Jeff Parker ETA IVtet – Happy Today

Happy Today, the third album from guitarist / bandleader Jeff Parker and his long-running ETA IVtet — drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and saxophonist Josh Johnson — engage in their signature, minimalist, form-bending improvisational syntax across two sprawling, LP side-length pieces.

Recorded and mixed in situ at Lodge Room by engineer Bryce Gonzales with a custom-made analog mixer and Nagra stereo tape recorder, Happy Today captures a bright moment during dark times. As Parker shares: "2025 was a very difficult year for me and my family. Dealing with being displaced from the Eaton fires for eight months, and the kind of toll that instability took on my family's mental health and general outlook, coupled with Donald Trump being back in office and basically making life miserable for everyone... There was a lot of sadness and despair. But feeling the sense of community that we created with our concert, and later hearing the recording, seeing the beautiful footage that had been shot and the photographs of such joy to be back in that space and to be making music again: It was a very happy moment. So I called the record Happy Today. It's meant to be a statement of joy." 

Happy Today is ETA IVtet's first recording made outside of the now-shuttered, widely-beloved Los Angeles micro-club ETA. Part laboratory, part low-stakes proving ground, ETA was where the band's collective sound coalesced over the course of a storied seven-year Monday night residency that yielded two critically-acclaimed records — 2022's Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy and 2024's The Way Out of Easy.