Heidi Happy performed at Café Nostalgica on March 17 ( Photo: Christopher King )

From the far-away land of Heidi and the Swiss Family Robinson comes musician Heidi Happy. The Charlatan’s Larissa Robyn Johnston caught up with the Swiss songstress before her show at Café Nostalgica to talk and laugh about Canada, her new CD and which capital university is better.

The Charlatan: Welcome to Canada. Aside from the mud and the smell of melting dog crap, what are your thoughts so far on Canada?

Heidi Happy: I love it, but I’ve mainly been to Toronto until now. But I really like it a lot.

TC: What do you like about it?

HH: I think that there are a lot of different areas within one city. I liked Kensington Market a lot. . . . I like the people, I like that there’s a lot going on.

TC: Where did your stage name Heidi Happy come from?

HH: I was asked through friends three years ago to play a solo show and I didn’t have a name yet. And they were all graphic designers so it was important for them to make a flyer. So I needed a name for them to be able to put it on the flyer.

We were just joking around and within five minutes we had this name, Heidi Happy, and nobody ever thought it would stay but then I played a show and got asked for other shows and I didn’t have time to look for another name.

TC: What made you decide to create your music with English lyrics rather than German?

HH: At the time where I wrote my first lyrics, I was doing an exchange in the States. So I came back and we recorded some songs with my Swiss band and for me, then, it was automatic to make English lyrics. And also, I didn’t like the sounds of the Swiss German language. . . . Actually though, I don’t mind the sounds. I think they can be charming. But because my lyrics are so personal, I feel weird to tell them in Swiss German to my Swiss German friends.

TC: What are most of your lyrics about?

HH: Actually about everyday life or what touches me in everyday life. Like it can be about an annoying person or about me being annoying or about something that happened.

TC: Your album comes out in Canada April 7. What do Canadians have to look forward to on that album?

HH: First of all, probably a whole lot of personal stories and it’s something new, you can’t really compare it with other artists style-wise. So I think they can look forward to a surprise.

TC: So we can understand your "star status" in Switzerland, what western musician would you compare yourself to? Be as cocky or modest as you wish.

HH: I wouldn’t want to compare myself to another artist since my goal is to express my feelings and not to sound like somebody else. I also don’t listen to much other music in my composing periods. But if you want to know the three artists I’ve been listening to mostly during the last year, it’s Feist,

Gilbert Bécaud and Hanne Hukkelberg. In Switzerland they like to compare me to Norah Jones and Alicia Keys. I think this is mostly because they don’t know any other women who sing and write their own songs.

TC: Your song, “I Think I’m in Love” — what or who were you in love with when you wrote that song?

HH: [Laughs] I can’t tell you! . . . But actually when I write a
song, sometimes, it can be that while I write it, stories change so one song can be about two people or I mix different stories together in one story.

TC: Speaking about being in love, you’re performing at a University of Ottawa venue and this interview is going in a Carleton paper. So who do you love more – Carleton or the University of Ottawa?

HH: Of course you guys!