Page 136 - July ONLINE VERSION

Tyler Goodson is undoubt- nerves took over. Instead of butterflies, it was big
Just
As
I N T E R V I E W W I T H
Am.
Interview by Tammy Yosich
Written up by: Merideth Myers
ZPG: I love that you brought your guitar!
Start at the beginning Tyler, when did mu-
sic start for you?
TG: When I was very young. My grandfather and
father played Bluegrass before I was born, so I was
literally listening to it since birth. Soon I was visiting
my grandparents’ house and listening to bluegrass,
and them putting a guitar in my hands and saying,
“Here we go.” So with that, and my grandmother
having me watch a recording she made of Chuck
Berry’s song Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll documentary,
music just resonated in my soul. I bet I watched that
Berry video every day, for three or four years when I
was little.
ZPG: How old were you when a guitar was
first put in your hand?
TG: Probably three or four years old. It was a little
guitar, not very big, but it felt like a huge surfboard to
me. When I was young, I had too much wax pro-
duction in my ears, and I was legally deaf up until
the second or third grade, and the teachers noticed
I wasn’t really paying attention. When I was playing
before that, I would put my jawbone on the guitar to
connect with the vibrations.
ZPG: Yes, we’ve talked about that in a
previous interview! I think we sometimes
take our hearing for granted, however we
136 www.zoegracepublishing.com
that he felt like he had this conduit, this
edly his own man. He happens! You work through it by putting yourself in
hawks and eagles, even a fire-breathing dragon. That
knows his music, where he
those situations as much as possible. You’ll become
wants to take his image,
and is certainly at home numb to it, or that even if you’re shaking inside,
you can still appear to be composed on the outside.
with a guitar in his hand. You have to put in the hours of feeling that way and
By the end of the interview,
facing that fear. It’ll eventually put a fire under you
to change that, to where you’ll want to approach it
I thought I had asked such
T Y L E R G O O D S O N powerful questions that it differently. You might have to do brain homework or
exercises, but you can change it, for sure.
moved Goodson to tears.
However, it turns out he
has a sensitivity to lights. ZPG: You sing also, right?
TG: Yes. I didn’t do that until I couldn’t find some-
Goodson is one of the most
humble guys I have ever body to sing, so I started. It worked out. Ultimately,
I want to be playing like Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray
had the pleasure of meeting. Vaughan, and Duane Allman. However, right now
Seriously, ever.
I get hired to do solo acts, so I have to know four
hours of material, so I had to learn to sing if I wanted
know people like Beethoven, who used the to keep playing guitar.
vibrations to produce really great music
even though he was deaf. It’s amazing that ZPG: Do you write songs?
at such a young age, Tyler, that you almost TG: Yes, I do, but not as much as I’d like. I play gigs
instinctively knew to do that. pretty often, probably 200 to 250 dates a year in
TG: Well, music is vibrations and rhythms so if Jackson and the surrounding areas. I stay busy doing
you’re in tune with that, it will feel right when you that.
put your head close to the guitar. I especially can
sense it while playing bluegrass. My dad showed me ZPG: Do you think Jackson will ever get to
a blues lick, and that was my introduction to the the point where we can venues like Nash-
blues, but I never really got into it until I watched ville that plays music all day?
Stevie Ray Vaughan when I was in high school, and TG: The town is definitely big enough, and we have
then I just started digging backwards, down to the enough musicians, it’s just having the outlets, avail-
1920’s. ability, and support to get that going. Jackson’s tour- is just a spin off of what they were normally doing,
ism needs to grow just a little bit more to get there. I
ZPG: That guitar almost appears to be an could see Jackson growing into that. I’ve done some
extension of your body. lunch gigs, at Redbones and currently at Hub City
TG: I want it to be! It’s the easiest way to express Deli, and that’s going well.
myself.
ZPG: Where do your lyrics come from
when you’re writing a song?
TG: To me it’s given, it’s something that you hear
inside of you. It’s pulled out. I don’t just sit and write
lines and words, it’s more about the notes. I like to
sit around and play music, and if I’m playing a song,
I will hear words come out of that music, but the
ZPG: Do you remember the first time you music has to be there first for me.
got on stage?
TG: Yes, everything I knew went away because my ZPG: In a 2015 interview, Tom Petty said
ZGP Magazine ZGP Magazine www.zoegracepublishing.com
connection to musical energy. He said he
doesn’t take it for granted and he under-
stands that there’s a lot of hard work to
maintain that connection. Do you feel like
cal energy?
you have some sort of connection to musi-
TG: Yes, I really do. It’s not a sense of having power,
or that you sound good, it’s just a connection coming
from up above that hits your heart and goes out into
the audience and then comes back.
ZPG: I’m always amazed by people who
can play something from hearing it. Can
you do that?
TG: I wish. That comes from playing your instru-
ment so much that when you hear a sound you can
hear where it is on your instrument. To me, a light
bulb rattle, sounds like the key of E. An ambulance
siren sounds like the key of A. There’s a lot of differ-
ent stuff like that, you just got to mess with it.
ZPG: So, you said that you guys play at
Hub City Deli, right? Are you part of the
band Electric Gumbo? Where did that
name come from?
TG: Yes, it’s Allen Rothrock, Jake Flippin, and Stan
Clayton. It’s just other bands that have come togeth-
er. They were doing an acoustic thing and I brought
some west coast style pedal steel, where it’s a little bit
raunchier, swampy sounding rather than Nashville
sounding, like Hank Williams stuff. That’s where
the jambalaya, gumbo vibe comes in, and “electric”
since they're normally acoustic. It’s just an experi-
ment, and a really cool band name. We’ve been doing
it for about three months.
ZPG: You’ve been playing music for at
least 15 years, maybe longer. When you
first came on the scene, does any particular
acts of kindess stand out to you?
TG: Yes, there’s multiple of those, but the most
significant would be playing with Chuck McGill and
Paula Bridges, for sure. We played every Friday at
Mulligans, working that show and getting it built
up to something, and having the crowd built up so
that they came out more. It was really special, just a
special time. Continued Next Page
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