Hi, How Are You
Hi, How Are You: The Unfinished Album is the sixth self-released music cassette album by singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston, recorded in September 1983. The subtitle refers to the length of the album; Johnston had intended for it to be an hour long release, as a majority of his earlier releases were. Background. Recording. On September 1, 1983, Daniel Johnston was evicted from his brother Dick's home in Houston, Texas. Daniel had been living with Dick throughout the summer and recorded his previous album "Yip/Jump Music" in the garage. Following his eviction, Margie Johnston , his sister, let Daniel live with her in her San Marcos home, where he worked in Pizza Delivery. Margie didn't have any extra furniture for Daniel, so they bought a mattress which was placed on a floor for him to sleep on. Margie notes that Daniel thrived in this environment because he was allowed to make a mess. The backing music to the song 'Desperate Man Blues' comes from a song by Johnny Dankworth titled 'Desperate Dan' from the album 'England's Ambassador of Jazz', which Johnston owned. The track resonated heavily with Johnston, leading to its inclusion on  the album. The album is one of the most sonically varied of Johnston's early output. While earlier records found him focusing on piano or chord organ songs almost exclusively, this album blends both approaches along with experiments in tape and noise collage, and some tentative playing on a stringed instrument, referred to as a guitar, a toy guitar, or a ukulele. Artwork / Title. The album's artwork is a sketch of '"Jeremiah The Frog of Innosense'" (sic), a character created by Johnston inspired by an old rubber stamp box he discovered while working at AstroWorld that previous summer. The  box featured a picture of a frog along with the text 'Hi, How Are You?' Johnston became inspired by the phrase and remembered that he had previously used it in his song '"Grievances",' from Songs of Pain."And I saw you at the funeral, you were standing there like a temple" "I said, "Hi, how are you? Hello"" "And I pulled up a casket and crawled in" Since he had already called back to Grievances countless times throughout his previous tapes, he felt it was only appropriate to continue to use the phrase as yet another call-back. 'Jeremiah', the  frog's name, was taken from the song Joy To The World by Three Dog Night, which opens with the lyric, "'Jeremiah was a bullfrog.'" Promotion. Daniel would promote the album through handing out copies to people he met. One individual given a copy of the album was Kathy McCarty, who said that 'That weird kid is probably the only genius I've met in my life!" This was the first Daniel Johnston album to be given a widely distributed release as a vinyl LP; it was released on Homestead Records in 1988. Legacy. In 1988, when the album was  pressed on LP by Homestead Records, Mark Lerario for the "Reading Eagle" said that it sounded like 'A basement tape haphazardly put together by deaf hippies.' That same year, the Reivers' cover of 'Walking the Cow' was released as a bonus track on the CD release of their 1985 album "Translate Slowly". By the early 1990s, Johnston, as well as the album continued to spread into notoriety, with the song 'Big Business Monkey' appearing in the soundtrack to the 1990 film, Slacker, and Firehose including a cover of 'Walking the Cow' on their album "Flyin' the Flannel". By 1992 Kurt  Cobain began wearing a t-shirt of the album's cover, launching Johnston into mainstream popularity. Two years later, in 1994, Kathy McCarty released her Johnston tribute album, which featured five tracks from 'Hi How Are You,' 'Walking the Cow,' 'I Am A Baby (In My Universe),' 'Hey Joe,' 'Desperate Man Blues' and 'Running Water.' In 1996, Dump included a cover of 'Hey Joe,' on the VHS "'Dump Versus Joost Visser - The Makers Of Smooth Music".' Two years later Sparklehorse also released a cover of Hey Joe on their second album "Good Morning Spider". Walking the Cow has become a  popular song to cover. Between 2001 - 2016, it was covered by A Camp (on her self titled debut), TV on the Radio (For ""), Mike Watt, Alicja-Pop, Jaya The Cat, Adrian Crowley & James Yorkston, and Porridge Radio. In 2006, Ty Burr Globe for the Record-Journal described 'Walking the Cow' as 'Demented and heartbreakingly fragile', and in 2009, the song was used in the soundtrack to "Archie's Final Project" and the following year Attenberg used the song 'I Am A Baby (In My Universe)' A 2015 documentary about Johnston, titled "Hi, How Are You Daniel Johnston?" was named after  the record. In 2018, the Mayor of Austin, Texas, declared January 22 (Johnston's birthday) to be 'Hi, How Are You' Day, a day dedicated to mental health awareness funded by the non-profit organisation of the same name. In 2019, American post-disco duo De Lux released a cover of 'Get Yourself Together.' On April 9, 2021, The Johnston estate announced an NFT based on the album's cover.