One of the high points of my "year in music" for 2004 would have to be the expressions on the faces of the four members of Goodwin when the curtain parted -- OK, it was a crappy, jerry-rigged curtain, manipulated by frontman Tony Diaz' brother, but a curtain nonetheless -- during their CD release party at the Wreck Room at the end of January. When they saw the sea of faces that were anxiously awaiting their set, you coulda knocked all four of 'em over with a feather.
Since then, the Goodwin guys have continued pounding the boards in Fort Worth, Dallas, and the mid-cities, as well as venturing outside the Metromess for stands at the Vibe in Austin (where they've forged ties with the Austin Indie Alliance) and the Steel Penny Pub in San Angelo. They've played band battles, benefits, and outdoor festivals, winning new converts wherever they went. Through the wonder of internet radio, MP3 sites, and e-commerce, they've sold CDs to fans as far away as Finland and Australia. But the fact remains, several of the most riveting moments in the band's current live set remain unrecorded: songs like "Red," "Apparently," "My Shitty Roommate." Now Goodwin guitarist-songwriter-evil dictator Daniel Gomez and his crew plan to remedy that situation. They're taking some time off from gigging to record a sophomore CD, to be unleashed on the world in the spring of 2005.
Sure, their self-titled debut CD was a revelation -- packed with flag-waving, gorgeously melodic rock anthems that the band performs with raw vitality, passion and power. (If you don't already own
Goodwin, do yourself a favor and go immediately to meetgoodwin.com to cop. I'll wait here.) But the band doesn't view the disc as an unmitigated success. "It was recorded over the course of a year in two different locations with two different engineers, mixed by two different people and mastered by two
other people," said Gomez. "And a couple of the performances were kind of lackluster. This time we're looking to have the sound more consistent, more raw and more
rock. We want this to be our
The Colour and the Shape."
"Our
Stink," chimed in bassist Matt Hembree, who split engineering and mixing duties with Gomez on the debut and whose Wedgwood home (aka Meow Mix) will serve as the studio for CD number two. Hembree isn't just the bassplayer in more than one local muso's dream band: he also plays with prog-rockers Underground Railroad, whose technically demanding tuneage, he says, provides him with a good counterbalance to Goodwin's unbridled emotionalism.
"Our
Bark at the Moon," added Diaz, tongue planted firmly in cheek. Besides fronting Goodwin, working a day job, and studying history at UTA, the barrel-chested singer is part of the three-headed hydra that hosts KTCU's Sunday-night Good Show. There's more: he's worked with graphic artist Kate McDougall to coordinate the music portion of 2004's Experience the Art of Music event at Axis. He's also one of the founders of the Fort Worth Arts Consortium, an amorphous organization of art and music folk seeking to increase public awareness of Cowtown's vibrant scene. A busy guy.
The Foo Fighters, the Replacements, and Ozzy Osbourne might seem like a wide range of benchmarks for a band to aim for, but the guys in Goodwin have grown accustomed to serving as a blank slate onto which listeners, particularly those who write down their opinions for a living, are free to superimpose their own rock dreams. (Comparisons suck, but scribes sure love to make 'em. It's how we attempt to explain our preferences without having to actually describe anything.) Hence, the references in Goodwin's press to artists as disparate as Cheap Trick, Journey, Rush, Bob Mould's Sugar and -- my favorite, because it's so off-the-wall and obscurantist -- Cincinnati's Psychodots. Once Goodwin live staples like their longtime set-opener "Write for You," Everyfan's anthem "Revelation of Revolution," slow-it-down change-of-pace "Glance," and the stripped-down masterpiece of tension-and-release they call "New" have been committed to shiny silver disc, we'll all have to reach into our collective bag of similes for some new "sounds likes."
While all the bandmembers get their two cents in, and will do so at the slightest provocation, make no mistake: Goodwin is Daniel Gomez' baby. Onstage, the self-described "taskmaster" and "overachiever" can beam like a benevolent sun or glower like an angry Aztec god while jogging in place or wowing the crowd with his signature splay-legged leaps. He'll occasionally confound his bandmates by extending intros or deviating from set lists, but he's always working to a plan that's clear in his own mind. Offstage, he's unmistakably the one who calls the shots. "We'll discuss things," joked drummer Damien Stewart, "and then Daniel decides what we're going to do." Stewart knows from his experience playing with his
other band, Pablo and the Hemphill 7, just how challenging it can be to run a band as a democracy. "At the end of the day, someone has to make a decision," he said. "In Goodwin, that's Daniel's job."
It's a cliche, but it's also true: Damien Stewart is a drummer's drummer, a stick-spinning paragon of onstage flash. Other skinsmen line up at Goodwin shows to try and figure out How He Does It, but the real source of Stewart's showmanship is simple: "I'm a total product of the New Orleans public schools." Back home in the Crescent City, he was the "secret weapon" in his high school's drumline. "I was the lone white guy out of 100 drummers," he said. "Drum captains from other schools would check us out and think we were going to be lame because I was there. It was fun to surprise 'em." Migrating to the Fort by way of Kansas City, he made his mark in bands like Ebola, Slowpoke, Route 420, and Brasco before assisting in Pablo's late 2001 birth and replacing Nathan Brown in Goodwin the following year.
"With the first CD," Stewart said, "we really enjoyed handing it to people and telling them 'We did this all by ourselves.' " Back in November, the band met with Bart Rose from First Street Audio to discuss the possibility of working with him on the new CD. In the end, they opted to work at home again. "It just made more sense in terms of cost control and scheduling," said Gomez. "The only aspect we can't handle ourselves is distribution, and unfortunately, Bart wasn't set up to help us with that."
"It's a challenge to us to try and top our first effort," said Hembree. "We want to improve. We know more now than we did then, so the next step is to have a CD that sounds and is recorded better."
Lest you get the impression that Goodwin takes this stuff too seriously, remember: this is the same band that appeared at the Wreck Room's Halloween bash dressed up as the Flintstones (Gomez as Fred, Diaz as Barney, Hembree as Mr. Slate -- "the character no one remembers" -- and Stewart as Bam-Bam, of course). For their CD release party, they armed the audience with poppers (the tiny fireworks, not the amyl nitrate thingies danceclub goers used to favor) and Silly String (prompting the Wreck's wizard of sound Andre Edmonson to plead over the PA, "Come on, people -- that stuff doesn't come out of
anything!"). At the end of another Wreck Room stand, they performed a few bars of the Who's Clear Channel staple "Won't Get Fooled Again," which Gomez concluded by smashing an innocent pawnshop-procured guitar to smithereens. After seeing the recent Donnas-Von Bondies show at Trees in Deep Ellum, Hembree commented, "The thing that bothered me was that none of the bands
smiled. Maybe Goodwin would be more popular if we all wore black and scowled."
Luckily, there's scant chance of that happening. What really makes me chuckle, though, is when I tell people that Goodwin is my favorite band and they ask, "You mean local?" -- as if there were two worlds of music, the "local" and the Real. I've gotten used to being emotionally moved, not just viscerally stirred, by musos who live in the same town as I do, to the point where it's hard for me to relate to folks who still think they need national media to legitimize what they like.
Listen: If what you like is catharsis that comes with loud electric guitars, you should anticipate the incipient arrival of the new Goodwin CD in the same way as you would a candygram from the gods.
