Interview: S.G. Goodman
S.G. Goodman describes her debut album, Old Time Feeling, as an homage to her rural Kentucky roots, and her second, Teeth Marks, as a look inward. Her third record, Planting By the Signs, released in June to critical acclaim, is arguably a hybrid of its predecessors.
After a grueling stretch of touring that took her around the world, headlining her own shows and opening for the likes of My Morning Jacket, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, and Tyler Childers, Goodman challenged herself to write a song cycle grounded in the ancient Appalachian practice of steering the rhythms of life — from gardening to haircuts — according to the cycles of the moon.
“If you zoom out, this record is about the stories we choose to live our life by,” Goodman explains. “Planting by the signs has been a heavily disputed belief system for a long time. My grandmother instructed my mother how to potty train her kids according to the signs. I was weaned from my mother by the signs.”
She spent months studying the subject obsessively, braiding personal stories of grief, resilience, and reconciliation with the central themes she uncovered.
“I had to look myself in the eye a little bit,” she says.
Character-driven songs such as “Snapping Turtle” and “Heaven Song” unfurl like Southern gothic novellas, simultaneously channeling a sense of place and purpose through Goodman’s visceral storytelling and singular voice, which can imbue both vulnerability and vengeance.
“I'm a Southerner and from a small place, but I feel like the themes I present from a regional perspective are pretty applicable to anybody,” she says. “Stories we believe or don't believe — those we carry with us or let go — is a human experience.”
Asheville Stages spoke with Goodman from her home in Murray, Ky., on a brief break between legs of the Planting By the Signs tour. She spoke about the process of writing, recording, and performing songs from the album.
Jay Moye: I’m catching you on a rare day off. How’s it feel?
S.G. Goodman: Well, I’ve had two days here at home. Those first couple days after getting back from tour are just cleaning out the van, unloading all your things, and doing laundry. Tomorrow will be my first relaxed day.
JM: Enjoy it while it lasts. I know it's short-lived.
SG: I definitely will. How’s it going up in Asheville?
JM: It’s been quite a year, but we’re good.
You've been through town a number of times over the last several years, but this will be your first show here since [Tropical Storm Helene]. We're excited to get you back.
SG: My manager lives in Statesville and has family in Asheville, and I have friends there. I'm sure it'll be heartbreaking, but it sounds like mountain people are pretty resilient.
JM: I suppose we are.
Congratulations on the new record; it’s fantastic. How has it felt playing these songs live for the first time?
SG: Well, my band's hot right now. Know what I mean? So, no complaints. I've been having a lot of fun getting to tell this story, and people have been really receptive to let me come at them with a lot of new material.
I'm glad to be touring on the eastern side of the United States for this next leg. The tour started nearly a month ago on the western side, and I ain't got it in me, hardly, to tour over there. I love the people and the places I see, but I just need to teleport to those cities because I'm scared of driving in those mountains. It’s just different.
I don't think people really consider when bands at my level are coming to their city in a van with a gear trailer. I mean, just to get to Portland, crossing between California and Oregon, there's a stretch where you're going straight down for like seven miles. I'm worried about my brakes and wondering, you know, “Did we get the trailer on properly?” It’s too much.
JM: Getting from Nashville to Asheville should be much easier.
So, I admit to cheating by checking out setlists before a show. It looks like you're playing the new record pretty much front to back, presenting it as a full document. Is that intentional?
SG: It is. I’m approaching it that way because it's a full story and a spectrum of the idea of planting by the signs. I play some older material, but I set out to write and perform this record as a complete body of work. I wanted to put the emphasis on art and narrative. That’s very important to me.
JM: What about the planting by the signs concept resonates with you, personally, as a through-line for these stories you ended up writing? It sounds like you had to do quite a bit of research to build your brain on the subject before putting pen to paper.
SG: I did, yes, but it’s a belief system that’s been present in my life since I was a baby. It wasn't something that was really discussed in a formal way. These things were passively talked about or mentioned, but no one in my family ever said, “All right, we're adhering to the signs.”
