In the fall of 2020, during the reign of deep Covid, I worked in-person as a frontline behavioral healthcare counselor at a residential facility for adults with serious mental illness.
It was a strange time to be a commuter. And as I drove from my apartment in Rohnert Park to the facility in Santa Rosa on the deserted 101, it was hard not to imagine that the world had ended right under my nose.
I fell into a sort of paranoid solipsism on these drives, lost in an anxious dream that people would never leave their houses again, that we had been placed in a continuous stasis from which there was no escape. That is, until I started noticing the strange evidence of other people along the highway, proof that I was not alone in the world.
Bedsheets and torn cardboard canvases, affixed with twine to chain-link fences, began appearing at freeway onramps and along frontage roads. All of them bearing the same hastily scrawled or spray-painted message: “Listen To The Happys.”
Nick Petty came up with the idea to start a band in 2012 while living in a halfway house in San Francisco. He had recently been released from jail and was doing his best to envision life free of the OxyContin and heroin habit that had been following him for years. While discussing potential names with a friend, he landed on The Happys as a tongue-in-cheek description of the music he wanted to make and the conditions he currently found himself in.
Now, in 2025, sitting in the attic of a barn on the property of the San Rafael Elks Club, The Happys’ current rehearsal space, Petty tells me, “Writing is what kept, and keeps, me sane.” As he tells it, he has been clean from opiates since that stint.
The current lineup of The Happys comprises Brett Brazil (bass/vocals), Alejandro Sanchez (lead guitar/vocals), Elijah Smetzer (drums) and Petty (songwriter/lead vocals). The band prides itself on having a wide range of influences and a somewhat chameleonic sound.
During the interview, they cite Kurt Cobain, Eliot Smith and Sublime as influences, and their most popular songs on Spotify tilt from surf-rock to post-punk to arena-rock anthems. It is hard to pin down their specific genre within the vague boundaries of “rock.” This amorphousness works, though, as it is undergirded by excessive energy and dedication from every member of the band. “All of us are all in on this,” Sanchez tells me. “We are in it for the long run.”
In 2019, Petty’s father passed away, and he was pushed into a bit of an existential crisis. “I just started thinking about the time I have left and what I wanted to do with it,” Petty notes. He decided to channel this angst into The Happys, a project that had already ferried him through one crisis years earlier. Starting around this time, The Happys crew started putting up makeshift signs around the North Bay, encouraging anyone and everyone to listen to them.
“The signs were inspired by graffiti,” Petty says. “And garage sale signs,” Brazil adds. The idea was guerrilla and anti-algorithm. In an age where musicians are encouraged to have an online presence and market themselves to specific demographics, The Happys decided to aggressively market themselves to literally whomever happened to be driving down the freeway that day.
After an especially long overnight shift back in 2020, I drove by another sign that read, “Listen to The Happys,” and finally caved. I loaded up their music on the spot and started listening. Several months later, as the world began coming back into focus, I saw a flyer advertising a live performance by The Happys in front of George’s Nightclub in San Rafael as a part of the Dine Under the Lights event series. Dear reader, I went and saw The Happys live. I bought a bumper sticker that says, “Listen to The Happys,” and it is still on my car. If anyone has ever wondered if this sort of marketing works, it at the very least did on me.
Sanchez claims that over the past five years, any time there is a Happys show in or around the Bay Area, they are approached by people who claim they came because of all the signs. “People come up to us and are like, ‘I’ve been waiting to meet you guys,’” he says with a nervous chuckle. He is also quick to qualify that he doesn’t think the signs are solely, or mainly, responsible for the growing success they’ve been experiencing over the past half-decade. “What helps us is that we are down to play a show anywhere and everywhere,” he states.
“I don’t think people understand how hard we work at this,” Petty adds. Outside of traditional venues, The Happys have played shows at Petaluma High School, non-profit organizations and substance use facilities. When Jack White played a pop-up show at the Phoenix in Petaluma in October 2024, The Happys played a pop-up show outside it for people waiting to get into the show.
At this point in the interview, I ask Petty if he feels like he might have some obsessive tendencies about the band. He responds by nodding and offering me a fist-bump.
It didn’t feel right to just interview the band about the signs. Obviously, they were going to have a positive pitch. I wanted to hear a counter opinion, a voice from the community on how they feel about the presence of so much DIY marketing. So I turned to the only reliable source of information gathering I could think of: Reddit. Creating a burner account, I posted on the Sonoma and Marin County subreddits asking what people thought of the signs.
As it stands at the time of writing this, the threads have a combined total of more than 200 comments. Some commenters hate the signs and think they are just litter; others respect the hustle but aren’t a fan of the music. Others still love the signs and encourage everyone to see The Happys live, promising an excellent show. One commenter in particular observed that a real journalist wouldn’t lazily poll Reddit for opinions. Ouch.
Judgments aside, one thing is irrefutable: People know who The Happys are and feel passionate one way or the other about their presence in the North Bay.
Petty is quick to address the litter question when I ask about it. “We take trash that is already there and make signs out of it. I’ve also hauled a bunch of litter off the highway to try and clean it up,” he states. The signs, then, are part of a green mindset: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. As far as the people who hate the signs and call them a nuisance, he says quite matter-of-factly, “Some people hate to see other people following their dreams.”
Speaking of following dreams, in the past five years, The Happys have released a full-length album, sold out Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley and have performed as openers for The Mad Caddies, Hobo Johnson and Sublime with Rome. They are currently preparing for an East Coast tour, which will be the first part of a nationwide tour, and will be releasing a new album in the coming months, titled Listen to The Happys.
When I ask the members about their long-term plans for the band, Sanchez and Brazil tell me they value the possibility of longevity. Smetzer says he wants to reach as wide an audience as he can. When I ask Petty the same question, he smiles for a second and then says, “Biggest band in the world.”
More info at thehappysofficial.com.
