Bruce Goldish: Sharing the Stage with

 Drug Dealers, Hookers and Cops

 

By M. William Phelps

 

It was hard for me to believe that a writer could, for nearly 300 pages, carry on a book-length narrative about an average man who finds (and eventually buys) his dream piano. Is this fodder for a book, I asked myself while reading the jacket copy? Hell, it’s worth a look just to find out if the guy can pull it off, I convinced myself while standing in line at the cash register.

 

In his wonderfully written book, “The Piano Shop on the Left Bank ,” Thad Carhart proved to me in the first few pages just how ignorant I can sometimes be. His candid, yet straightforward writing style, along with his intriguing take on a subject that seems so mundane and almost beside the point, takes charge from page one and never lets up. It is not a book, one soon realizes, simply about a piano shop, its owner and a guy—Carhart—who decides to once again take up an instrument he had, years ago, abandoned. It is a story of a man who re-ignites a passion for an instrument he soon realizes is more to him than just a wooden box of keys and strings—the piano is an extension of his soul, a part of his character he cannot suppress, no matter how hard he tries.

 

The piano shop owner, a short, old Frenchman named Luc, asks Carhart why he is “looking puzzled” when the two men first meet in Luc’s piano shop one afternoon.

 

“It’s just occurred to me how much of ourselves we project onto a piano when we consider what we’re going to buy,” Carhart tells the old man.

 

Pulling from his experience, Luc puts into perspective the struggle that is going on in Carhart’s heart at that exact moment in his life.

 

“Ah,” he says, “but of course, that’s the beauty of a piano. It’s not just another instrument like a flute or violin that you put away in the closet. You live with it and it with you. It’s big and impossible to ignore, like a member of the family. . . .”

 

“Like a member of the family.” Exactly! That phrase struck a chord with me. I relished in its honesty. And this is where, while reading, I had an epiphany: Ah, but of course   . . . the love of playing an instrument with so much passion and commitment that every sense in your body, every part of your being, goes into the sound that comes out of it, regardless of what kind of instrument it is, or what anyone thinks.

 

How many parents have forced an instrument on a child who, mostly out spite, has denied it? For many, playing an instrument isn’t a choice; it is a necessity. In other words, one cannot learn to love something.

 

Rarely—if ever—do we come across this sort of alchemy, this sense of love and admiration for an instrument, while listening to a record these days. It’s just not there anymore. Records today are made for profit, not profundity. It’s all about hooks, looks and sales. Seldom a day it is when a record scoops you up on a magic carpet in one quick motion and whisks you through all sorts of feelings and emotions. Many times, when we buy a new disc, before the third or fourth track is even over, we’re looking to skip ahead and see what else it has to offer. We’re bored. The same ole, same ole.

 

Guitarist Bruce Goldish’s first record, “Coast,” offers us a chance to delve into something entirely different—and here’s the great thing about this record: It is just Goldish and his guitar. Nothing more. There are no vocals or cheesy lyrics to bog it down. There’s no overdubs to make you wonder just how hell it was done. It’s just Bruce, his guitar and his soul. Unfiltered art. Pure. Uncomplicated. And in today’s market: extremely courageous.

 

Goldish began playing guitar at 17, when, while walking down the corridor of his high school, he heard the miraculous sound of a Martin 12-string coming from a room ahead of him. Following the sound, it pulling him like the smell of one of momma’s apple pies on a summer afternoon, he “discovered virtuoso guitarist and friend-to-be Craig Monson.”

 

“[The] first time I picked up the guitar, I was whiny. Nobody told me it was supposed to hurt! And why weren't my fingers doing like I told them? At first, it was all very unnatural. What saved me is, I'm simple. Once I figured out how to make a simple D-chord sound pretty with some finger picking patterns, that was it; I was hooked.”

 

Soon after, Bruce wrote his first song, which eventually evolved into a tune called “Cinnamon Toast,” a rather eclectic song that found a comfortable home on “Coast.”

 

Music was always part of Bruce’s DNA; he has been around it his entire life. Born and raised in the hills of Duluth , Minnesota , he is the son of physician Bob Goldish who, Bruce admiringly says, is “an amazing vocalist, sax [player] and clarinetist.”

 

A few years later, when Bruce was still figuring out what to do with his life, he abruptly picked up and moved to what he calls the “musical Mecca of Minneapolis—where the snowdrifts only bury you to your hips, not your neck, and where I would check out local finger style greats like Leo Kottke and Preston Reed.”

 

Believe it or not, Minneapolis was a good spot on the map for a burgeoning musician back then, even if the genre Bruce was pursuing wasn’t necessarily the spotlight of the town. Back when the term actually meant something, in the “80s” and early “90s,” “alternative” pioneers The Replacements and Husker Dü basically had the run of Minneapolis—gatekeepers, if you will, who, along with the Great Purple One literally put Minneapolis on the musical map.

 

So what was a solo guitarist to do in a town made famous by alternative rock and a guy who, at one time, had his name changed to a rather odd looking symbol? Was there room for Bruce and his music? An audience?

 

Bruce didn’t want to stick it out. At 22, he took off for Europe hoping to find, as he puts it, “the elusive best place in the world to live.” Minneapolis , for one, was just too damn cold. Second, Bruce soon realized that, in Minneapolis , he wasn’t going to reach the audience he knew was out there somewhere.

 

When he got to Europe , Bruce quickly found out that it wasn’t going to be coffee and croissants in Paris cafes by day and reading Jane Austen novels and drinking vintage Merlots in Venice by night.

