Two years on from her impressive debut, Old Time Feeling, S.G. Goodman has finally embarked on her first headlining tour, and after building up her fanbase with opening spots for the likes of Jason Isbell and Shakey Graves and appearances at the Newport Folk Festival and SXSW – along with the June release of her even more impressive sophomore album Teeth Marks – the Kentucky singer-songwriter rolled into Brooklyn for a sold-out show at Baby’s All Right on September 27, 2022 that was absolutely worth the wait.
After an affecting opening solo set from Canadian songwriter Le Ren, the three-piece band took the stage and kicked things off with a heavy, chugging beat courtesy of drummer Stephen Montgomery, which was met by a slick groove from bassist Gusti Escalante and washes of reverb and tremolo-soaked chords from lead guitarist Mark Sloane as Goodman made her way up and strapped on her own guitar to lead the group into “Work Until I Die”, a grinding anticapitalist barnburner and one of Teeth Marks’ biggest highlights. Barely pausing between songs, Goodman kept the heat coming with a high-octane rendition of “Old Time Feeling” followed by the one-two punch of “If You Were Someone I Loved” and “You Were Someone I Loved”, the latter of which had the audience in silence; enraptured in her voice as it floated with a haunting ache over a bed of eerie guitar noise.
When she did take a pause, Goodman was more than happy to get to talking, interspersing stories of cab drivers and tour life with quips about her love for Facebook Marketplace and her tendency to lose things. She was self-aware of her tendency to keep chatting, noting that while she isn’t particularly extroverted she is very much an external processor. “I really thrived in the pandemic where you just called a person and talked for three hours…I’m a mamaw, I like to do that” she joked. “Anything that crosses my mind I can say right here” she said, gesturing to her microphone, “and it has been absolutely wonderful for me”.
Sadly, a double booking at Baby’s that night meant that S.G. Goodman was on something of a time limit, which meant that her time for both sharing stories and songs was constrained, but she and the band really made the most of what they had. Their performance of “Space and Time” grew from a mournful sway into a powerful crescendo thanks in large part to the shimmering lead guitar work from Sloan, who, with his long hair and leopard print dress, remained a consistently engaging presence throughout the night; rocking around the stage and proving an excellent foil to Goodman, who stayed anchored to her side. She may have joked at one point that she usually doesn’t let the guitarist wear his hair down because she doesn’t like “competition”, but S.G. was undeniably the star of the show. The power of her voice, captured more than well in her studio recordings, is a different beast on stage; full of cracks and nuances that brought out even more character in songs like the title track to Teeth Marks and the unreleased “Solitaire”, which she played solo as the band watched on.
Goodman wrapped up the set with a pair of covers, first up was a swampy rendition of Waylon Jennings’ “Waymore’s Blues”, a choice inspired by how often her accent causes people to ask if she sings country music, which is a box she seems reluctant to fit herself into. The tune fit Goodman’s enigmatic howl like a glove and featured further standout work from Sloan who came prepared with some country-fried licks that he let loose on two solos. She closed things out by asking the audience to help out her Kentucky and Appalachian community by donating to mutual aid organizations, shouting out the Whitesburg, KY-based Appalshop specifically, before delivering another haunting acapella performance, this time on the classic protest song “Which Side Are You On?”, making sure to properly credit the song’s original writer, Kentuckian Florence Reece.
Returning for their encore Goodman and her band ended the night in mighty fashion on the song “Keeper Of The Time”. Starting with just the singer’s voice against simple guitar arpeggios, the band gradually filled things in until reaching the coda which they built up into a behemoth, eliciting whoops and hollers from the crowd as the song and the show came to its towering climax around Goodman’s repeated cries.
