Over the last 30 years, the existence of singer Anne Richmond Boston’s long-elusive second solo record “I Should Be Happy” has achieved mythic status. The project began in early 1990s as the follow up to her critically acclaimed 1990 solo debut “The Big House of Time.” While the album was eventually completed, its release was complicated by the end of Boston’s marriage to producer/musician Rob Gal and funding drying up at her Atlanta indie label DB Recs. Aside from a few cassette copies Boston made for friends and the press, “Happy” never had an actual release. When Gal shuttered Snack ‘n’ Shack, his Atlanta recording studio, he gave Boston the masters where they sat untouched on a shelf in her house for years.

A lot of life happened in between.

Boston moved to Athens and resumed her role as frontwoman with her old band, the Swimming Pool Q’s and recorded new material with them. She would go on to work as a book designer for the next 30 years and now as a freelance graphic designer. In 2021, Boston and Gal’s daughter Caitlin, who as a toddler inspired the album’s “Amazing,” was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. As a result, the Athens and Atlanta music scenes united to raise over $64,000 to help her pay insurance premiums for surgeries and her successful recovery.

“This is the record I would have put out if I had been in charge 30 years ago.” — Anne Richmond Boston

Through the years, friend Clay Harper, former member of the Atlanta rock act The Coolies and the co-founder of Fellini’s Pizza, has pestered Boston about putting out the long-shelved project. He even put up the money to get the masters digitized.

“Anne would talk about it through the years, and I knew it was important to her,” explains Harper. “Fellini’s Pizza wouldn’t exist without Anne. She is an incredibly generous person. She painted the sign at our first location and did all the artwork for The Coolies Records. I owe her more than I even remember I owe her. The record needed to be out there. It’s a gift to everyone who’s waited this long for it.”

Harper even contributed the project’s wistful title track. He says the song was written in the emotional aftermath of his father’s death. “It’s about hitting those benchmarks in life even when you didn’t think those things would happen for you,” he says. “It’s about getting those things, the house and the kid and you know you should feel like a winning game show contestant but it’s not quite happening.”

When she finally listened back to digitized masters last year, Boston was delighted to rediscover five additional tracks recorded post-“Happy.” Working with longtime Athens producer and former member of the rock act Sugar, David Barbe at his Chase Park studio, Boston built out the new tracks, adding fresh instrumentation while reimagining the album as a quieter, more sonically spare work. During their sessions, old pal Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers popped by for a listen (Boston first met Hood when he was doing sound at the late lamented E. Clayton St. High Hat Music Club in Athens).

The freshly pressed vinyl and CD copies of “I Should Be Happy” sport the familiar bowling ball-and-pins logo of Danny Beard’s namesake Atlanta record label, DB Recs. It represents the first new release by the indie label in 33 years. In addition to issuing Boston’s 1990 debut solo album, DB Recs had released the Swimming Pool Q’s debut LP “The Deep End” in 1981 before their eventual signing to A&M Records. “I knew it was out there and I had always enjoyed what Anne had done in the 1990s so I was happy to help,” Beard reflected last fall, standing a few feet from where copies of the new album were displayed on the wall of his iconic Little Five Points record shop, Wax n Facts. Beard is now planning additional DB Recs releases in the wake of “Happy’s” debut. “It’s a slight reactivation of DB Recs,” Beard acknowledges with a sly smile.

Americana Highways calls “I Should Be Happy” “a delightful reintroduction” while Stereo Embers praises it as “brilliant” and Creative Loafing describes Boston’s voice “as radiant and soaring as ever.”

To celebrate the much-anticipated release of “I Should Be Happy,” Boston will play a pair of shows April 27 at the Rialto Club at Hotel Indigo in Athens and May 20 at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur. Perhaps, appropriately, as she discussed the long-awaited album this week by phone with Eldredge ATL, one sound was abundant — laughter. 

Q: Congrats on all the great press the record is receiving. What can you tell us about the upcoming shows?

A: I’m really excited!  It’s been amazing how positive the response has been. People have been so nice. It’s been wild. The shows are going to be sonically different from the record because there’s just five of us. But rehearsals have been fantastic. [Longtime Q’s guitarist] Bob Elsey came to the first rehearsal last week and that just put the cherry on top. These Athens musicians I’ve been playing with are so great and such good people. It’s been fun to figure out how to make the songs work with this instrumentation. I’m so glad Bob can be a part of these gigs. Neil Golden is the keyboard player and playing bass and sings. John Neff is playing acoustic, electric and dobro guitar and Sam Webber, who is 19 and a great drummer. We have quite an age span in this band, from me to Sam! (laughs).

Q: In preparation for our conversation, I dusted off my 1995 cassette of “I Should Be Happy.” What a difference 30 years makes! Did this feel like giving birth twice?

A: (laughs) Not that I didn’t love the first iteration, but I really love this more pulled back production. It was so cool to be able to take what was and then make it into what it is. We took a different approach this time. Clay Harper is the guy who made this happen. Rob [Gal] had given me the tapes years ago I never really thought anything would come of it. Clay was the one who kept saying, ‘You need to get that record out.’ It was wild listening back because I had completely forgotten that we cut additional songs after the “I Should Be Happy” sessions. They were sort of demos. We fleshed those out and I swapped some of those for songs that had been on the original. This is the record I would have put out if I had been in charge 30 years ago.

