Happy Chichester provides comfort amid hardship with ‘Test Time’

Happy Chichester said he likes to tell people that he’s been working on new album Test Time for his entire life.

While spoken partly in jest, there’s a measure of truth to his words, the album populated with deeply personal songs, some of which date back a decade or more, that come to play as snapshots from experiences with those he holds most dear.

Speaking by phone in late April, the longtime Columbus musician acknowledged that this development is reflective of a larger shift that has taken root over time, with his writing process becoming less driven by a desire “to try to get a song on the charts or to please record label executives,” as he explained it, and evolving into an act of care meant to preserve tender moments and to offer strength and comfort to those around him in need of consoling.

“I might write a love song for my wife, or a song that’s going to help her face a health challenge,” Chichester said. “Or I’m going to write a song for [James] Beoddy as he’s facing his own death.”

Beoddy died in May 2015, and Chichester recalled how he would routinely visit the Columbus poet and artist’s home on the South Side, providing care and company in his final months. In the midst of this back-and-forth, Chichester penned the Test Time track “Stranger Life,” a rhythmic cut built on skittish drums and rubbery bass that serves as equal parts tribute (“A good heart from the South Side”) and a parting of ways (“Oh, I’m going to miss you”), and which he had the fortune to perform for Beoddy in the weeks before he died.

“And he told me he was honored, and I was really just honored to spend that time with him,” Chichester said. “If you go to [his website], there’s this manifesto about his life and his art. And there’s so much of it in so many forms. He really lived his art every single day of his life. And I relate to that.”

It’s far from the first time Chichester has leaned into performance as an act of preservation, with the musician noting how he continues to cover songs written by his late friend, Matthew Merola, who died in 2019 after spending a chunk of his life working as a pediatric nurse in a remote region of Alaska. “I performed his songs on the radio in New York City, and I was able to tell him that months before he died,” said Chichester, who recounted the time he lured Merola from Alaska to Seattle for one of his concerts, intending to introduce him to the president of Sub Pop records. “Decades ago, this cassette I made of Matthew’s songs circulated around, and [the executive] heard it, and was like, ‘This is brilliant.’ … But [Merola] was so anxiety ridden that he left the concert. And we were supposed to get together afterward to work on music, but the next day he just got on a plane and went back to Alaska. It was all just too much for him.”

Though written and assembled over more than a decade, there are throughlines existent within Test Time, Chichester returning to themes such as the power and grace that can be found within love, and the corrupting social and political forces against which these fragile human bonds can provide a degree of comfort. Witness the album-opening “D4,” which registers as something of a dance party at the end of the world, Chichester surveying his broken surroundings but refusing to let these fractures spread within. “You can’t make me feel my hope is gone,” he sings.

Chichester credited this innate pull toward the light to a genetically instilled optimism, joking that while he was born Harold Chichester – a name he shared with his grandfather – his parents began calling him Happy on the first day of his life. “I think it’s just in my nature to try and find some joy,” he said. “And I sort of feel that should be the purpose of life. It can’t all be toil.”

Not that the musician is in any way ignorant of the world’s horrors, which exert their presence on songs such as “Shadowland” (“Stop voting for man that expects support for his abuse,” goes one line) and especially “Knocking at the Door,” an unfiltered expression of disgust that Chichester penned more than a decade ago alongside the late Shawn Smith. “It angers me to see/Such fools to fall for such fools as these,” he sings, a few beats later adding, “Now they’re pumping their fists in victory/Engineering economic slavery/Betting on greed and Jesus.”

“And it’s interesting, because those words were written in 2014, they’ve become more affirmed by the state of the world. And I really don’t want to gloat, because it’s heartbreaking,” Chichester said. “I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but I really feel like in many ways, by 2020 and 2021, our country had been traumatized, whether people know it or not. And our sense of reality has been so warped and fun-house-mirrored that … it can create this trauma, and it can create nihilistic and despondent feelings. And I’ve always been drawn to artists who take a moment to actually look that awful reality in the eye … and then give us something that helps us. And that could be either a sense of solidarity or comfort in some form. Or maybe it’s just something that makes you get up and shake your ass on the dance floor.”