Happy started her recording career while working as an apprentice engineer at Cathedral Sound Studios in Rensselaer, New York, a suburb of Albany, NY. She learned the equipment by recording her own songs. Pat Tessitore, the owner of Cathedral, was impressed by Happy's talent and encouraged her, even giving her free studio time to play around with the equipment and record her songs.
Her first 4 albums (Rhodes I, Rhodes II, Rearmament and Ecto) were recorded by Happy, all alone in the studio. She played acoustic guitar and keyboards and used lots of overdubs for her voice and the instruments. Happy produced the albums herself and even engineered quite a few of the songs. Pat Tessitore introduced Happy to Kevin Bartlett, who also recorded his albums at Cathedral Sound Studios.
When Happy and Kevin Bartlett met in 1986, Kevin talked Happy into letting him release her music on Aural Gratification. By then, she had amassed enough songs for 2 albums. They gathered together all the tapes of the various songs and Rhodes I and Rhodes II were born. Later that year, Happy released Rearmament, and Ectowas released in 1987. Those 1st 4 albums were originally only released on cassette, but thanks to the encouragement of her fans on the Ecto mailing list, Happy re-released them on CD in May 1992, complete with bonus tracks on all 4 CDs. Happy even thanked the Ectophiles in the liner notes of the 4 CDs.
Between Ecto and Warpaint, Happy and Kevin joined forces professionally as Bartlett\Rhodes. They never released any music but did play live in the Albany area a few times. In mid-1989 they decided to continue as they had started, as separate artists. Happy then began work on Warpaint in 1990.
The albums since Ecto were more professionally recorded (she and Kevin took out bank loans to make sure they were as high-quality they could possibly make them) and use more musicians, though it's mainly just Happy and Kevin on the records. Until the latest (Many Worlds Are Born Tonight), all of Happy's albums had been recorded at Cathedral Sound Studios.
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