“You don’t want your stuff to vanish,” says Joe Pernice about the twenty-fifth anniversary reissue of Overcome By Happiness. “Not that I’m looking to get famous, but you need to connect with the world. There’s something that reaffirms your own life in that echo that comes back to you—even if it’s your own voice coming back.” The story of Overcome By Happiness is one of great risk and greater payoff. It’s the story of a disgruntled country singer struggling to define himself against prevailing musical trends. It’s the story of a songwriter just finding his voice, an artist so desperate to express himself that he scrapped one band to form another, risking his record contract and arguably his career to put the sounds he heard in his head onto tape. It’s the story of a musician embracing the sounds of his childhood: AM easy listening, sophisticated chamber pop, baroque lounge music, Bread, the Carpenters, Bacharach, Manilow. It’s the story of a poet driving through Massachusetts in a rusted-out Bonneville with a wooden bumper. This time has come for this story to be told on vinyl. Released 25 years later to the day, New West Records is proud to present the remastered 25th anniversary edition of Overcome By Happiness on vinyl for the first time in its existence.
