Bill Frisell's release Good Dog, Happy Man further explores the musical ideas expressed in two previous recordings for Nonesuch, Nashville (1997) and Gone, Just Like a Train (1998). Good Dog, Happy Man reunites guitarist/composer Frisell with the rhythm section featured on Gone, Just Like a Train, bassist Viktor Krauss and drummer Jim Keltner, as well as multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz (Joni Mitchell, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, k.d. lang) on dobro, mandolin, Weissenborn, National steel guitar, and lap and pedal steel guitars, and Wayne Horvitz (Zony Mash, Naked City, The President) on Hammond B-3 organ.

With the addition of Greg Leisz and Wayne Horvitz and fuller orchestrations than on other recent recordings, Good Dog, Happy Man breaks new ground, blending Frisell’s warmly refined sound with such indigenous musical elements as country, blues, bluegrass, and rock. L.A. Weekly, in reviewing Gone, Just Like a Train, said, “What Frisell has begun to fashion on his latest releases is a sensibility as unmistakably American as that of Charles Ives or Duke Ellington, with the harmonic and tonal complexity of both and a seductive melancholy all his own.” The New York Times called Gone, Just Like a Train Frisell’s “simplest and best recording in years.”

The 11 original tunes on Good Dog, Happy Man celebrate Frisell's emergence as a composer who has created a genre unto himself. As with his preceding two albums, he continues in pursuit of a music that reveals a wide emotional range and that ultimately defies categorization. The one non-original composition on the album, a rendition of the traditional folk song "Shenandoah," is performed here with special guest Ry Cooder and dedicated to the guitarist Johnny Smith.