For those fans who make the wise choice to pick up the physical version of Joel Plaskett’s new Scrappy Happiness album, they will be pleased to know that the Canadian songwriting hero has recorded an acoustic session video to be included with the release.
“I just thought it would be nice to add a little more content,” Plaskett tells Exclaim! “We wanted to create something for the people who buy the physical CD.”
The simple eight-song acoustic set features some new songs and some old, and is meant to offer fans a glimpse of “the songwriter at work,” explains Plaskett.
“I just like making stuff,” he continues. “It’s nice to keep creating and presenting things in different ways.”
Plaskett says he wrote most of Scrappy Happiness on an acoustic guitar, and that a cordless add-on set will let fans hear how his songs sound before they reach the studio.
“What I hear a lot these days is music that sounds either hi-fi or produced. But at the heart of it, I don’t really hear a great song, or I don’t hear a lot of melody. Or I don’t hear the words,” Plaskett says. “There’s a lot of different ways that people listen to music — not everything is supposed to be about words. But what I like about music are things like melody and language and tension. I like rock’n’roll. I like guitar solos, and that all goes into the frame. If people like the songs, it just gives them another version of it.”
While the noble effort will undoubtedly make diehard fans very happy, Plaskett himself has resigned to the ways of the internet. “I’m sure it’ll end up on YouTube the day after it comes out,” he says of the video.