 

“Midwinter in Europe ,” Bruce explains, “I found myself unexpectedly broke and homeless, save for my scrawny pup tent and backpack. But I also had my beautiful Guild 12-string.  And it saved the day.  I started playing ‘professionally’ in Switzerland , sharing the streets with tourists and drug dealers, hookers and cops.” 

 

After years of honing his chops and getting to a point where he felt comfortable in front of an audience, despite the fact that this early audience generally consisted of the worst society had to offer, at 37, in 1997, Bruce finally found a place he could call home: Santa Barbara, California. That’s when he took a look at the music biz and decided to make a serious go of it.

 

“In 1999, I decided to make music a ‘profession’ again. Turns out I prefer playing warm, dry concert venues and festivals to the cold European streets.”

 

Bruce learned something rather quickly, however—that home truly is (excuse the cliché) where the heart is.

 

“Actually,” Bruce recalls, “ Santa Barbara reminds me a lot of [my] hometown, Duluth . Lots of water, lots of green, blue sky, hills. But I do enjoy updating my Minnesota friends on the winter wind chill out here that sometimes makes the temperature plummet from 75 to 73.”

 

After several years of recording in a basement studio, Bruce has released a polished and professional version of an album that had been originally started as a mere labor of love. His debut disc, “Coast,” was released last year. It is an all-instrumental disc from a guy who can’t read or write music. Go figure. When one brings this sort of street mentality and raw education to a genre that is laden with Berklee graduates and protégées of the latest and greatest, it offers the modern listener, the person who doesn’t really listen to the genre, a genuine feel for the improvisation involved in a project like this. There’s no musical coach standing over Bruce’s shoulder reminding him of the notes he missed. It’s the sort of music I assume heavy metal guitarist Ritchie Blackmore would be doing if he wasn’t spending his time with Deep Purple. It’s classical music, I guess one could say, with an edge; it’s instrumental guitar with cocktail sauce.

 

Regarding Bruce’s lack of musical knowledge and theory, within minutes of listening to “Coast,” it is remarkably obvious that one doesn’t need a license to drive a car. Or a degree in botany to be a gardener. One just has to have a passion for what he is doing.

 

In a market today that is saturated with brand names and pop queens, the Internet seems to be the only outlet left for the musician who wants to stay true to heart and, despite doors being slammed in his face, pursue his dream. For Bruce, and many musicians like him, it is a place to reach an audience that at one time would have never known these musicians even existed.

 

“What I love about the music business these days is the on-line power and access.  I don't mean sites like Napster, which I've never used (for no good reason). It's the ability to get a quick sneak peek and listen to people's stuff, right there on their Web sites.  Brucegoldish.com allows indie labels like me a chance to be heard anywhere and anytime—and to me, that's big.  On-line stores like CDbaby.com allow a global audience and make things nice and easy for shoppers.  What I dislike about the more traditional aspects of the music business is how much kicking it takes to get ‘in,’ not to mention stay in. To me, ‘music’ and ‘business’ are two very separate concepts.  While mashing them together is a necessary evil, it doesn't make them more compatible . . .”

 

For a rock and roller or country music fan or even a pop music junkie, would Bruce’s music appeal? How many of these listeners are drawn to a style of music that sounds as if it belongs on late night NPR, or maybe a fadeout to an NPR public service announcement? Yes, there’s no doubt acoustic instrumental music would fit nicely in the background of any dinner party, keeping people company as they eat their pâté and discuss the latest stock dives, and no one would probably realize it was even there. And no one is arguing the fact that this music would work rather swimmingly in front of three thousand suits and bow ties at a classy band shell during a warm summer evening in Greenwich , Connecticut . But one has to understand something about good music, regardless of the genre: It can also work in the confines of a 1987 Datsun B-210 while one is perhaps going off to the factory in the morning. It’s simple pleasures, that’s all. One doesn’t need a PhD. to enjoy something; one only needs to give it a chance.

 

In fact, Bruce Goldish’s “Coast” will sweep you away and actually force you to think about things in your life—instead of allowing you just get by with mumbling along to the latest disposable pop song that you’ll hear three or four times that same day anyway.

 

True art isn’t born from spending four years at graduate school, or a life of leisure, churning out paintings or melodies all day while living off daddy’s trust fund; it is something that comes on like a disease and doesn’t let up. In other words, it cannot be taught. It is a place in the soul that is unearthed in its eternity by a random act of self-expression, which ultimately leads to a life of full disclosure. Bruce Goldish felt a rush one day when he heard the sound of a guitar while walking down his school’s hallway. From that day on, it became an obsession to master the instrument. And if “Coast” is any indication, well, Bruce Goldish is on his way to fulfilling one of the reasons why he is, perhaps, here.

 

What’s Bruce up to this summer?

He begins a “5,000 Mile Tour” in July with a special sendoff on June 29 at Santa Barbara 's Presidio Chapel, along with two other guitarists, Andrew Jackson and Dorian Michael.  Throughout the summer, he’ll visit a total of twelve states, from the southwestern coast to the Great Lakes to the northwestern coast and back home again. 

 

Bruce’s personal highlight for the summer?

 

“Reuniting with my old mentor Craig Monson for a concert at the historical NorShor Theater, in my hometown, Duluth , on July 21. I can't wait.”

 

Catch Bruce Goldish now while you can still afford it. Soon he’ll be playing the likes of Carnegie Hall, and you’ll be forced to take out a small loan just to buy tickets in the nosebleed section.

 

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