Q: What I love about these new songs is many of them are written by or co-written by you, right?

A: Which I had never done! I don’t consider myself a songwriter by any means, but they were things that I had come up with the words for and then [guitarist/bassist] Barry [ Sell] and [guitarist] William [Tonks] or [producer/guitarist] Rob [Gal]  had come up with the music. “Dark Room” came out of me having an idea and a guitar which I don’t really play. I just sat down and wrote it one night. And then I was like, “Wow, I wrote a song.” [laughs]. I called up my friend Laurie [Sargent of New Wave act Face to Face] and played it for her and I ended up recording it. That was so long ago now, it feels like another lifetime.

Q: You literally pushed this record into existence, from designing the album cover to overseeing the additional recording. What kept you motivated to finally release this album?

A: I was in charge for the first time ever on this. I got to make the decisions. We had worked really hard on the first one and Rob had worked hard on it. It was during a time which was tumultuous for us both, but we had created this album and then it was so disappointing when it never came out. I really wanted the world to hear it. And then Clay and Danny really made it happen for me. I’m so grateful.

Q: With this album you have the distinction of singlehandedly reactivating the DB Recs label after, what, a 33-year hiatus?!

A: [laughs] Technically, Danny did that but I’m happy to have given him a reason and to be one of the products that’s happening. What was funny was when we were doing the legal stuff, I asked Danny what the catalog number would be because he had gotten into the hundreds with all of DB Rec’s releases. ‘Rock Lobster’ by The B52’s was the first 45 DB Recs ever put out [in 1978] and that was DB 52. So, when I asked what number this one would be, Danny said, ‘Let’s just go backwards and make this DB 51’ and that’s how we got the catalog number! [laughs].

Q: For a generation of us back in the ‘80s, you, Syd Straw of The Golden Palominos and your then-A&M Records labelmate Marti Jones were a holy trinity of college rock queens. How did the three of you end up doing vocals together on “Speedboat’s Wake” on this record?

A: At the time, we were all doing stuff. I had met Syd when she moved to Athens and Marti happened to be in town for a show and so I asked, ‘Would you please come sing on this record?’ They also recorded vocals for a couple of other songs that are no longer on the record. I’m just so glad they were here to do it. 

Q: One thing that hasn’t changed in 30 years is the sequencing of the album’s final two songs, “Amazing” and “Who Cares.” It still packs a one-two punch. Rob Gal wrote “Amazing” for your then-little girl Caitlin who was dancing around in a purple dress as a baby back then. It’s always been a joyous track, but when I heard “Amazing” again for the first time in 30 years, I got tears in my eyes. Given Caitlin’s cancer diagnosis and recovery a few years back, it now sounds even more celebratory if that’s possible, doesn’t it?

“The record needed to be out there. It’s a gift to everyone who’s waited this long for it.” — Clay Harper

A: She’s 36 now! And yeah, the song has a whole new meaning for us now. The way the community came together and the support we received was just amazing. I’m so grateful and so is she. She’s planning on coming to the shows too!

Q: And of course, the record’s big closing track features NRBQ legend Terry Adams playing piano on the song he-co-wrote, “Who Cares.” A lot of singers would be apprehensive about cutting a vocal with just piano accompaniment. But you cut this live in studio with Terry Adams as your pianist.  What was going through your mind in that vocal booth?

A: Oh my god. It was just unbelievable. I was such a huge fan. A friend, David Greenberger and Terry had written “Who Cares” for someone else who decided not to record it, so David sent me the demo and offered it to me. I remember listening to it and thinking, “Oh my god! I would love to record this song, but who is going to be able to play this?” And David said, “I think NRBQ is playing a show in Atlanta. If you book some studio time, maybe you could get Terry to play it.” I remember thinking, “Yeah, right. Terry Adams is going to play on this record!” And then, there I was, sitting on the piano bench next to him in the studio! I went into the vocal booth where I couldn’t see him, and we did three or four takes and that was it. The version that appears on the record ends with Terry saying, “Well, that had its moments, didn’t it?” Everyone in the room was like, “Are you kidding? Hell yes!” David Barbe and I decided that had to stay on the final version.

Q: I want to close out by asking about the lead paragraph of the story Creative Loafing just published about this album. Writer Charles Farmer kicks off the story by describing his visits to multiple record shops around Atlanta where clerks were all playing “I Should Be Happy” in-store last fall and talking up the record to customers. It’s such a statement about the grassroots support you’ve received through the decades, isn’t it?

A: Well, first of all, I can’t believe that’s true! [laughs]. If it is true, that just kills me. It’s just so sweet. I couldn’t even imagine what, if any, response this would receive after 30 years. I just wanted to put it out there. The fact that people are playing it and liking it is more than I can bear. It really is. I’m so, so grateful.

Anne Richmond Boston, backed by her Swimming Pool Q’s bandmate Bob Elsey, keyboardist Neil Golden, guitarist John Neff and drummer Sam Webber will play album release shows for “I Should Be Happy” Monday, April 27 at the Rialto Club at Hotel Indigo in Athens and Wed. May 20 at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur. 

“I Should Be Happy” is available on vinyl and CD at Wax n Facts, Criminal Records, Wuxtry Records and on many streaming platforms, including Bandcamp and Apple Music.