Tom Goss is not bashful. Nor is he pushy. Put simply, he has a message to share and he'll do what he needs to express it. Often, that means touring. Goss has the miles to show for his career, still moving in an upward trajectory.
This month, Goss, 32, is making a bold move to dedicate himself full time to this mission. He's leaving the job of nearly a decade he's held with Charlie's Place, a D.C. program to end homelessness run out of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church. His first European tour, with dates in Iceland and the U.K., begins later this month, and his new album, Wait, releases May 13.
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Tom Goss
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
Even with a new album, the song remains the same.
"When I write, I'm the least guarded that I ever am," says the singer-songwriter. "So I think that my longing and my search for that really shines through. That's what people hear."
That's the search that took him to Catholic seminary, and the search that got him to leave that behind, as well.
"A lot of people self-identify as spiritual, not religious," he says, speaking about his message and pointing to "Rise," a song of his from 2008. "I'm not talking about 'Christ the redeemer rose on the third day.' That's not the lyric. But if the lyric is, 'Now it's time to say goodbye, and to leave our skins behind. Let the dusk drain the sun and rise,' that says a very similar thing. You could put that in a Christian context. Or you could put that in a spiritual context. I think the message is the same. It's about rebirth and renewal and reconciliation. I think a lot of my songs reflect that. I may not be doing the sign of the cross, but there's a wisdom and an authenticity that I'm sharing."
It's something of what he shares with his husband, Mike, and with so many other artists with whom Goss revels in creating community. If you like, he'll certainly share it with you, too.
METRO WEEKLY: Wait seems "poppier" to me than your previous work.
TOM GOSS: Oh, yeah! I've always considered myself a pop writer. I love pop music. Not like 'N Sync or Backstreet Boys or Britney Spears or Lady Gaga, but I've always been trying to produce pop music.
You think of The Beatles and that era of pop music, which is super-succinct writing, really fast changes, really hook-y melodies. A lot of the music we hear day to day is pop music, whether you're talking about country music or rock music or whatever. I've always thought of myself as someone who wants to write really concise, well-written pop songs.
MW: But compared to your previous albums, Wait feels less sentimental, more toe-tapping.
GOSS: Totally. I agree. I wanted to have a lot of fun on this record. People see me live and connect with me. They connect with me as a storyteller, somebody who can evoke emotions, because when they hear the songs live they're stripped. When I go into the studio to record with a band, the vision is a little different.
MW: The first couple of tracks, particularly -- "It Only Takes Once" and "Take a Chance" -- I think will have people up, out of their seats, wanting to dance.
GOSS: That's what I want! In a lot of ways, that's always what I've wanted. I had a couple big numbers like that on Turn It Around, as well, but I never want to do the same thing I've already done. I never want to just be creating the same sounds.
I could spit out 50 love songs by the end of the day and they'd all be good and passable and evocative and all that kind of stuff, but I don't want to do that for the rest of my life. I want to do stuff that's different. It's super easy to write a soft, romantic, heart-wrenching song. That's nothing. But to write something that's going to get people to move? To write something that's going to incorporate a lot of different sounds? That's difficult.
MW: I'm sort of reminded of your "That's Not My Name" cover. It seemed you were being dismissive, but it's a really fun cover.
GOSS: People loved that. I really started playing it because I hated the song. I was hearing it on the radio all the time. I thought, "There's nothing redeeming about this song." I just had all this negative energy about why I hated this song. And I thought, "Why don't I just make it my own and shed that negative energy?" Then, at the same time, people just really enjoyed it. I'd play it at shows and get the whole crowd to sing. I used to close shows with it, have whole rooms of people singing, and we'd do rounds. People loved it. Then, if The Ting Tings were on Letterman, I would get emails and phone calls about these people who stole my song. It was really, really funny.
People love that song because it's fun and it's got attitude. At the same time, there's really not a redemptive message when you dig into it. For me, the challenge is always creating something that has that energy, that makes you happy and want to bop your head, but also has a redemptive message to it. There are very few people who do that effectively. That's the biggest challenge for me.
