Happy Camping
Original release: July 20, 2017 (self-released)
1. Pieces of My Map (4:40)
2. To the Manner Born (4:00)
3. Basin (4:45)
4. When I Lived In Carolina (4:57)
5. Darker (3:18)
6. Happy Camping (3:59)
In the conventional sense, a happy camper is a comfortable, contented person. Happy Camping is Kazyak having reached this state in active form – with sound, lineup, age, and life. The album is dubbed by Frey as the band’s ‘country record’, using simple guitar/bass/drums orchestration. The sound evokes a type of Experimental Americana.
Frey wrote the songs in the months that led up to his wedding. As part of a pre-wedding get-away, he and his wife-to-be visited Alaska, where they helicoptered from the foot of a melting basin to set up camp atop the glacier. The trip marked an inventive approach to making peace with the past, entirely unhooking it from the future ahead. In search of balance and a steady state, Frey and the band seem to have found it.