Eva Louise Goodman - Nighttime Interview
Are you originally from LA? When did you first begin to fall in love with music and songwriting? Was this something that was relevant around your household growing up?
I moved to LA last summer from Upstate New York, where I had been living in the woods the past few years. In my earliest memories I remember sitting on the floor listening to cassette tapes and recording songs on a toy tape recorder. I’ve loved music and songwriting for as long as I can remember. My parents are really not musical, though they like music and definitely saw some enviable acts come through Ohio in the 70s. I remember my mother gave away her grade school flute to a neighbor when I was a small child and I don’t think either have owned a musical instrument before, or since.
Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years and why? Did you participate in any groups,or projects prior to Nighttime? You’ve been releasing music as early as 2014 if I’m not mistaken. What ultimately inspired you to pursue a life and career as a musician?
I consumed music really indiscriminately as a child. I would find random CD’s and listen to them in my walkman over and over and fall asleep to them every night. As the internet came into being I would make documents with the names of every musician I heard of and illegally download their work on Kazaa and Limewire. I remember thinking of songs as being their own world and I think I just wanted to hear everything I could. It wasn’t until I was nineteen, or twenty that I joined a band for the first time. Based on where and when I grew up, it just didn’t really occur to me that women could play in bands. It took a long time to see it as an option. And it was only after playing in someone else’s band for a few years that I began performing my own music, though I’d been writing for a long time. I’ve just always made music. It’s the only thing I’ve never stopped wanting to do. But I think what inspires me to keep going these days is a deepened respect for the power of art. This path is definitely not the one of least resistance, but it’s meaningful. Capitalism tells us that artistic expression is self indulgent, but I think it actually just holds a dangerous truth. Depth, beauty, reflection, doing something for its own sake... These are the things that make you question the way we’re told to live and bring what’s beneath to light.
Tell me about writing and recording your earlier works such as “L’Age D’Or”, “Hand in the Dark” and last year’s “Keeper is the Heart” on Ba Da Bing! Records. What was the overall process and approach when bringing these albums to life? Tell me about your new album entitled “Lone Star”. Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
The process has been pretty drastically different every time. But I think it’s just been an evolution of coming into myself through trusting others. Ten years ago when I made “L’Age D’Or” I really saw isolation as the key to my music. I don’t see it at all that way anymore. I adore collaboration and all of the power and energy it brings to the initial spark of an idea. Each record has been more collaborative than the last and onward! I’m releasing a new record called “Lone Star” July 5th. It’s a compilation of bedroom recordings that I’ve made over the past five years. Many are magically intuitive works, written and recorded at the same time. The release is in anticipation of a number of solo dates on the East Coast and Midwest this summer. It is also an excuse to share something new as I am deep in the works of my next record which is, of course, taking longer than anticipated.
“Lone Star is a compilation of older recordings close to my heart. Currently deep in the works of the next studio album, I felt called to share something more vulnerable in celebration of Nighttime’s solo tour this summer. These are bedroom recordings– intimate, intuitive, emotional. A soft reminder that magic arises in the spaces between”