MW: People want candy.
GOSS: People do want candy. If you give them candy that they can break down and realize, "Wow, I have candy and I have a redemptive message," or, "and I'm talking about social justice," or, "and I'm talking about something greater than me," then that's an accomplishment.
MW: So, you're like Gummy Vitamins.
GOSS: [Laughs.] Yeah! I've got a whole bunch of 'em in the other room!
MW: Seriously?
GOSS: Yes! I love vitamin Gummys because they make me take my vitamins, but it's hard because I want to eat them all day. MW: How would you feel if a DJ got hold of one of the bouncier tracks off Wait? You could be in Provincetown doing your shows, and maybe walk into the Crown & Anchor and hear a Tom Goss remix.
GOSS: I think there are going to be a lot of remixes off this record. I'm already working on one.
One of the things I learned a lot from working with Rich Morel, and just from being such an admirer of his work, and from seeing how people responded to "Bears," and everybody's really into EDM right now, and that's something that's just going to grow and boom, when --
MW: EDM?
GOSS: Electronic dance music.
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Tom Goss
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
MW: Ah, sorry. I'm 44.
GOSS: That's okay! When you think of yourself as a "singer-songwriter," what do you think of? You think Joni Mitchell. Or James Taylor. They're kind of like the models. That's what it is in its purest form.
So, when people are like, "Hey, why don't we put this beat behind it?" they're really tense. Like, they really don't want to do that. I spent the past couple years trying to understand what it means to be an artist and embrace what's good and fun about that. That means being open to different opportunities. Instead of being closed and having a singular vision and saying, "This is the way it has to be," it's being open to say, "Wow, that's really interesting. That's really resonating with people. How can I learn from that?"
MW: Your style of collaboration must be pretty agreeable, in that collaborators keep coming back.
GOSS: Don't get me wrong: I have strong opinions. But, at the end of the day, my loyalties lie with what is best for the project. There's a certain kind of humility that has to come with being a good collaborative artist -- or a good artist at all -- who is open to listening and open to learning and open to hearing that your idea isn't the best idea in this specific moment. I think that's hard.
MW: Are those values you were raised with? Something you learned later?
GOSS: I think it's both. It's an evolution. My last record, which I'm very proud of, I played every single note on the record, every single instrument. That was really important. Before that, even though I was making these quality projects, doing amazing things and bringing a lot of people together, I'm not sure that I thought much of myself as an artist or believed in my own artistic vision as much. I don't want to say it came from a lack of self-confidence. I've always been able to say, "This is what I want."
MW: You've got that competitive background, as a wrestling champ. But entering seminary shows your humility. It's an interesting mix.
GOSS: That's a good insight, because I do think, all my life, I've always believed that I've failed at everything I did.
MW: When did that change?
GOSS: I don't know if that ever has really completely changed. I think it's because I grew up being so competitive, doing things that had very clear winners and losers, very much black-and-white things.
MW: Beyond the wrestling?
GOSS: Sure. Life! You're talking about sports. You're talking about school. I find competition really fun. It's my whole family. If you hung out with my family for 20 minutes, you would be part of 20 competitions. I grew up in a big gymnastics family. I was competing in gymnastics since I was 2. My parents owned a gym. I'm pretty aggressive, in general. I'm pretty straightforward. A lot of that's been tempered as I've gotten older, but I was pretty angry then, too. I was getting into a lot of fights.
MW: At what age?
GOSS: All of them. [Laughs.] I got expelled from school in ninth grade.
MW: For fighting?
GOSS: Yeah. I got into a fight with my football coach.
MW: You didn't hit him, did you?
GOSS: That's up for debate. I say I didn't hit him, but other people disagree. It was stupid. I was 14.
MW: It's hard for me to imagine Tom Goss with anger-management issues.