Personally, my lifestyle has changed so much in the last six-plus years, being separated from the agrarian life I'm used to. I still live in a rural place, but I'm no longer able to spend a lot of time working outside like I used to. I haven't put a garden in the ground in years. I felt called to think about this concept because it doesn't just apply to planting crops or a garden. We're all made up of water, and that's the basic structure of this belief system — that the moon affects water, so different placements of the moon create different conditions for things to happen.
I think I was taking stock of who I am now that I'm spending most of my life in a van, getting out at a venue, then going to the next thing. I’m not experiencing seasons in their fullness in one place. This is a way for me to latch onto a normal rhythm and recognize that, even if I go out and it's winter in one state then come back to Kentucky and it's 80 degrees, I can find some normalcy. That's what stories serve for people. They’re a way to stay connected and reground yourself in who you are. That's why I feel like this is an important thing to discuss and present through music.
JM: Which song on the album came out first?
SG: I wrote “Solitaire” sometime in 2020, but never recorded it in a way I wanted it presented. I didn't, at first, understand how it would go with the theme of planting by the signs. I talk about the river in that song — but not a physical river; I'm talking about Texas Hold’em. What's interesting about cards is there's four suits, which is representative of the four seasons. And the number of cards in a deck [52] is the same as the number of weeks in a year. It’s a symbol of time, and so much of what this concept goes back to. So, I decided this was the right record for that song to make an appearance.
It's hard for me to timestamp the origins of some of my songs because of the way I write. I'll have a line that won't come out for years. I started “Michael Told Me” in 2021, but didn’t finish it until 2024. With “Snapping Turtle,” the images that come up in that song, I first tried to write into a short story when I was in college. That's just the way I write. I like to honor the song and just trust it'll come and appear when it's meant to. If it's meant to stick around, it will. And if it doesn't, that's a good indicator it's not meant to.
JM: Did having the concept and what you knew you wanted to get across with this album make it easier for you to stay on task throughout the writing process?
SG: It was intimidating at first. I'd never set out to write an album with a theme in mind. But, like you said, I read every piece of material I could about planting by the signs. I talked to old people who live their life in this way. So, when it came time to write the songs that made it onto the album, the details were there on their own, organically.
There are certain themes in planting by the signs: like harvesting, planting, tilling, and building. I could see, when a song was forming, what it was meaning within those themes. But I wasn't actively trying to push it. It was happening naturally at that point.
JM: And you, seemingly, wove in stories and insights from your own life.
SG: I don't see how I wouldn't. That’s the signature of how I present music. Most people aren't very good about writing about things they don’t know. I didn't want to beat anybody over the head with the concept. I wanted to show how stories and belief systems make up the small details of the human experience. And I think that was accomplished.
JM: By the time you got to the studio with the stories you wanted to tell, what were you aiming for, sonically?
SG: On the record, I bring up questions of how technology affects older ways of believing. Like on my song, “Satellite,” there’s a tension and juxtaposition between modern elements of music with a very old, narrative form of songwriting. I was open to bigger sounds and different elements. I have a lot of keys on this record.
The way I approached my singing is different than the past. I used my lower range on most of the songs, instead of — and you know, this isn't to brag, it's just the truth — but I can blow. I can wail. And sometimes that's just not necessary. You have to make an artistic decision: Do you want the words in the story to be what stands out, or do you want people to just know that you can sing your ass off? I was pretty discerning about that going into the way I wrote these songs. And it’s honestly made it a lot easier to sing them live. [laughs]
JM: Are there stories from the recording process where a song became something much different than what you had demoed?
SG: Yeah. I call it “studio magic.” Sometimes, things just develop in a natural way on their own, and you can either get in their way or you can just trust and let them reveal themselves. We had a fully produced version of the title track — kind of a rocking, vibey take. I listened back to it before going in the studio one morning and decided there was no way in hell I'd let that go on a record. It just wasn't right.
