Radio Dial Press Kit One Sheet

jason myles goss
radio dial
You were the voice and you were the sound
And I was raised in a factory town
And all I wanted was to always be true
To say what I mean and to do what I do
- “Home”
Jason will always be that kid who grew up in a small, Massachusetts
mill town who wanted to write songs and play music. Despite
hanging his hat in Brooklyn, NY for the past six years now, his
heart will always be in those small-town streets—that straightaway
down by the cemetery, the baseball field built atop the old factory
dump, or the parking lot outside the drugstore. After years of
making records on his own dime, driving long hours, city to city, to
play for a handful of onlookers at a time, and flying well under
anyone’s radar, Jason has released his fourth album and first selfproduced effort, Radio Dial. Here we find a songwriter who has
clearly come into his own, with a burgeoning confidence and a
distinctive voice that has been forged from a variety of influences,
both musical and literal, and sharpened by many late-night
highway drives and gas station coffees.
“With Radio Dial I knew I wanted to make a big, classic-sounding record, and
I felt I had a lot to prove to myself. I have always been a melody-driven
songwriter; I love big choruses and hooks that swim around your head for days.
As a teenager, I would get lost inside albums like The Wallflowers’ ‘Bringing
Down The Horse,’ or Counting Crows’ ‘August and Everything After.’ But as I
got older, it was records like Gillian Welch’s ‘Time (The Revelator)‘ that
turned my world upside down—that kind of bare-bones, knock-you-on-your-ass
songwriting really taught me what a song could be and what it could do. Rather
than fight with these two different influences, I strove to make a record where
they each could pull up a chair at the same musical table.”
To start, Jason enlisted the help of friends Austin Nevins (guitars)
and Sam Kassirer (keys), both members of Josh Ritter’s Royal City
Band, as well as David Dawda (bass) and Joel Arnow (drums). Work
began at Vanity Sound in Brooklyn, NY where Jason and engineer
Myles Turney decided to record basic tracks live to analog tape,
giving the songs a rawness and roominess reflective of the records
they loved. They wanted to have musicians together in the same
room, breathing the same air, letting the dynamics of playing the
songs live shape the arrangements organically. In fact, several
tracks that ended up on Radio Dial were taken from the original
demo recordings (Keep Your Love With Me, Chocolate Croissant, Bows
And Arrows, and Hospital Shirt).
Into The Night
Heavy
Lion’s Mouth
Red Letter Man
Keep Your Love With Me
Home
Come Back To Me
Chocolate Croissant
Dark Dark Winter
Bows & Arrows
Black Lights
Hospital Shirt
New York City
jason myles goss ☆ www.jasonmylesgoss.com ☆ [email protected]
jason myles goss
radio dial
“It’s easy to get in the control room and start putting a song together like a
science project without letting it run wild a little bit. It doesn’t take much effort
to kill something by trying to capture it. As Tom Waits once said, ‘It’s easy to
cook up the feathers and throw away the bird,’ and I didn’t want that to
happen. I was very fortunate to be working with this band, this was my first
time producing a record from start to finish, and I really depended on them for
their ideas and know-how.”
Several themes run through Radio Dial, but the most pervasive is
that of struggle: to find a place in the world, to create light from
darkness when death and loss inject meaning into our lives, to fight
for the things you love. Ultimately, it’s a record about growing up,
about learning how to take your lumps, and realizing that the
world is a beautiful place full of painful and magical things that will
always be bigger than your heart’s ability to decipher them.
“Writing has always been my way of working through my own fears and
apprehensions. It didn’t dawn on me at the time, but a lot of these songs ended
up being about death and letting go, even songs as upbeat as ‘Home’ and ‘Into
The Night’ have undercurrents of that. I was also reading this book called “On
Boxing” by Joyce Carol Oates and it really made a huge impression on me;
boxing became this anchor point for a lot of the songs on Radio Dial.”
Boxing is mentioned in several of the songs on Radio Dial, (Bows
And Arrows, Come Back To Me, Hospital Shirt), but takes center stage in
the most cinematic song on the record, Black Lights—a story of a
young fighter, struggling to make a name for himself, and the
punishment he endures in a vainglorious attempt to “be somebody.”
