Mention this summer’s Newport Folk Festival to S.G. Goodman, and she’ll lead with a sports story. “Oh, I kicked Kevin Morby’s ass,” she says, faster than it took to bring up the fest in the first place.
Goodman was the captain of the winning team in the Newport All-Star softball game, getting the best of Morby’s group. A day later, she found herself on the Harbor Stage, covering the Butthole Surfers’ “Pepper” and inviting Dan Reeder on stage to play on “I’m in Love,” one of the signature tunes on Planting by the Signs, Goodman’s third studio album, which dropped in June. She also found time to sit in during MJ Lenderman’s set.
Days after that Newport whirlwind, Goodman holed up in a coffee shop in Midtown Manhattan to while away the hours before opening for Patty Griffin at Sony Hall by reflecting on Newport and the weeks since Planting by the Signs hit streaming sites and record stores.
Her overarching assessment of Newport was that she was a lot more nervous than she let on.
“During my set, or bringing Dan up and sitting in with MJ, the nerves didn’t hit,” she recalls. “When they really hit was when I knew I was sitting in with Lucius, who are just masters at harmonizing. I was basically subbing in on this wonderful song they did with Madison Cunningham. It’s a complicated song, and it was maybe going past my abilities as a vocalist to do it seamlessly. Then, when I walked up to the stage, I was handed the setlist, and right under me was Mavis Staples. I just went, ‘Jesus Christ. Here I am, gonna be really putting myself out there, and right after me is gonna walk a living legend.’”
Goodman’s re-telling may be self-deprecating, but it reflects the Kentucky native’s slow, almost grudging, acceptance of the spotlight. Even before Planting by the Signs, Goodman’s star power was growing more quickly than at any point since her 2020 solo debut, Old Time Feeling. She had a long post-pandemic run of opening for Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit and was named the 2023 Emerging Artist of the Year at the Americana Honors & Awards. But it was Tyler Childers covering the heart-wrenching love ballad “Space and Time” from that debut album, including it on his 2023 release Rustin’ in the Rain, that broadened Goodman’s fan base exponentially.
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In front of an audience, she manages her creeping fame with dry, Kentucky humor, and it works, as she showed later that night when she played ahead of Griffin.
“This song is called ‘Heaven Song,’” Goodman told the sold-out crowd inside the 500-seat listening room as she introduced one of the tracks on Planting by the Signs. “I’m not very good at titles. I don’t really give a shit about them, to be honest with you. After I write a song, I feel like I’ve done the thing. Just let AI generate them.” She catches herself quickly: “Nah, I’m just kiddin’ there. AI didn’t generate this one, they could never.”
Whatever humor Goodman brings in playing the record, it is rooted in the polar opposite feelings. Planting by the Signs is the product of a mushroom-aided quest to overcome writer’s block and despair. In a two-week period in 2023, Goodman saw her longtime dog die, followed by a friend and mentor. The grief that followed left her detached. The mushrooms helped her reconnect with the world around her, then to her music. The album’s title is a referencs to getting in touch with nature and existing according to lunar signs.
Since the record’s release, audiences have taken note of the joy that Goodman elicits while she’s working through it onstage.
“One thing I’m particularly moved by is people’s response to me, maybe, evolving into some different things, sonically,” she says. “It registers live, too. People give me feedback that they’re excited to see new players onstage, or how they can tell that I approach this record different, vocally, and that I had fun. And I did. I had fun making this record, and I’m having a lot of fun playing it live. I’ve been known to banter a lot onstage, but with this album, I’ve created a lot of interludes. It’s a very narrative record, and even in a live setting, I’m trying to honor that.”
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One of the new players Goodman references is John Calvin Abney, a musician and songwriter from Oklahoma and frequent collaborator with John Moreland. Abney opened a run of West Coast shows for Goodman in the spring, and when she decided to tour with a band in support of Planting by the Signs, she brought Abney on as keyboard and auxiliary player.
“S.G. bears the mark of a grand bandleader and carries a thorough thoughtfulness toward the folks in her camp,” Abney tells Rolling Stone. “She approaches her performances as she does her songs — with a combination of emotional wealth and narrative depth. I’ve enjoyed being a part of the group, because she knows what she wants from us artistically. She pushes us towards playing better while giving us space to speak in our voices. All that said, she can crack anyone up with a joke, too.”
One of the shows Goodman played with her band in April was Childers’ sold-out concert at Kroger Field on the campus of Kentucky University in Lexington. Goodman was the first of three artists on the bill, with Wynonna Judd playing between her and Childers. Goodman ended her set with the “Space and Time,” affording thousands of Childers fans the chance to hear the song’s creator play it.
“After I put out Old Time Feeling, it was my first time to experience the thought, ‘Oh my goodness, this is the end of an album cycle,’” Goodman says. “This song that I love and that is so special to me is dead now. Then, I have Tyler Childers, who is an amazing songwriter all by himself, who wants to cover my song… Just the fact that Tyler felt moved to do that has allowed that song to be experienced and heard by a lot more people — maybe different people than it would have been if I’d have just continued to sing it on the road.”
For all the difference that made in Goodman’s career, her biggest takeaway from Childers is something more basic. She explains that opening for her fellow Kentucky songwriter — and Isbell and Margo Price, too — let her witness the way those artists treat crew members, family and friends, giving her a baseline for how she wants her own camp to operate. They create their own extended family on the road, she says, which in turn makes touring something more than simply bearable.
This is how Goodman’s own life reflects the notion of planting by the signs. All the aspects of her music — songwriting, recording, touring, and the interviews and softball victories that come with it — have to work together. What the world sees in her art must be a reflection of the life she has carved out for herself. Even if that means they’re seeing her processing grief every night, it’s true-to-life, and Goodman is at peace with it.
“I think I’ve actually struggled with what’s the point of doing music at all, when you could do so many other things with your life,” Goodman says. “I was a philosophy kid. I wanted to go to law school. For a long time, I questioned if I was helping anybody by doing what I’m doing. In writing this record, I’d say I write a lot of emotional songs, and I get a lot of emotional responses from people. I’m told a lot of heavy things. That made me question, ‘Am I just making people sad?’ Then, I was in this really big grief period myself. I started reading this book called A Wild Edge of Sorrow, which is about grief rituals and how we go through that. During that time, it hit me. There might be something to being a minister of grief, if that’s what people need.
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“If people feel like they can cry, or have an emotional experience because of my music, there’s some purpose there.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose latest books, Never Say Never and Red Dirt Unplugged are available via Back Lounge Publishing.