GOSS: Remember The Jenny Jones Show? Like, "My kid's out of control!" Or Cartman: "Mm-hmm, I do what I want." That was kind of me.
MW: Could you handle a kid like you?
GOSS: If I had a kid and my kid was like me? I don't know if I could or couldn't -- but I would.
To be brutally honest, when I think about it, it makes me sad. I feel bad for the fear that I caused my family. I feel bad for some of the things that I did. I feel bad for the tension I created, especially between me and my mom and the rest of my family.
MW: After puberty, after adolescence, did your hormones calm down?
GOSS: I essentially went from fighting, to fighting as a sport. I went to college to fight. If you're doing a sport in college, especially wrestling, it's all consuming. I used to envy people in other sports, because you could go to practice and then come home and have a life. Wrestling's different. It's the time when you're not at practice that's the hardest. You can't eat meals for days on end. Or you can't drink water. You're running three times a day in between practice. And you're doing it all because you want to want to beat somebody else physically. You want to literally beat them up.
It just got really old for me. The idea of moving back to Wisconsin and teaching social studies to be a wrestling coach -- because that was really the track -- it just felt horrible. The idea of it felt like the most horrible trap I could ever have been part of.
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Tom Goss
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
MW: How do you feed that competitiveness now?
GOSS: I guess I was saying all that because, for me, the idea of being an artist is so different. It's not who "wins" at the art. I have very little musical competition. I don't feel like that has any place in this business. I do feel like sometimes that gets stirred up, but I push it back down. The music business is different because it's so up and down. Somebody loves you. Somebody hates you.
MW: So, that's sort of where the feeling of failure comes in? Because there's no referee to hold your arm up and tell you that you're the champion?
GOSS: My point is that I'm so competitive that if this is my bar, as soon as I get close the bar rises. My competitiveness in this industry is to always want to do better. It's not to compete against a thing or a person. Being successful in art, to connect with people in art, is to be as authentic as you can possibly be to yourself. If you're authentic and you can speak authentically, people will connect with that. The competition is not, "I want to beat this person down." The competition is, "I want to be the most authentic and fully integrated self that I can be." Which is a totally different mindset.
MW: That's difficult to quantify, a lot harder to "win."
GOSS: You can't. You quantify it by how much money you make. You quantify it by how many Facebook "Likes" you get. You quantify it by the stupidest shit.
MW: Does your husband help you temper that edge?
GOSS: My husband's way crazier than I am. [Laughs.] That's one of the few things we'll actually get in fights about.
The other thing about this is you can't take anything personally. If somebody doesn't book you for a gig or somebody doesn't call you back -- and these can be people you have relationships with, or not -- Mike takes that stuff, if he finds out about it, very personally.
MW: Mike is very protective?
GOSS: Super protective. He's protective of me and he's very protective of the things that I do and the talent that he believes that I have. It's hard. When he sees other people doing well, he wonders why I didn't get that specific thing.
It's hard, because I feel like it's that way in the community, as well. I feel like a lot of musicians get stuff and hold it, and they don't want to share and they don't want to collaborate and they don't want to create community. How many CDs do you own? You don't buy one CD. It's not like you win if you sell this CD. You win if you create this community of people that is supportive. It's not one or the other. It's about, how do we create something that people want? How do we create this whole community of goodness?
If you think about -- especially indie artists -- artists that get big, it's because they created this community, because a bunch of people got together and collaborated and helped bring more people into the message they had to offer.
MW: What is your message?
GOSS: It's funny. If you asked someone else, I think they'd say my message is love. I believe that my message is truth. I think that my message, especially on this record, is authenticity. I'm always searching for truth. I'm searching for that thing that is good and that is true and that is right. And that is bigger than me. A lot of me believes there's not much beyond this.
MW: Having left seminary, what is it that you do believe?