My co-producer, bandmate, and long-time collaborator, Matt Rowan —who worked on this record with me alongside Drew Vandenberg — in the past few years has really gotten into flat-picking, which is a big departure from his punk rock roots. Listening back to the tracks we’d recorded, I thought it’d be fitting to see how far we could strip that one back.
The night before, I blew out my voice pretty good singing the last track on the record, “Heaven Song,” so I decided to keep the ball rolling and have Matt lead the band, vocally, on “Planting by the Signs.” When we were going over the melody, we were singing together in a call-and-response way. We looked at each other and said, “This is it. Let's track it.” We got some mics up. There are only two takes of it in existence.
JM: Studio magic, indeed.
“Nature's Child” was the first tune we got to hear because you were kind enough to lend it to the Cardinals at the Window compilation benefiting Western North Carolina in the aftermath of the storm, eight months before you released Planting By the Signs. Did you always have Will [Oldham, a.k.a. Bonnie Prince Billy] in mind as a duet partner? And why did you choose that song to contribute to the project?
SG: That song's history with me goes way, way back. It's the only song on the record I didn't write. I came to know it maybe as far back as 2012. I heard a friend I went to college with sing it at an open mic in a very different style than what is presented on this record — a lot faster and more desperate with the vocal approach. But the words, man, I never forgot ‘em.
He left our area for about three years, then showed up on my porch one day. I had him sit in my living room and play it, and I asked him if I could make it my own. That would have probably been 2016. I've since been playing it live every once in a while, and just thought it would be an interesting element to sing it with Will.
We put it on the North Carolina benefit because Tyler Ladd, who wrote it, is from Asheville. And Will has family in Asheville. And, you know, what better way to use music than to help people? I thought it was a good choice.
JM: Well, it was. And we thank you for it.
When you played here last [AVLFest 2024 at The Outpost], you did a few songs from your pre-S.G. Goodman project, The Savage Radley. How has your relationship to those older songs evolved?
SG: The Savage Radley is just a pseudonym I wrote under. I’ve been making records since I was 18, and I'm not embarrassed of anything I’ve done. I can now hear what I was trying to work out in myself. It's an interesting way to have a timestamp on your growth and evolution as a person and an artist. I stand behind a lot of those songs. If I didn't, then I couldn't stand really behind myself.
JM: You have a transparent, conversational relationship with your fans through social media and your Substack (Gas Station Delicacies). For this tour, you’re handing out a disposable camera at each show for audience members to take photos with for a ‘zine you’ll ultimately publish. How’d you get the idea for this experiment?
SG: Some of my hardest touring happened after the [COVID-19] pandemic, when it was like, “Oh my goodness, we can gather together!” I’ve had boots on the ground for many years, playing a lot of shows for someone my [audience] size. At the end of the day, it just goes with my story. Because in my wildest dreams, I hope people at my show talk to somebody they wouldn't usually talk to. Maybe they're not on their phone, and they're reminded that when we see live music, we see it with other people. It’s the communities you build while you're doing music that are important, and we're all adding to each other's story. Putting photos in a ‘zine allows me to fortify these nights into something.
When you release a record, it's not yours anymore. Because, hopefully, a lot of people listen and have their own personal experience with it. It's the same thing at a show. This is a way of capturing a moment in time like you do when you go into a studio to record music. And what better way to do that than to have people take pictures of themselves at our shows? It’s community-building, and it’s been fun. People have been into it, and I appreciate that.
JM: I'll see if I can find my way into a photo or two here in Asheville.
SG: Love it. I can't wait to see everybody. I'm so happy to make it back and to see how y’all’s community has banded together to help out your neighbors.
IF YOU GO
Who: S.G. Goodman with Fust
When: Saturday, Oct. 25, 8 p.m.
Where: Eulogy, 10 Buxton Ave., burialbeer.com/pages/eulogy
Tickets: Sold Out (Wait List)
(Photo by Ryan Hartley)
