S.G. Goodman Jonathan McPhail

S.G. GOODMAN
THURSDAY 2/23. White Water Tavern. 8 p.m. $15.

In an online essay for the Oxford American, S.G. Goodman spoke about the indispensability of the female perspective for country and roots music: “Listeners can hear a roadmap of progress through the voices and songs of women … they are telling their tales of fight and grit, of injustice and inequality.” Goodman, a gifted songwriter and farmer’s daughter from small town Kentucky, falls into that same lineage but adds her own epic, rocky and atmospheric twist to the genre.

Advertisement

In “If You Were Someone I Loved,” a biting track from the middle of her 2022 album “Teeth Marks,” she indicts both herself and her proverbial neighbor for ignoring the victims of the opioid epidemic ravaging rural America. If the listener sings along, they are cast in the role of a person who has willfully put distance between themselves and those who suffer. In “Dead Soldiers,” Goodman bears witness to a friend’s alcoholism, leading her to observe that self-destructive drinking looks a lot like “a man chopping wood for his own funeral pyre.” In other words, she’s not messing around. Stand in the crowd at White Water Tavern and see what kind of action or reflection she might spur you to.

Advertisement