GOSS: I don't think there's anything else. And that scares me: the idea that we live, we do our thing, and then we die. Maybe someone remembers us for 10 years or 20 years. But -- be honest -- 50 years later? Do you know who these statues are around D.C.? These people have statues in circles! And most people are like, "Enh, it's a guy on a horse." You know what I mean? A big piece of me doesn't want to believe that.
I always want to believe that there's something bigger and there's something greater. I'm always searching. So far, the only thing in my life that speaks, like it just is what it is and cuts through the shit, is love. When I see people acting out of love, whether that's with their husbands or wives or children or friends, when they're acting selflessly, that's truly seeing who they are and what is good about the world. That's what I always want to be representing: The one thing that's biggest and best and all encompassing and that draws us all together.
MW: Has the tour for Wait already begun?
GOSS: No. I'll be going over to Europe, playing Iceland and the U.K. The record doesn't release till May 13, but it will be great to get a first European tour under my belt and to just play these songs a lot more.
MW: And you're the one on the phone arranging all this?
GOSS: Yeah. It's always kind of a delicate process. I've been getting pokes from Europe a lot the past year or so. I've been really afraid of it. I love touring. Touring is where the bulk of my income comes from. But the idea of putting a big, upfront chunk of change down is a little nerve-wracking.
MW: It's not the sort of thing banks want to give you a loan for?
GOSS: Nah. Well, I've never asked -- maybe they do. [Laughs.] Essentially, I had this period of time where I could do it. I was having conversations with some folks and their dates were matching my dates. Really, to be honest, I spent the money on the plane tickets so I had to do it. [Laughs.] That's what I did! It's been great. I really like the idea of it, and I'm excited to see what comes of it. It's a whole new monster. Everybody says Europe is way better than the states in terms of touring, for making money, for reception.
MW: One of the venues you're playing, London's Manbar, hosts quite a few fundraising gigs. Are there particular social causes you get behind?
GOSS: Besides the fact that I've spent the past eight years running a meal program for the homeless? For the most part, anybody who's asked me to do an event for them, I pretty much always say yes.
Obviously, most of my experience, my knowledge base, is in the homeless community. I'm going to plug my organization, Charlie's Place, because I'm leaving there in a week.
MW: You're leaving to dedicate yourself full time to your music career?
GOSS: Yeah. I've been at Charlie's Place for eight years, started as the program director. I was there every morning at 6, when we feed 50 to 80 clients. I was the only employee there. About a year and a half later, I had a really great opportunity to start going on the road full time. I also understood my limitations of being one person who does all the development, who does the volunteer coordination -- who does everything. That's kind of why I pitched a development role. "Look, you need somebody in there whose sole focus is the clients, in a capacity that helps them transition off the streets. They shouldn't have to worry about money. I can do this, and I can do this part time, and I can do this telecommuting."
Of course, I also said, "I'm going on the road. I have to take this opportunity first. I love you guys, I don't want to leave, but...." And they said it was a great idea, so I've spent the past six years doing solely development. I do a lot of that from home, a lot of it from the road. It's kind of gotten to the point, just to be really honest, it's too much to juggle. That's been happening for years. There have been times when I've had to turn down gigs because of work. That's life. Whatever. But, yeah, over the past year or so, as things continue to just be more hectic -- I shot this movie, Out To Kill, that'll release in the summertime.
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Tom Goss
(Photo by Julian Vankim)
MW: I don't know about this.
GOSS: I will tell you about it. It's a film by Rob Williams, who's done a lot of movies. He's had some of my music in his movies, so we know each other. Out To Kill shot in November in Tampa. It's a really fun murder-mystery/comedy-type thing. There's a character named Justin Jaymes. He's a really bad, gay pop star. Really hyper-sexual, really manipulative. That's the role I play. It was an interesting opportunity to do some acting that was -- I believe -- really different from myself. And to have an opportunity to write songs for a movie in a whole different context. I did a music video for one. It's probably one of the worst things you'll ever see, but it's hilarious.
MW: What's the song?
