It's difficult to say which is more awesome: Rachel Goodrich's catchy song "The Black Hole" or its low-fi video. In it, she sings while kneeling on her friend's unmade bed; she's wearing, for no real reason, a ladybug costume and a pair of sunglasses. Meanwhile, her friend Jon Estes plays the double bass.
There is something sublimely perfect about the clip and about Goodrich herself. Maybe it's her goofiness. Maybe it's her genuineness. Maybe it's the fact that she kicks ass on, like, 16 different instruments, including spoons. Whatever it is, as soon as people get wind of this chick, they want to be her friend. At least one dude has asked to be her boyfriend. At the very least, listeners get her songs stuck in their heads for three weeks. She just has that effect.
Take, for example, the show Goodrich played last month at downtown Miami's PS14. The minute she plugged in her amp, her smile seemed too big for her head, her voice seemed too big for the room, and audience members could be overheard declaring her their New Favorite Singer. She wore Converse sneakers, suspenders, and not a lick of makeup. Her shiny brown ponytail snaked in front of her shoulder. (The girl can pull off bangs.) The crowd swooned collectively as if it were developing a giant crush. Where was Oprah's couch when you needed it?
"I got a shovel the size of a teacup," Goodrich whispered into the mike as if telling a secret, making the p in teacup pop as she sang the lyrics to "Little Brass Bear." "A dream as big as China," she sang louder, her voice breaking into a gallop and then — "we can go far, we can go far" — slowing down to a trot. Then her kazoo kicked in.
At any given show, Goodrich might play solo or invite a rotating cast of friends. It helps if said friends know how to handle an upright bass or bring something interesting to bang on. This particular night, she was joined by a drummer with a drum kit, plus a bow-tied percussionist who had brought what looked like a dish rack draped with chimes and blocks and — was that a bicycle seat? He wielded a drumstick in one hand and rattled a tambourine in the other. The supporting musicians had coordinated their outfits; it was easy to imagine them phoning one another before the show to ask, "Do you have a shirt with black-and-white stripes? A pair of aviators?"
Goodrich calls her mostly upbeat music "shake-a-billy": "Not rockabilly — it doesn't rock; it shakes." Although she just turned 24 years old, there is something classic about her, and she treats her voice not like a product to be perfected but a toy to be played with. It warbles here; it sails there; it slips into a into country twang. The word joyful is an apt description.
A few days after the show, Goodrich, rocking a pair of red stretch jeans, rides her 10-speed to a South Beach café. She says the affection she's getting has been a surprise: It's not only dutiful friends who come out and support her anymore. She notices clubbers, headbangers, and etceteras at the increasingly packed shows. "I don't know where they came from," she muses. "That's what I love the most, though — that part of the adventure. Bringing people together. Not clashing, but meshing."
Born and raised in and around Miami, Goodrich began playing music when she was five or six years old, hanging out with her father. "He'd play guitar; I'd tap my foot," she explains. He never forced music lessons, but "he did kind of throw it in my face. And I was like, 'I'll take it!'"
She tackled guitar at age 12 and for her bat mitzvah was allowed to get a "real" one. The choice came down to a Rickenbacker or a Les Paul. The Les Paul was too heavy, so she took the Rick. "I loved the tone of it," she says.
In 10th grade, she began to collaborate with her best friend, Johnny D., and together they formed an alt-grunge outfit called Deezel and wrote songs about teen angst, running away, and of course "love — stupid love." She remembers her mom bringing her to her first gig at Churchill's and being allowed to play at Señor Frog's in Miami Beach. "That was huge. Quarter beer night — underage kids getting wasted!"
When the band broke up a few years later, she moved to Gainesville and tried studying music at the University of Florida. "School was like the excuse," she says. "[But I] didn't dig it. It stunted my growth." So she came back to Miami and learned all she could from her records — mostly old blues masters, Joni Mitchell, and anybody who could coax sweet tunes out of a ukulele. (Although her own music isn't noodly, Goodrich has an unabashed love for The Grateful Dead.)
After that, she says, "I spent two years in my bedroom — my own little universe." When she flung the door open and emerged, she made music her only job and began playing around town in full force. That's how she met good pals and local musicians such as Raffa & Rainer and Jesse Jackson. "We all love each other and help each other out," Goodrich says of the tight-knit scene. "What a beautiful friendship." She went on tour with Raffa to North Carolina and has played in New York and Boston. When she performed a set at SXSW this past March, some called it her "coming-out party."
So far, Goodrich's only recordings for distribution have been the songs on her MySpace page and homemade CDs packaged in cloth sleeves she patched together herself. She plans to put out a full-length hi-fi record, Tinker Toys, sometime in the next month.
It'll be released on her own label, Yellow Bear Records. "One time," she explains, "I was in this meadow and a Native American guy — like for real, with the garb — approached me and said, 'You're Yellow Bear. I am Blue Bear.'" (As with her ladybug video, further analysis of this story would only ruin it.)
Fame and fortune would be cool, Goodrich guesses, but she doesn't stress over it. "I just sort of let things fall into place, let it breathe," she says. "I just want to travel the world and have cool adventures and meet people. Hit every road out there. And every off-road."
Check out Rachel Goodrich's video for "The Black Hole":
