Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Goode.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Josh. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’ll make my musical life story as brief as I can, so here goes. Read: this will not be brief.
I started as a scrawny trombone player when I was 12 years old. I really wanted to play sax, but they said I had “lips of a horn player” and recommended brass instead. I guess they were right, as I was pretty good from the start. I was the first chair often and competed well in all the band competitions… After a few years, my junior high band director told me she needed a baritone player for the top band in 8th grade, and I figured that would be fun. So, in doing that, I got the chance to play the 2nd instrument and *that* turned me on to being a multi-instrumentalist, which was a fucking blast. So then I learned trumpet, tuba, some drums, and the piano. Piano was a challenging instrument as I was learning on my own.
After 6 months I only had a few songs to show for it, and that sucked. So, in the midst of my frustration, I had a serendipitous moment with a blank sheet of music paper and my parent’s piano, and I just decided that I could probably make up my own music – so I did. And that was waaaay better. After writing a bunch of solo piano songs, my parents invested in me (heavily, for that time) and bought me a really nice keyboard and some recording software. With those tools, I dove in, hardcore. I was writing compositions like crazy, sometimes 2-3 a day. I was figuring songs out by ear, constantly.
At that point, I was around 16 and decided I was going to write music for a living and that was all I wanted to do. I didn’t know where to go to college, so I just followed my high school sweetheart to UT Austin, since they had a good marching band (which I had already been doing for years in high school) and had some sort of a music program.
While in going to school in Austin, I got exposed to blues and the blues scene there. I stole my roommate’s guitar constantly and fell in love with the way playing guitar felt. I started writing songs at around 19. I started going to open mic nights 5 times a week, playing as often as I could. I played blues open mic nights, singer/songwriter nights – whatever. I didn’t care. I just wanted to play and create.
I was playing guitar 4 hours a day. I was totally obsessed. I was writing songs constantly. I rented an 8 track recorder from Austin’s “Rock and Roll” rentals and made my first record on it. Nobody’s ever heard it, and they never will because it’s hysterically awful. But – it got me interested in the process on recording and started that obsession. I got my degree in 2000 (BM in Music Theory and Composition) and moved back to Dallas because Austin was totally saturated with bands and the Dallas scene seemed better (at the time) to find guys to play with. So I joined a few metal projects in their baby stages.
That kind of sucked. I was in a funk-rock band called Mr. Lucky for about a year, and then finally decided to do my own thing since I loved writing so much and didn’t love writing in a band environment. I started the Josh Goode Band and we gained a little local success. We played to 2-300 people fairly regularly in the early 2000’s and did a few festivals. We also played a handful of AFE (Armed Forces Entertainment) tours and traveled to Japan, Korea, Hawaii, Guam, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greenland, and a few tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific; Kwajalein and Roi. Crazy stuff, seeing parts of the world that no one else ever does. You can’t even get to Roi without a government contract, and there are only 80 people that live on that island and they’re all a little nutty.
I met a guy who needed some help with some commercial music and so I wrote a Dallas Cowboy’s theme song in 2005 called “Gotta Have my Cowboys”. Then I wrote one for the Mavericks and won an Emmy. I did another few spots and won a second Emmy. I met a director and scored a few feature films as well.
Then, around 2005 at an open mic I met a singer-songwriter whose songs and voice I really liked, but could tell she needed help to take her songs to the next proverbial “level”. So I asked her if I could help her. I didn’t know what producing was, I just knew I had enough of an opinion to be bold enough to ask. So I worked with her for a few years and finally produced an EP. In doing that, I realized I was a pretty shitty engineer. So, I asked another local producer to help – Alex Gerst. He made it happen for us and I feel deeper in love with the role of “producing”.
At that artists’ CD release show, I met an amazing engineer named Bradley Prakope. He was a beast at what he did and needed someone like me to help him. I was a crap-tastic engineer so I needed him as well. We started working together. Within a year he and I had started working regularly and we did a ton of different projects. Big band stuff, indie stuff, singer-songwriter stuff, rock stuff, even an orchestral record. Since I got a degree in music theory and composition I could do all these intricate strings and horn arrangements and really loved the work.
Then Bradley moved to Nashville. While he was living there, I got way deeper into electronic music and started programming way more. Bradley kept mixing my music and got into the Nashville scene a bit. I worked with more Dallas artists (like Sarah Sellers, Dezi 5, Ellen Once Again, and a number of others) and began to really love the electronic side of record production. So I got deep into that, and never really left.
Now I produce full time, write with folks in NYC and LA and am just trying to make the best music I can, Sarah’s record comes out this year, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I really can’t wait for everyone to hear it. Oh, and she’s now my fiancee, which is amazing. So that’s a whole separate interview in itself.
So, yeah there you go. I’m a record producer/film composer/jingle writer/songwriter/live player/music director and that’s basically how I got here.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I mean, yeah it’s been pretty smooth. As smooth as being in the music industry is. Sometimes I’ve found myself on Val Kilmer’s ranch playing guitar on his porch (true story) and other moments I’ve just been that guy playing at a local restaurant that’s you ignore while you eat. Sometimes you get to crowd surf in Korea, and sometimes you’re just the audio wallpaper at a wedding or corporate event. You kind of have to be multi-faceted to survive, I think.
It really isn’t ALL glamorous. I’ve had some amazing moments, and some shit-tastic moments too. The most important part though is that it’s all been REALLY fun. I fucking LOVE what I do, and am still 1000% obsessed with making records. I can’t get enough of it. I always want more new talent to work with, and am always looking.
Please tell us about Josh Goode, record producer – don’t really have a business name.
I’m a record producer who specializes in pop/r+b/electronic vibes. I can also do any indie-organic/country/Americana/whatever project. It doesn’t really matter what the genre is, but I do excel at making more commercial sounding records.
I did Scott Hoying’s first record, and that was pretty amazing. Scott’s incredible. He’s in Pentatonix, the new worldwide phenom in acapella music.
What sets me apart is my skill set and standard for excellence. Not a lot of producers have my background (in Dallas, anyways) and that makes me unique, I think.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have moved to LA when I was in my 20’s.
Contact Info:
- Website: joshgoode.com
- Email: joshgoode1@mac.com
- Instagram: @joshgoode
- Facebook: @joshgoodemusic
- Twitter: @goodejosh
Image Credit:
Mark Goode, Collin Hauser, Brent Baxter, and Manish Gosalia
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
