is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiIqnvFAoHs.

Google video of Happy's cover of Queen's "Lily of the Valley" and her own "Possessed." Turn the captions off by clicking on the "CC" at the bottom of the player. This is at the Tin Angel in Philadelphia in 1996. Kevin Bartlett is on electric guitar and Carl Adami is on bass.

..
Direct YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDu8xn6jxOY

Don't try to tell me there's no
Reason for any moment in time
Every memory of mine
Those years are lines of
Color on my face
My past is warpaint
The past is warpaint

Biography from auntiesocialmusic.com (used with permission)


HAPPY RHODES is an enigma. This is according to the Music Industry, which has never been able to pigeon-hole her into any category. Her music is otherworldly yet substantial and her 4-octave voice has a haunting familiarity to it.

Most listeners find her work difficult to describe and yet she incites an almost unheard of devotion among her fans. She goes from Kate Bush highs to David Bowie lows and you find yourself being beckoned to follow her into her multilayered worlds.

She was born on August 9th, 1965 and named Kimberley Tyler Rhodes. Three days after her birth, while still in the hospital, her brother Mark called her "Happy-baby" because she was so smiley and he couldn't pronounce Kimberley. It seemed so fitting that it stuck. The family never knew her as Kimberley and so when she was 16, she made Happy her legal name.

Happy's youth wasn't easy. She lived in poor neighborhoods, in a poor family and experienced a never-ending onslaught of peer rejection and abandonment. Despite the truly bad odds, she was driven. Music was an early inclination, as were dance and art. Her father, Vernon H. Rhodes Jr., exposed Happy to his very eclectic musical tastes early on. She would sit on the floor in front of his console stereo and listen to Switched-On-Bach until she could sing along with every note. "I remember some Saturday mornings I'd wake up to Bagpipe music BLARING through the house and that meant that he'd be listening to his whole collection all day...... I loved walking around the house, singing along with every record or reel-to-reel tape." When Happy was 11, she got her first guitar. She had no desire to learn the instrument the way everyone else was doing it. She simply wanted to begin writing immediately. Creating was always the main objective for her, not excelling at any one particular instrument. It became instantly clear that Happy's path would not be one of virtuosity. But by the time she was 14, she was already performing her original songs in school shows.

As time went on though, she became increasingly removed from the outer world. High School became a place of alienation for her because she was already driven for a musical future and depression was slowly becoming part of her everyday existence. She knew she needed to do something or she would explode. At age 16, Happy left school and got her G.E.D.

For the next two years, she wrote and made some Open Mic Night appearances at a legendary cafe called Cafe Lena in Saratoga, NY. During this time, she met up with Pat Tessitore, a co-owner of Cathedral Sound Studios in Rensselaer, NY. She approached him with the idea of becoming an intern of sorts, just so she could learn the basics of audio recording. "I knew I wanted to be a professional musician, but didn't really know where to start. So I decided I'd learn how to MAKE records first, get my foot in the door and then figure the rest out later."

Happy never really got the full recording education she was looking for because as soon as Tessitore heard her sing, he insisted on recording everything she'd written up to that point. "She played and it absolutely blew me away. And I had heard a lot of voices in my day", recalls Tessitore. "She brought tears to my eyes."

Soon, Happy met up with another musician and mutual friend of Tessitore's, Kevin Bartlett. Bartlett had been writing his own instrumental music for years and had a small, cassette-only label, called Aural Gratification. He heard Happy's work and asked if she'd like to release her music to the public on his label. She accepted. One of these cassettes made its way to a woman named Vickie Mapes, who at that time, was doing an all-female-artist radio show in Kansas City. She began to play Happy's tapes and circulating samplers to unsuspecting music-lovers. From her efforts, a small fan-base was forming. They organized themselves into what is now known as ECTO, a Happy Rhodes Mailing List. This is a forum through which, music lovers can discuss Happy's work, as well as other "Ectophilic" artists.

Happy released approximately 9 CD's on the Aural Gratification label. In 1997 however, Happy decided that it was time to seek out a different kind of record label. A good friend recommended her to a newly forming label called, Samson Music. Founded by Norm Waitt Jr.(co-founder of the Gateway Computer company), this was a label that Happy felt would take her music to the next level. She signed with them and released "Many Worlds Are Born Tonight" in August of 1998. "I went through a lot of darkness to make that album. It was also the most fun I've ever had making a record." Happy and Samson Music parted ways in early 2000.

Happy lives on a farm in upstate New York with her husband, musician Bob Muller. She currently spends her days building pro-audio equipment for Dangerous Music, a job she likes and finds very satisfying.

She self-released her 11th album, Find Me, in September 2007.

== End auntiesocialmusic.com biography ==

I am transparent
An open book
There's no choice in the matter
But the breath from my mind
Is living air
And the notes from my heart
Are what I share

Words weren't made for cowards
There's not much to hide behind
We can see for a mile
Without our eyes
I can see through a smile
To any lie

..

If people speak in my stead
Do not trust everything that is said
When my thoughts come from me
You will know that it can be believed
I say

If you feel suddenly cool while lying in bed
Open your eyes, I'll be over your head
Now don't be afraid, don't reach out
Just be glad that I exist

I'll be here, I'll be ecto
I'll be here, but I'll be ecto

Happy was the inspiration for the creation of the ecto mailing list and the Ectophiles Guide To Good Music. Ecto the mailing list has been going strong since June 1991 (born from a Kate Bush mailing list) and, while still a marginal home for Happy's fans, it mainly encourages discussion of other arists, especially female artists (male artists are NOT excluded).

Back when ecto first started we designated the term "Ecto music" as a genre to encompass people like Kate Bush, Happy Rhodes, Jane Siberry, Peter Gabriel and others who didn't quite fit into the Rock/Pop/Alternative/whatever categories. Hence the "Other" genre, which is Ecto.


Go here to read an article about Happy and the Internet that appeared in 1993.

REGARDING COMMENTS: All Comments are read, appreciated and saved but I do not accept html on Happy's page. Also, generally, Comments that don't contain a mention about Happy or her music are not posted (except for the Welcome Back Comments, or unless they're from Dot Allison...who in their right mind could delete a Comment from Dot Allison, Happy-centric or not??). I don't mean to be rude, but I really want to keep the page Happy-centric. Blame the fan, not the artist.

HAPPY DOES COME TO THIS PAGE AND READS THE COMMENTS (Hi Hap!) SO IF YOU LEAVE A COMMENT YOU CAN BE SURE SHE'LL SEE IT.

My ears are lucky to hear
These glorious songs
Of inspiration
And voices crafted from
Thunder
The power of life