b'pop musicbecomes as much a part of the song and the experience as what is said. Chicken Wire and other songs on Overcome by Happiness may have diminishing returns for him, but for his fans they still sound as devastating in 2023 as they did the first time they heard them. I dont even think I was trying to reach people, he says now. I was more trying to get something out of myself, which is why I was stunned by the positive reaction to these songs. I wasnt writing them for other people. I was writing them for myself, and then you have people who come up to you and say that one of those songs changed their life. That blows my mind, because at the time I was just trying to sustain my own life. I was just trying to stay on two feet. The story of Overcome by Happiness is one of great risk and greater payoff. Its the story of a disgruntled country singer struggling to define himself against prevailing musical trends. Its the story of a songwriter just finding his voice, an artist so desperate to express himself that he scrapped one band to form another, jeopardizing his record contract and arguably his career to put what he heard in his head onto tape. Its 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. Its the story of a poet driving through Massachusetts in a rusted-out Bonneville with a wooden bumper. The Pernice Brothers was never a conceptual project, nor a reclamation mission, but rather a sincere exploration by a songwriter only a year or two removed from his MFA studies, who wrote literary songs without the baggage that adjective often implies, who discovered a particular and very personal style of songwriting that hes still refining today.You dont want your stuff to vanish, says Joe about the 25th anniver-sary reissue of Overcome by Happiness. Not that Im looking to get famous, but you need to connect with the world. Theres something that reaffirms your own life in that echo that comes back to youeven if its your own voice coming back.'