Antlered Auntlord – Daniel Johnston Covers

When we started Happy Happy Birthday To Me twenty-one years ago, we did so in hopes of sharing the music of the outsider. Simple but smart, earnest but lighthearted — bands and musicians who channeled a real sense of self without conforming to the musical status quo. People who not just marched to the beat of their own drum, but built that drum themselves. Naturally, we found inspiration in the work of late Texas poet and musician Daniel Johnston—a man more intent in getting his feelings set to tape than he was about sound quality. He understood—even if only on a subconscious level—that the sound of hiss and noise not only didn’t matter, it made his words of hope and heartbreak and fear and desire even more special. We were honored to have him perform at the 2007 Athens Popfest; his set will forever be one of our greatest Popfest performances.

Jump to 2016. We were thrilled to have Daniel Johnston return to Athens Popfest as our special guest and festival headliner. We had to provide his backing band, so we put together an in-house super-duper backing group featuring Jesse Stinnard from Antlered Aunt Lord / Tunabunny and Jake Ward and Marie A. Uhler from Eureka California. Daniel gave us some leeway and some direction for his setlist, and once settled, the band recorded it and sent Daniel a copy so he could rehearse. Unfortunately, the day of the show, the Gulf Coast was hit with a tropical depression, and all flights from Houston were grounded.

We at HHBTM wanted to pay tribute to one of our biggest influences. After some time passed, we listened to the practice recordings, and we knew what we had to do—but we knew we had to make it special. Thus we present you with some of those recordings, The Daniel Johnston Covers Tape, packaged on limited edition cassette with only 100 copies being made. The setlist offers a healthy mix of his classic songs and deeper cuts from all points in his career. Like the spontaneous, raw recordings of his Stress Records releases, Antlered Auntlord: The Daniel Johnston Covers Tape captures a moment in time from when Daniel was an “is” and not a “was.”  Any other tribute would have fallen short; Daniel was life, not death, and while his passing should be mourned, his music should never be treated mournfully.