A compelling comparison is alluded to here between the reality of
being a fighter and the reality of being an artist, how each is a
performer at the mercy of their audience, and how each works
tirelessly, and mostly in solitude, at something which then
culminates in a public spectacle (ring vs. stage), where each has to
access a very different part of themselves that, otherwise, has no
real place in day-to-day life. Both crafts also focus on the perfection
of simple things, find their power in those things, and are both
perceived in ways that are very different from what they actually
are.
press
“Goss is a thinking person’s songwriter, he
puts out these thoughts in a voice that’s
fragile one moment and like a wounded bird
falling from the sky the next.”
—The Valley Advocate (Northampton, MA)
“A stellar act.”
—Not Your Average Folk (New England)
“Goss’s musical performance was enticing;
his combination of storytelling and singing
lured in listeners and brought them to his
own level, as if they were living the songs
themselves.”
—The Ithacan (Ithaca, NY)
“Good, genuine, grassroots music.”
—Rebel Spirit Music (New York, NY)
“This one-man-show reminded everyone
packed into the small venue what live
acoustic performances are all about and why
the up-and-coming deserve to be heard.”
—Dissolver Magazine (MA)
“He’s won the hearts and minds of those
who enjoy thinking people’s music. His lyrics
contain timely and timeless messages and the
music that underlies them just seems to
exactly fit the mood making each song a
holistic melodic entity.”
—Me & Thee Coffeehouse (Marblehead, MA)
“One of the Brightest on the Folk Circuit
Today.”
—The Stone Church (Newmarket, NH)
jason myles goss ☆ www.jasonmylesgoss.com ☆ [email protected]
jason myles goss
radio dial
Although the songs shy away from the deliberately
autobiographical, Radio Dial contains many threads and ideas
deeply meaningful to Goss; even the cover art features loom and
shuttle patents invented by his great-grandfather in the midtwentieth century, whose first job, upon emigrating from Italy, was
working in the factory that now sits vacant in the center of Jason’s
hometown—a unique and deeply-personal tribute to the history of
where he (and his family) came from.
“My great-grandfather came through Ellis Island when he was only a teenager.
He was a brilliant man—an inventor, an opera singer, and a multiinstrumentalist. I think about the courage he must have had to leave everything
behind, and how, with a lot of effort and ingenuity, he was able to build a life
for himself and have a family. These patents are his American story, and they
have become very meaningful to me, especially as I get older. I feel a kinship
with that spirit of working hard to try to create things that you can build a life
with. They remind me that, whatever road you take, you need to have faith in
yourself.”
As an album name, Radio Dial embodies the spirit of these
songs, with a keen eye looking back on those days when Jason was
a teenager, walking the old town railroad tracks with his head lost
in music, while also conveying a sense of hope and optimism for
what the future may hold.
“It has this life-affirming quality to it that I feel a lot of the songs speak to,
despite the difficulties and darker things lurking in there. I think part of growing
up is learning how to be brave in the face of these things. I have alway found
tremendous solace in music, in how records would make me feel, and my hope is
that this record is able to do that for someone else.”
Points of Interest:
• 2011 Northeast Regional Finalist in the National Mountain Stage New Song Contest
• 2009 Northeast Regional Finalist in the National Mountain Stage New Song Contest
• Twilight Serenade in top 75 best-selling songs for singer/songwriters on iTunes in 2010
• 2006 Finalist in the Music Makers Northeast Songwriters’ Contest
• 2004 Finalist in Newport Folk Festival National Songwriters’ Contest
Jason has shared the stage with: Josh Ritter, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, Duncan Sheik, Lori
Mckenna, Patrick Monahan, Slaid Cleaves, Martha Wainwright, Peter Mulvey, The Guggenheim Grotto,
Ellis Paul, Anais Mitchell, Vance Gilbert, and Mary Gauthier
Press Photo by Doug Seymour
jason myles goss ☆ www.jasonmylesgoss.com ☆ [email protected]