For Louise Goffin, being a rocker chick was not what she had in mind when she went to record her first album back in 1979. But then again, she wasn’t really sure who she was but a producer thought this was who she might be and she went for it. Kid Blue was a decent first outing for the nineteen-year old who had opened for Jackson Browne just a few short years prior. In 1982, she was the youngest artist on the Fast Times At Ridgemont High soundtrack with her co-penned song “Uptown Boys.” Two years later she ended up on another Cameron Crowe-written movie soundtrack, The Wild Life, singing with Go-Go Charlotte Caffey on “No Trespassing.” The songs were fun, upbeat, a sign of their times.
But for Goffin, the daughter of Carole King and Gerry Goffin, her heart and soul always harkened back to times when she was a more pure singer-songwriter and over the years her songs have become fuller, more exploratory into the seeds of emotional reactions, closer to who she was in the beginning, and her latest album showcases Goffin in prime form. Releasing on November 9th, All These Hellos shine with a pleasant afterglow song after song – from “Chinatown” with Rufus Wainwright to “Turn To Gold,” “Bridge Of Sighs” and “The Last Time I Saw My Sister.” Flowing with an uninterrupted sequence, it’s surprising to learn that some of the songs are actually older.
Goffin talked with Glide about the songs she gathered up for All These Hellos, her Laurel Canyon songwriting vibe, taking control of her musical directions and finally realizing she’s a pretty good producer (the Grammy nomination for her mother’s 2011 A Holiday Carole kind of sealed it). But first, after learning of my Louisiana roots, she was excited to tell me about her recent foray into Cajun country for a songwriter’s retreat.
So I hear you’ve been in Cajun Country
I was just in Lafayette in May for the first time. It was hot and humid (laughs) but I loved it. I was actually part of the first South Louisiana Songwriters Festival & Workshop where they had local talent like Marc Broussard and a lot of locals, some known, some not so known, working with established songwriters who came from different parts of the world with the intent to kind of cross-culturalize different regions. There were live shows involved as well. It was really to bring some more attention to Louisiana and it’s talents and writers and I was fortunate to be at the first one and I loved it. I wrote some great songs and made some great friends from your fine state.
Was Michael Doucet from BeauSoleil there?
I wrote with Michael! I wrote a song with Michael, a great song. He’s fantastic. The song we wrote had a lot of real Cajun French in it that I had to keep studying. Every time I would open my mouth to record, I’d be like, “Am I getting the pronunciation right?” (laughs)
Is that something that we are going to get to hear one of these days?
I think that song that I wrote with him is not something that I would sing. First of all, it’s written from the point of view of a guy and it needs to be sung by a guy who also wants to sing in French (laughs). I tend to write these songs and sometimes I forget about them. Usually when I write songs, the person who usually does them is me. I don’t have a publisher running around saying, “Hey, do this song!” I don’t know how much of a market there is for people to cover other people’s songs so primarily I roll like an artist and to be an artist in this day and age, you’re doing eighty million jobs. There is so much I do from morning to night. I make and edit my own videos and I’m doing an interview with you and there’s doing artwork and the manufacturing and playing a show. It’s a lot of organizing and it’s a full-time thing. And people who are writing songs to be covered by other people, that is a full-time job. You know, you write the songs, you demo them, you pitch them; it’s a constant thing. So I write a lot of songs and if I’m not doing them, they tend to sit, you know, which is kind of a shame. But thanks for reminding to call Michael and say, “Hey, what’s happening with that tune?”
All These Hellos sounds like a very, very personal album. Is that how you wanted it to be from the beginning or was that just how it turned out?
Well, all my songs are personal. I write from my own life and I write the way I talk. I don’t go into some other mode when I’m writing, like, oh I’m writing a song now so I’m going to say this differently than I’d say it because you got to make it rhyme. I tend to write like I speak and think.
But some of these songs were written a long time ago and the reason for that is that I started to put together a folder in my dropbox of songs that I really liked that
I either didn’t think were ever recorded in the way they should be or songs that I really liked that I’d written that I intended to record or songs that I wanted to do a more current version of them. And the dropbox got pretty big. Then I had this opportunity where I had an investor say, “You need to be in the studio. I love your records. Why aren’t you in the studio? Why aren’t you making records all the time?” And it was like, well, it costs money to go record the way I want to record. And he just made it possible for me to go in and do that.
