Song Chronicles Louise Goffin

Season 3 Episode 5
Carole King
To Be Home Again 
Forest Ecosystem Preservation
 

Carole King at the 1972 Grammys
 
Our guest today is one of the most successful female songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century, writing or co-writing 118 pop hits in Billboard's top 100 in the US and 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts for 43 years starting in 1962.
What happens when you redirect the energy, hustle and persistence it takes to make it as a songwriter into a worthy cause?
Song Chronicles is proud to present this conversation between Carole and podcast host and producer, her daughter Louise in an informative exploration that delves into King's remarkable journey from being renowned for her iconic songs to becoming a passionate advocate for environmental protection, specifically through her work on the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA). Despite her initial lack of expertise in environmental matters, King's love for nature, cultivated since her childhood, sparked her interest in ecosystem protection.
 

photo by Elissa Kline 
 
Forest Ecosystem Preservation
In 1989, King's involvement in environmental advocacy began when she encountered a bill proposed by scientists from Montana, which laid out a comprehensive approach to protecting the Northern Rockies ecosystem. This bill, based on the concept of preserving habitat for keystone species like grizzly bears, resonated deeply with King, leading her to take action by lobbying in Congress.
Over the years, King faced both rewarding and challenging experiences as a volunteer advocate for NREPA. Despite the bill's continuous presence in Congress since 1992, it has yet to become law. However, King remains steadfast in her commitment to keeping the bill alive, recognizing its significance as a crucial climate solution, especially in the face of growing environmental challenges like climate change.
 

Carole King testifying in Congress
 
Through her advocacy efforts, King emphasizes the importance of recognizing the interconnectedness of ecosystems and the urgent need for conservation measures. Her dedication to NREPA reflects her belief in creating a sustainable future for generations to come, highlighting the vital role of grassroots activism in addressing environmental issues.
 

clockwise left to right:
Sherry Goffin Kondor, Carole King, and Louise Goffin
 Laurel Canyon
 
Overall, Carole King's journey from music legend to environmental advocate serves as an inspiring example of using one's platform and passion to drive positive change in the world, reminding us of the power of persistence and determination in the face of daunting challenges.

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 4 of Song Chronicles. Our guest today is Dave Davies, co-founder and lead guitarist for The Kinks, one of the most influential and quintessentially English rock bands. 
Dave has recently released his autobiography and an album that goes with it, which are both called Living On A Thin Line. He has much to share in this conversation about the creative process, how a sense of humor can drive good storytelling home, the emotional comfort of melancholia in songs and poetry, and what it was like writing the song 21st Century with my dad, Gerry Goffin. 

In addition to his brother and later bandmate Raymond, Dave was raised with six older sisters. We talk about growing up in this house of girls helped him understand how important it is for a healthy life to develop both a masculine and feminine side.
Dave was inspired by the working class storytelling of American music such as Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Fats Domino and even Rogers and Hammerstein songs, having heard songs from South Pacific and Oklahoma that his sisters used to play him when he was a boy. Getting thrown out of school set his musical learning on a path he credits with driving him to experiment more. We talk about how imagination is drawing new connections between things you've been exposed to. 
Dave with his Harmony Meteor in 1964
The Kinks, Dave's band with his brother Ray, were one of the most successful and influential bands of the 60s. The Kinks scored 12 consecutive Top 20 singles in the UK before making themselves known in the US in the late 60s and then inspired countless other bands with their working class stories, humor, and androgynous theatrical image. 

In the late 60s, Dave embarked on a solo career and continued to tour until 2018. He remains active to this day.

In 1992, Dave wrote "21st Century" with Gerry Goffin in an LA coffee shop. This hidden gem went unreleased for 30 years until it was released as a 7" vinyl in 2022. We talk about their relationship and Gerry's lyrical intuition.

Thank you Dave for being generous with your time and stories.

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 3 of Song Chronicles. Our guest today is singer and songwriter Billy Valentine, who just released a new album called "a masterclass in soul interpretation" by Record Collector. Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth was chosen as the first record for the relaunch of Flying Dutchman, the iconic imprint known for releases by Duke Ellington, Gil-Scott Heron, and Leon Thomas.

Billy was born in West Virginia as one of thirteen children and later moved to Columbus, Ohio where his parents owned a nightclub. His brother Alvin introduced him to the path of professional entertainer. At 15 years old, Billy booked his first paying gig after sitting in with his brother Alvin during a performance at Leon’s Cocktail Lounge in Patterson, NJ. After a stint in the original touring company of The Wiz, Billy and his brother John formed The Valentine Brothers. Together they recorded four albums and had a breakout Reagan-era protest single "Money’s Too Tight (To Mention)."
The Valentine Brothers
After the duo split, Billy began a songwriting collaboration with Bob Thiele, Jr and Phil Roy. The trio’s songs were recorded by Bonnie Raitt, Pops and Mavis Staples, The Neville Brothers, and his hero Ray Charles. We talk about the "pinch me" moment of hearing Ray’s recording of his song, the title track of the album My World.
Ray Charles's 1993 album My World
Billy’s incredible vocal interpretations made him a sought-after demo singer for songwriting greats like Burt Bacharach & Hal David and Gerry Goffin. Bob Thiele, Jr. says it was Billy’s voice that made the songs they wrote together irresistible, making Billy "the secret weapon of nearly every songwriter in LA." We talk about how Billy came to sing on the soundtrack of Boston Legal.
Burt Bacharach and Billy Valentine
Recording during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 brought Billy back to the '60s, being brought up in Ohio during the Kent State and Vietnam War protests. He chose to reinterpret iconic protest songs by Gil-Scott Heron, Curtis Mayfield, and Stevie Wonder for his new record Billy Valentine & The Universal Truth. We talk about the permanence of protest songs in our cultural landscape.

