— Ann Powers, critic and correspondent, NPR Music
SG Goodman gazes into the distance as she begins the first song of this tiny desk session, rocking her body from side to side, connecting with an inner power and also just out of reach: Maybe it’s something in her past or the image of someone she cares about, or maybe it’s just wild, torn hope.
“I see all my love coming back to me – I can see it!” she wails in her piercing, haunted soprano voice. Her band revs up the engine beneath her as she testifies about a rock and roll epiphany. As drummer Stephen Montgomery and bassist Mark Sloan push the rhythm harder and guitarist Michael Ruth throws in some energetic riffs, she closes her eyes and presses down on her guitar. Music, as Goodman’s songs show us, is a path to survival and transcendence.
A proud and ever-questioning Southerner who invokes Tyler Childers, Dolly Parton and her own Kentucky accent in her between-song banter, Goodman released her debut album Old-time feeling early in the pandemic and they amazing tooth marks in June of this year.
Goodman’s songs cultivate a direct gaze as they confront grief and seek understanding. The other two songs featured here, “If You Were Someone I Loved” and “Space and Time,” demonstrate the breadth of expression she and her band achieve when they keep their feet firmly on the ground of grassroots rock, the kind that reverberating from bar stages and garages in Hickman, Kentucky, and countless small American towns like it.
Goodman’s stories and sound are very special, but she’s a heroine with big arms, an ordinary woman learning to move on. You can see it, that commitment and resilience, in every moment of this performance.
setlist
- “All My Love Comes Back To Me”
- “If You Were Someone I Love”
- “Space and time”
Musician
- SG Goodman: vocals, electric guitar
- Michael Ruth: electric guitar
- Mark Sloan: bass, vocals
- Stephen Montgomery: drums
Tiny Desk Team
- Producer: Bob Boilen
- Direction/editing: Maia Stern
- Sound engineer: Neil Tevault
- Audio Mixing: Josh Rogosin
- Series Producer: Bobby Carter
- Videographers: Maia Stern, Joshua Bryant, Kara Frame
- Audio assistant: Andie Hüther
- Production Assistant: Jill Britton
- Tiny Desk Team: Suraya Mohamed, Marissa Lorusso, Hazel Cills, Ashley Pointer
- Vice President, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins
- Senior Vice President, Programming: Anya Grundmann
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