Steve Goodman biography

[fezo]

This was actually released last year but it's new to me...

Steve Goodman: Facing the Music. Now it's not the best written book in the world and if you aren't nuts about Goodman in the first place it probably won't spin your chair, but if you are a Goodman fanatic you'll love it. Better that 700 pages with lots of little stories and such.

It'll be 24 years in September and I still miss him.

[RM]

This may be a bit of serendipity. I recently won a wager that rewarded me with a gift card to Borders. I mainly know Goodman from his association with John Prine. Is that time period covered in the book ?

[fezo]

Absolutely! This book covers everything from his parents getting married to tributes after his death.

Goodman's production work on Bruised Orange was a real highlight in the Prine catalog.

I never did get to see Goodman except on TV. I saw Prine back in college. It cost me a quarter. He was 24 at the time.

[charlene]

http://clayeals.com/

[RM]

Done deal. I just ordered it. Thanks for the link. I hope this MageeNet site isn't a scam. (just joking, I know who it is)

[vlmagee]

Ron, you make me smile! You should be happy to know that I recognized the "measongster" in your email address, and thought "I know this person"! So then I came here and discovered this new thread. It's an amazing book. If you are a Goodman fanatic, you'll love it. The book actually numbers 800 pages, and was definitely a labor of love. Clay spent something like 8 or 9 years working on it, full time for the last several years. He was lucky to find a publisher who gave him a free hand, and didn't make him cut it to pieces. If it happened, it's in the book!

PS: There are some interesting mentions of Lightfoot, including the way that Lightfoot's train song (Canadian Railroad Trilogy) influenced Goodman's (City of New Orleans). Lightfoot was also one of the many people interviewed for the book.

PPS: Thanks, Fezo, for mentioning the book here!

[brink-]

Hey Fezo, welcome back!

I loved the book, one of our favorite singers (Bill Hall) got an autographed copy for me. It is a great read, so much information in it, I loved it. It is now sitting in my office at work so everyone will ask me about it and I can show them it is autographed, but I don't lend it out to anyone. Our Border's store here has kept several of the books in stock.

Goodman gets a lot of airplay on Sirius Radio - Margaritaville, Buffett was quite a fan too.

[fezo]

Glad to see the Goodman fans (who I knew were in here somewhere) coming out. Being a real short musician named Steve I've always felt a close connection....

There's another Lightfoot mention in the book. Steve opened for him once and Lightfoot called him up to play with band for Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Aside form Steve - "How cool is this?" Indeed.

As if I didn't have enough gems from him that I play already I got a copy of him singing "I'm My Own Grandpa." Couldn't resist. Oh! Bring up another connection - like Gord, Steve covered the old Leroy Van Dyke "The Auctioneer." It (along with Grandpa) is a bonus track on the Somebody Else's Troubles (likely my favorite of his releases) CD.

[RM]

I have received the book, and figure by the time I get through it I'll know more about Goodman than I do about my own family. Thanks for the prompt service.

[fezo]

Originally Posted by RM

I have received the book, and figure by the time I get through it I'll know more about Goodman than I do about my own family.

Yeah, that's about right. It is nothing if not thorough.

It's interesting to me just after reading it I got to transferring my vinyl into digital and have been slowly going through my Goodman collection. I start wondering if he'd have been a bigger name if he'd recorded the Asylum releases like those that went before and after them. I mean the Asylum albums worked off of bigger budgets which led to more complex arrangements while the earlier and later works relied more on Steve himself.

All his albums have some seriously good material on them. Some hang together better than others. He did ask a lot from the listener which no doubt hurt sales.

I find what tend to be two favorite albums are ones where he really comes off as being himself. These would be Somebody Else's Troubles and Affordable Art.

[RM]

fezo, I have a question for you......I went through my cds and the only Goodman disc I have is "Santa Ana Winds". What did you think of that effort ?

[fezo]

It's pretty good. It's not up to the standards of Affordable Art or Somebody Else's Troubles but it's a good, solid piece of work. It's also the album he had just finished up before going in for the bone marrow transplant that he didn't survive. It was released in the week after he died. Not because he died; that just happened to be the release date.

The fact that he was declining so rapidly at that point and could still put that out is amazing to me. You would not know listening to it that anything was wrong.

There was an album put out afterward called Unfinished Business that sounds much more like its title might indicate - that is it is a bunch of songs that they had hanging out and while good they don't hold together as well as Santa Ana Winds does.

Amazingly they still manage to release good new (to anyone other than his management) Goodman material every so often. Such things as The Easter Tapes a great little live radio show. The Steve Goodman Anthology isn't a bad place to start either.

I do have to get the live DVD. I never did get to see him live in person but saw several of the shows the DVD borrows from when they were on PBS. He was an amazing performer. His guitar playing is all the more amazing because he had stubby little hands much like I do. There are things he shouldn't have been able to do. Actually he was told he would never be able to do that which was just the thing to say to him - he loved proving people wrong.