So I called Dave Way, who I had done “Fifth Of July” with, which was a one-off single on my Essential Louise Goffin record. I had recorded it in 1988 and I wanted to do a new version of it and I did it with Dave Way and I was so impressed with how fast it came together and how artistic it was that I just thought, well, I’m going to go make this record with him. So we got together and he said, “What songs do you want to do?” And I said, “I got them in this folder.” So we just sat and listened to all the songs and chose what we were going to record. We recorded twenty-four songs, actually, over a period of like stop-and-go. Like, we would do three days in a row and then we’d be off for three weeks; mostly because the songs were already written and the arrangements so there was a really good starting point already on the demos. But also because Dave is so good at what he does and we had amazing musicians.
I wanted to put out like a double/triple record and then decided to just put one song at a time out as a single, digitally. But then I was like, I really want an album. I want a sequence, I want artwork, I want people to hold it. So I settled on ten songs as the first album, which is All These Hellos. So there is another album ready to go.
What can you tell us about the song “The Last Time I Saw My Sister”?
That was written in the nineties. I’d always loved that song and nothing ever happened with it and I started to play it again and I was like, “I really like this song.” And the beauty of doing a song now that was written at another time is that you get all these vibes and it’s like a gift because it’s a different time in my life so I was a different person, I was a younger person, and then to be able to record that song now, it’s like somebody just gave me a song (laughs). It’s like paying it forward to myself in a crazy way. But that song has really come to mean something, especially in the era that we’re living in now where women are finding a voice and I feel like that’s a very woman-empathic story.
Is that one of the oldest songs?
No, the oldest song on there is “Bridge Of Sighs,” which I wrote like thirty-one years ago. It was on a record that came out on Warner Brothers and there was a video and I had big eighties hair in the video (laughs). People loved that song and I wanted to do a version of it now. And it’s really different and I love it. I find it very upbeat and you want to sing along.
The other one that was written a while ago was “Paris France” and it was written in 2008 with John Parish, who works a lot with PJ Harvey, and he and I were collaborating on a lot of songs and that was a song we wrote. I think we submitted it to a movie to be a theme for it or be used in a movie and was never used. That was one of the songs in my dropbox that I thought, this is such a good song, why is this sitting in my dropbox? (laughs)
Same with “Life Lessons.” It was also written in 2008 here in LA with a writer that I was writing with a lot at the time for his record and I always thought that song was unfinished. It was like a piano and a vocal and it went to the bridge and then it went back to the drumbeat and then it went to the bridge again and it was just never finished. But I realized it WAS finished when we went to record it and Timothy Young, the guitar player who is brilliant, said, “I like what it does at the end where it goes to the drumbeat and then it goes back to the bridge.” And I went, “Really? I just tacked that onto the demo because I didn’t know what else to do.” And he goes, “No, I think it’s kind of cool. We should do it that way.” So we ended up doing it that way.
“Turn To Gold” is one of several you wrote with Billy Harvey
The way we wrote that song is kind of funny. Billy was in this songwriting group that sent a prompt out every Friday by email and you’d get a phrase and have to use the phrase in a song. And the phrase was “Take a shot.” I came over that day or Saturday and he said, “Well, I got to write something for this songwriting game, do you want to write something with me?” And I was like, “Okay, what is it?” And I sat at the piano, and you can’t hear it much in the mix but on the demo the piano is very much prevalent but it’s quiet in the mix, which features more like the drums and the eerie organ; crazy, dark chords. Half the time when I would write with Billy, I don’t even know how either of us would come up with anything. It was like songs would drop on our laps and we would finish each other’s sentences and we both would kind of speak in poetry; like, we’d say something and be like, “Write that down, it’s great!” (laughs) We just have this chemistry when we write and sing together.
So we wrote this song and we demoed it that day and I always loved that demo. All the demos I made with Billy Harvey, I’d literally drive around and play them for my friends and anyone that would hear those demos would be like, “Where is this record? I want this right now! How do I get this!” (laughs). I kept thinking that Billy and I would do a duo and we would put these out. In fact, we had a duo called A Fine Surprise, which was the first song we wrote together ever, which is also on this record, another song I love. But that’s how “Turn To Gold” came about. It was just prompted by the phrase, “Take a shot.”
On “Chinatown,” you duet with Rufus Wainwright and your voices sound so good together
Oh, thank you so much. That was another song I wrote with Billy Harvey and I think that was the second song we wrote. “Chinatown” didn’t have all this orchestral thing. It just was a guitar and a piano. Somehow I was thinking that title and I said, “I know it’s such a famous movie with Jack Nicholson but it’s kind of cool.” Then he started coming up with like, “Meet me down the street,” and the lyrics were just very fun, you know.
