For the stark “You Were Someone I Loved,” which features Goodman singing with no accompaniment, Vandenberg let her have the run of the studio. The 11-track album encompasses country music, spartan post-punk and high-lonesome Appalachian balladry, everything tied together by Goodman’s indelible vocals. “She didn’t want to just make a country record.” “One of the things that she and I really connected on was just being into so many different kinds of music,” Vandenberg said.
She and her backing band of Murray musicians drove the eight hours down to Athens, Ga., to record with the co-producer Drew Vandenberg at Chase Park Transduction Studios. To record “Teeth Marks,” however, Goodman had to leave town. Now she’s making a name for herself, but it’s amazing that she’s doing it while staying here in Murray.” She wanted us to give them away to people.
“I remember her coming into the store years ago with a goody bag of homemade CDs,” said Tim Peyton, one of Terrapin’s owners, who plays in the local post-punk band Quailbones. This is where Goodman got her start as a musician, buying records and playing bills with local punk bands. She’ll also take you by Terrapin Station, a strip mall record store that serves as the hub of the lively scene in Murray, stocking merch from local bands and occasionally hosting shows. “They hosted different types of people and outlooks, and they’ve been a life force for people in rural communities.” “When the town wasn’t ready to progress, these were places where change could happen,” she explained. After tithing at the local Baptist church, profits would go toward buying school clothes. Each summer, Goodman’s father would plant sweet corn for each of his children, and they would be responsible for harvesting and selling the crop. She was raised in Hickman, right on the Mississippi River, and she’s quick to point that “Mark Twain actually called it ‘a pretty town, perched on a handsome hill.’” It’s “mostly dilapidated now,” she noted, “but it’s still charming and beautiful.” Her family were sharecroppers, responsible for thousands of acres of wheat, corn and soybeans. Western Kentucky has left its marks on Goodman and her songs. “I don’t think that can be done by someone who just decided that they like the style of music that typically portrays those places. “It’s important to represent the South and rural places with a beauty and complexity,” Goodman said, adjusting her glasses and running her hand through the thick brown hair that has become her signature. Love - especially unrequited love - leaves a physical impact, an idea she explores throughout the album. A little souvenir, where your teeth left marks.” Her voice is an intimate whisper, her phrasing defined by her West Kentucky accent, and the image itself is both playful and painful. Over a clutch of tender, twangy guitar notes on the LP’s title track, she sings, “When you left the bed, after you bit my arm. She approaches her songs as though they were stories, emphasizing character and scene. Goodman has put those lessons to good use, especially on her second album, “Teeth Marks,” out Friday.
“He taught me that a really good way to understand what feelings you’re trying to capture is by reading something like a short story or a novel and really paying attention to the moments or images that make your stomach turn a little.” “All of his sentences are so beautiful and economical,” she said, failing to locate the one she had in mind. Sitting in her midcentury-modern living room in this small college town and steadfastly ignoring the whines of her balding terrier, Howard, the singer-songwriter flipped through a copy of “My People’s Waltz ,” the Pulitzer-nominated 1999 short-story collection by her mentor and friend Dale Ray Phillips. Goodman was looking for the perfect sentence.