GOSS: It's called, "You Don't Know How Hard." It's all about, "You don't know how hard it is to be this hot." It's really funny.
I've been getting some pokes on and off for acting the past couple years. I'm not an actor, I've never really done that, so I didn't really think much about it. But when this opportunity came along, it seemed like a really good fit.
MW: Does Mike go on tour with you?
GOSS: Mike obviously has to work, like a normal person, but comes sometimes. He'll take a week off and he'll do Portland to Los Angeles with me, or something like that. I can show you a map, it's really cute, with different lines to all the places we've driven together.
MW: You must be putting a lot of miles on your car.
GOSS: We got a new car this week. There are 242,000 miles on my car. It's done. So we bought a new car this week. But it's so nice that we're afraid to drive it and it's just been sitting in our garage. We got a Ford C-Max. It's a hybrid. It's big and it gets good gas mileage. As soon as we got it, Mike was like, "Oh, no, this is too nice. You can't take this car on the road!" I tend to agree with him, but I have to.
MW: With your star rising, being out there more, you lose some privacy. And fans can be pushy.
GOSS: I'm pretty lucky. But, yeah, sometimes people are pushy and weird.
MW: But no restraining orders?
GOSS: No, that was more the seminary days. [Laughs.] Pre-seminary and seminary, I had a lot of stalkers. As horrible as it was, it taught me a lot about boundaries.
Mike and I are monogamous, which I think is different in this community. That's fine. But I don't think people necessarily expect that, especially in the bear community. I think, a lot of the time, people assume something else. For the most part, people know and they're super respectful, but some people like to push the boundaries. If I'm standing there and somebody comes up and decides they like my ass and want to touch it, I'm more than happy to grab their hand and take it off my ass and tell them to stop. I don't have any problems with that. I'm not a super-timid, shy person.
MW: I'd be worried, like, Mike's not home, it's 1 a.m., and I think I just heard someone in the bushes.
GOSS: Oh, no, I've never had anything like that. I feel like I'm a little bit of a broken record, keep speaking about authenticity, but I think something that draws people to what I do is I'm open and honest about me and my life and my love. If you come to my shows, you're going to hear stories about Mike. You're not going to come out of my show thinking, "Oh, Tom's available." You're going to come out of the show loving Mike as much as I love Mike, because you're seeing Mike through the eyes of me, who loves him so much.
It's funny. I think people like Mike more than they like me. That's fine -- I love Mike! I hope everybody loves Mike. But when I pass through towns -- and he's been to a lot of the places I've toured -- people inevitably ask me if Mike is coming. I know that if Mike is coming, more people are going to show up to my show. It's hilarious. People see Mike as this really amazing, great guy. He's huggable. That really helps people when they approach me to see me as someone they respect as having a great thing going on. And I do. I don't have any interest in messing with that balance. It's a really great balance.
MW: Is there a part of you that would like to just keep his head down, stick with a job like Charlie's Place full time and not have to worry about the touring, promoting your work, all of that?
GOSS: I really like my career and I think I've done a lot of really great things.
The thinking about Charlie's Place, I really had to ask myself, "Is this it?" Because if this is it, I can balance it for another 10 years, where my career is now and Charlie's Place. But the answer was, "This is not. This is not the apex for me. I can do more. I can do better. I can create new, beautiful things -- and I really want to." The only way to do that is to let Charlie's Place go. Part of me feels like an idiot for leaving, because it's been so good to me. But I see so many more possibilities, so many beautiful things I want to create, so many people I want to meet.
With the exception of being away from Mike, which is always hard, I feel happiest when I'm on the road. Every day, I'm in a new place. I'm meeting new people. I do all this because I want to connect with people. I want to meet people and hear their stories. And I want to tell mine. That's when I'm happiest.
Tom Goss's next Washington date is Saturday, May 31, at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, 600 I St. NW. Tickets are $15 to $20. For tickets, visit tomgossmusic.net. Wait, releasing May 13, will also be available at tomgossmusic.net.
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