Unbelievably, that song started with one of those push button things; like he had a Wurlitzer that you push a button, like an autoharp, and it plays a chord and you hit another chord and it plays another chord. So we started out with a beat like that and if you listen to the chord changes, it will make sense to you because they sound like random push button chords. They are weird chord changes. So we were just pushing these buttons and hitting these crazy chords and writing lyrics and melodies over them. That was our first demo of it and then we said, let’s try to actually play this song (laughs). He was playing the guitar and I was hitting the chords and then it took on this whole other mysterious thing to it. We sung it as a duet, with me playing piano and him playing guitar, and because there were so many chords there are actually some mistakes on it. And that was the only representation of the song.
Then when it came to making my record, I wanted to work with Van Dyke Parks, who I had spoken to about writing and he said he didn’t have time to write but if I ever wanted him to do an arrangement, he would love to. So I called him up and I said, “Alright, I’m making a record and I would love you to do a couple of songs.” And he said, “Alright, send me some songs you think would be good.” So I sent him three and he chose “Chinatown,” and it was the least demoed, the least kind of presented song of the three. He said he didn’t want any direction, to leave him alone (laughs); he likes to work on his own and he worked on it and we recorded it without the string arrangement. We recorded the acoustic guitar and a bass and that was it. I sung it first and I said to Van Dyke, “You know, I’d really like to do this as a duet with someone.” And he said, “Who do you think?” And I said, “I think it’d be fun to get Rufus to do it.” He made Rufus’ first record and Van Dyke was one of the people that Rufus came to in the beginning to help him figure out how to present himself as an artist. So he knew him for a lot of years and he said, “Let me call him.” And it was nothing, nothing, nothing and then one day Van Dyke wrote me and said, “I’m so sorry, Louise, but Rufus passed.”
Then like two days later, Van Dyke writes me and says, “I completely made a mistake. I misinterpreted what he said and he’s up for it. So I’m putting you two together.” I already had a vocal on it and then he worked out harmonies to my vocal and did a lot of things in the beginning and afterwards we turned it into a two-part vocal. Once he sung on it, I was like, I have to sing this again. I need to know I’m singing to Rufus Wainwright and an orchestra. I need to be singing TO Rufus and the orchestra. I can’t use a vocal that didn’t have their presence on it. Billy Harvey kind of jokes about it, like, “You kicked me off our song and replaced me with Rufus Wainwright! I’m never going to forgive you!” (laughs)
Do you remember the first emotion you ever wrote about?
I believe I was fifteen. Now, I wrote a lot of songs before I was fifteen but I can’t remember any of them. But when I was fifteen, I wrote this song called “Quiet Times” and it was kind of a wistful, gentle, spirited, nature girl thing. I grew up in the seventies in like crazy times. If you look at anything in film and television about the seventies, it was just hedonistic times, and here I was this skinny teenager. I really loved nature and horseback riding and playing piano and listening to records. I liked arts and crafts, I liked a Super 8 camera. I was a pretty normal, self-expressive kid.
But your first record was not that at all
It was so rock! It was Danny Kortchmar and he just kind of imposed this sound on me that was really not who I was. I deal with this a lot with artists at empowerment workshops and there are a lot of women in them, men too, and all ages, but the main thing is, when you don’t know who you are and you give power to someone else, they tell you who to be. And even if you know who you are, you don’t have the skill set to manifest it and you need other people to help you. “The Last Time I Saw My Sister” is about that too.
I was just a young artist, it was my debut record, I had a major record deal with Electra/Asylum. I got signed when I was seventeen and I had to finish high school before doing it. And we went to Bob Ezrin first, who was such a famous producer then, and he called Electra and said, “I’m not going to ruin her life. She’s a really sweet girl and I’m not putting her in the music business.” (laughs)
Then we went to Peter Asher, who I saw last night at some ASCAP event, and he was like, “Well, I’m really busy right now. I can’t produce it but Danny Kortchmar I think would be a great producer.” So my record was Danny’s first record and Danny is an amazing musician and he knew amazing musicians and I had incredible people on that first record. I had Stevie Nicks singing on it, I had the Eagles on it. But I had to get into this rock role that wasn’t the role of this first song I wrote when I was fifteen, which was acoustic guitar and really about sitting up on a hill and meditative. I remember the emotion being really strong and that that’s where I was happiest.