After many decades in the business, Billy says he is finally feeling good in his own skin and proud of how he made these songs sound. We talk about how hard artists are on themselves and how pleasing yourself is the hardest part. He has an ageless quality about him and describes himself as having a "young heart."

Enjoy this conversation with a storied interpreter of songs.

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 2 of Song Chronicles. Our guest today is Michelle Lewis, an Emmy- and Peabody-winning songwriter and composer and an advocate of songwriters’ rights as executive director of SONA.

Michelle’s parents were both musicians. Her dad was the tenor saxophone player in Frank Sinatra’s band and her mom was a session singer who sang with the likes of Benny Goodman. Michelle talks about what it was like to tag along with her parents in the early seventies scene of working musicians in New York as "the little mascot of the cats."
Michelle recording jingles as a kid
After college, Michelle had a deal with Irving Azoff’s Giant Records as a recording artist. Later her songs were recorded by other artists, including Cher, Amy Grant, Kelly Osbourne, and Lindsay Lohan. We talk about the invisibility of songwriters and the skill involved into distilling your life experience into words that can be sung by someone else, like a screenwriter writing for actors. More recently, Michelle has been a composer for children's television, including Doc McStuffins, for which she won a Peabody Award. She shares how writing for television lets her express a different range of creativity because it's not bound by genre.
Michelle with her Peabody Award
In 2015, Michelle had a cut on an album that sold millions of copies and yet she was paid a fraction of what her 2005 hit was worth. Learning how much streaming technology had devalued the work of songwriters, she got together with songwriters Shelly Peiken, Pam Sheyne, Kay Hanley, Adam Dorn, Jack Kugell, and attorney Dina LaPolt to form SONA, Songwriters of North America. SONA pushes for changes to legislation like the Music Modernization Act which updated how songwriters are paid mechanicals to reflect the streaming music landscape. Michelle breaks down the different sources of revenue for songwriters including mechanicals, performance royalties, publishing, and syncs.
SONA meeting with Senator Edward Markey
Michelle is a mentor with WriteGirl, an organization that provides free mentoring to girls interested in songwriting and other types of writing including poetry, fiction, journalism, and screenwriting. We talk about the experience of helping girls write their first songs and how their lives are changed after seeing their songs performed. Michelle shares a story about watching future National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman develop her voice in WriteGirl workshops.
WriteGirl songwriting workshop
 
Enjoy this conversation about the importance of the jobs of songwriters, who provide the soundtrack to our lives.

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 1 of Song Chronicles. Our guest is producer, engineer, and educator Mark Rubel. Mark has produced thousands of recordings for artists including Alison Krauss, Rascal Flatts, Fall Out Boy, Ludacris, and many more. Mark sees humans as storytelling machines, with production and mixing as a unified field of sonic storytelling.
Mark placing microphones to record Roy "Futureman" Wooten at The Blackbird Academy in Nashville
Mark has taught audio technology, the music business, and the history of rock to thousands of students. Previously the Audio and Recording Director and Instructor at Eastern Illinois University, he is now the Director of Education at The Blackbird Academy in Nashville, where he and Louise met, when she was one of his students. He shares the parallels between pacing a lesson and pacing a set list and how teachers are, in a sense, performers when they hold their students’ attention.
Mark teaching students at Blackbird Academy
He’s currently working on a book on the great American recording studios of the '60s and '70s many of which had their own unique setups with obscure pieces of equipment before the studio revolution moved recordings from live tracking to mono to 24 tracks synched up. Describing himself as a "inveterate rabbit hole diver", the task of finishing the book has been monumental. We talk about how Mark finds the motivation and energy to get everything done, what kinds of people make art no matter what, and how his parents influenced him. HIs mother was a journalist and his father was a scientist and mathematician.
“You know" he says, "...if you take science, but high level science, where it's not, it's not just equations, it's  philosophical leaps of problem solving and  finding creative ways to get from one place to another -so that kind of science -and you combine it with what my mother did, which was portraiture in words, and you put them together, you get a record producer, engineer who's making a kind of a technical portrait of someone's essence, and you're trying to portray their personality and, and who they are through sound. So it's, it's a nice combination of those two things.”
 

Enjoy this conversation about making audio technology accessible to everyone. 

Welcome to Season 2, Episode 12 of Song Chronicles. Our special guests today are the bewitching jazz vocalist Marley Munroe, better known as Lady Blackbird, and the award-winning producer, writer and musician Chris Seefried. Together, the two created the incredible Lady Blackbird debut album Black Acid Soul, which they describe as a genre all its own they almost invented. As Chris explains, the word "jazz" could have been limiting, but he reassured Marley "you can still wear your outfits."

Lady Blackbird’s vocals are often compared to legends like Nina Simone or Billie Holiday, two vocalists she feels trained her. Chris describes what it’s like to have new audiences see Marley perform — it’s almost as if she’s a star they just haven’t heard yet.

As well as being a renowned producer, writer, and musician, Chris is an artist in his own right. We talk about what it’s like for him to be a part of another artist’s project as an artist himself. There’s no conflict for him because, as he says, "We get to play everything we love and listen to the greatest singer in the world sing it."

Black Acid Soul might seem like an overnight success, but many years of work have gone into it.
Marley and Chris in 2014
And releasing a debut record in 2020 was no easy feat — Marley and Chris couldn’t support the record with the standard touring because of the pandemic. 

The project was eventually embraced first by the UK, as often happens with American artists, and Lady Blackbird was invited to play Jools Holland — which Marley and Chris pushed through not realizing they both had COVID.

Listen to a most joyful conversation and hear about Marley and Chris's incredible journey writing, recording and performing this world-class, era-defying music that's worthy of becoming part of serious music fans' most loved artists.