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Quick Q and A with Jason Myles Goss
 by Kathy S-B  ·  5 February 2011

Jason Myles Goss has garnered many accolades for his songwriting during his relatively short musical career. 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. For more information about this talented artist, check out his website. To get a taste of his live show, here’s a video!

Jason Myles Goss
When did you first start playing music?
When I was about 12 my parents surprised me with an electric guitar for Christmas. It was this 3/4 size black-and-white guitar with a little shoe-box sized amp. It was awesome.
I started taking guitar lessons and tried very unsuccessfully to grow my hair long. I ended up looking more like Greg Brady than Bon Jovi.
Do you remember the first time you played a gig? How did it go?
Yes, In high school I sang and played guitar in a rock band called Hubris and we had our first gig in the old gymnasium as part of a “Dance Marathon” event, which was basically a dance & fundraiser that lasted almost six hours. We took the stage and played for about thirty minutes, a couple of original songs and a few cover songs by bands like The Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam. We were really loud and we thought that was good. I don’t know if we were actually good, but when we finished we were feeling pretty great and people were clapping. My dad recorded it on VHS tape so we could re-live the glory. . . if we still had a VCR.
If you weren’t playing music for a living, what can you see yourself doing?
I was an English major in college and I have always loved reading and writing. If I wasn’t playing music I would love to try being a high school English teacher. Both my parents are teachers and I have a tremendous respect for the job, for how much work and dedication it requires, and for how important it is. I think all of us remember those few teachers who really inspired us when we were in high school or college. I have a younger brother who is graduating from UMass Amherst this year, it’s been fun to talk with him about his ideas for his essays, to hear about the novels he was reading, etc. I think I could really enjoy that world.
Did your experience as a literature major in college help you in the craft of songwriting?
I think so, I get inspired by the things that I read, and also by the ways different writers explore the big questions (Life, Death, Love, God, War) and also how they frame the smallest details. As a songwriter and performer, it’s as if you get to write the screenplay and be the director; you get to choose what is going to be in the frame and also how it is going to be shown, and that can be fun to play with. There are so many layers that can give meaning to a song and to the performance of a song: the lyrics, the key, the tempo, the timbre of the voice, the instrumentation, etc. Trying to tune into these things has been a good learning experience for me as a performer. I also really like how songs evolve over time in the same way that other texts do, depending on the perspective of the reader/writer. Hearing Dylan play “The Times They Are A Changin.’” live at the White House as a much older man sounds very different than when he was younger. What it lost in its brashness its gained in a gentler, almost melancholic, wisdom. It feels like he is singing more about something that’s about to pass rather than something that’s about to come. I like how songs can be living things like that.
What’s the longest road trip you’ve taken? What’s the hardest thing about being on the road?
There’s so many places that I haven’t been to yet that I would like to play — the West Coast, the North & Southwest. The longest road trip so far was this past December. I had some dates in Tennessee and secured a last-minute, in-the-round gig in Nashville. I drove out there straight from Brooklyn, which was about 15 hours, only to arrive during an unexpected blizzard which cancelled the show and shut down the city for two days. That was a little tough. I also went to Texas for the first time in December, but flew out for those shows. In terms of things that can be difficult, I do virtually all of my traveling alone, and after a week or so of not seeing anyone familiar or living the entirety of your day internally, I get a little homesick. I am a homebody and like to be around those things that are familiar to me. I have a lot of friends who play music and travel way more than I do and never seem to be in one place for very long. I have a lot of respect for them, it is not an easy thing to do. Another difficulty is finding places to eat that are not fast food chains but still cheap and good. Routing around the gas station mini mart at a Sheetz in West Virginia, checking ingredients on beef jerky and granola bars can get a little old.

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