When did that finally come out?
When I was married to Greg Wells and we made Sometimes A Circle, which I had a lot of arrangement input on, I still didn’t really know how to make songs be what I wanted them to be on my own. I needed to give it to a producer and have them do it. But starting with Songs From The Mine, which came out in 2014, that was my first leap. I had a bunch of songs, I’d just produced Carole King, which got Grammy nominated – Why am I not bringing this skill set to my own work? What am I doing? Who am I waiting for? So literally within like a two week period, I said, I’m going to make a record. It’s going to be these songs and I’m going to book studio time and I’m calling these musicians and BOOM, there I was. I got an engineer and I was starting to produce my first record and I’ve been doing it since really.
So being a producer that first time didn’t scare you off
It didn’t scare me off but mostly what scared me was going into a session on my mother’s record with Niko Bolas, who has won all these Grammys and is an amazing engineer. I had Dean Parks, Russ Kunkel, my mother; everyone just live on the floor. I’m thinking, okay, we are spending thousands of dollars today and I am the producer! And I sat in the parking lot just like shitting and praying: okay, take a deep breath, pay attention, listen to what’s going on, don’t talk unless you need to say anything (laughs); and please God, let me get through this and not reveal myself to be completely a novice.
And I walked in there with my heart beating and Niko had things covered. But I’d notice things. I noticed Dean Parks didn’t have cans and was trying to get Niko’s attention and couldn’t, and I said, “Niko, he needs cans over there.” I heard on the talkback Russ Kunkel saying one of the songs he thought should be a little bit faster. He didn’t tell us but I heard him and I said, “Russ, talk to me. What are you thinking here?” And he said, “Well, I think it can go up a tad.” I did exactly what I prayed I would do, which was hear and notice and not impose my ego and personality on things but just help facilitate it being the best it can be. And I delivered. I really did.
My mother didn’t want to sing live. She was like, “Can’t I just sit in the control room and can I do the vocals later?” And I was like, “No (laughs), the band needs you and you get excited when you’re playing with the band and we want those vocals.” And once I did that, that was my baptism, cause when I got through that, I knew, okay, if I can do this, certainly I can be in a studio with my own songs and musicians and lead them through an arrangement and get it to sound the way it’s supposed to sound for a record. So that really was my education. And Bob Ezrin, I told him years later when that record got nominated for a Grammy, I said, “You know, Bob, I’ve been at this for so long and it wasn’t until I got that Grammy nomination that I actually felt like I could tell people with a straight face that I was a producer.” He looked at me in utter disbelief and said, “It took you THAT long?” (laughs)
How are you going to finish out the year?
I am playing some shows. I’m doing kind of one-off things. In early December I am going up North and I am playing some house concerts, up in the Bay area. I was going to do a tour with a full band and it just got so crazy to try to figure out how to pay everyone and travel and do a full band. But I feel like the record really lends itself to a band and I would love to present it that way. But lately I’ve been doing shows solo or with one other person and it’s amazing how the songs really hold up as songs without the full arrangements and with storytelling in-between. People seem to really like that. So we’ll see.
And you also have your podcasts
Yeah, I have a podcast with Paul Zollo, who is a songwriter and an author and a photographer and he’s authored books that are really critically acclaimed on songwriting. One of them is called Songwriters On Songwriting. He’s also written about Hollywood and all the classic places that still exist here and the stories behind them. He’s worked extensively with Tom Petty. They were writing a book together, collaborating on something about Tom’s life before Tom died. We do a podcast called The Great Song Adventure and they are really in-depth. Anyone who wants to learn about songwriting and record-making, we do it. We’ve talked to Lou Adler about the Mamas & the Papas and recording Tapestry. We talked to Mike Stoller of Leiber & Stoller, who worked with Elvis Presley; Chris Difford of Squeeze, Chrissie Hynde and Tom Petty. You can find us at http://www.thegreatsongadventure.com/ and you can read about us there or download us on iTunes. It’s a labor of love. We don’t get paid to do it but I feel that it’s so important to get these stories where people can hear them. Some of these people are getting old and it’s great to pass on this information. They are very enjoyable and I learn so much and as an artist you’re always about you-you-you but when I’m doing these podcasts I have to switch the focus to hearing about how other people think and it is really enriching for me. You learn from taking the focus off yourself sometimes. It’s great.
Photographs by Amanda Bjorn & Jeff Fasano
