Goodnight, Texas Is Holding Out For A Banjo Revival But Are Not Quitting Their Day Jobs
Patrick Dyer Wolf and Chris Sugiura performing with Goodnight, Texas at The Neurolux, photo by April Massey
Goodnight, Texas is a five-piece proverbial sweet spot of profound lyrics and instrument showcase. Named for the once geographic middle point between the group’s two lead singers, Goodnight, Texas has struck an unexpected yet satisfying balance between nostalgia and innovation. Drawing heavily from folk and blues storytelling traditions, Goodnight, Texas skillfully weaves gothic and ephemeral elements with American lore to create hauntingly memorable songs.
By combining the melodic tones of a 1913 Gibson mandolin, traditional banjo twang, heavy riffs from a Danelectro Baritone Guitar, and a smattering of pedal steel and fiddle, the group has managed to create a sound that borrows from the past while remaining wholly unique in today’s music landscape. The geographically scattered fivesome released their highly anticipated fourth album, How Long Will It Take Them To Die, at the beginning of 2022. The album is a balance of dark and light snippets of American history mixed with musings from the past two years of isolation. We had a chance to catch up with Patrick Dyer Wolf and Avi Vinocur before the band’s tour stop at The Neurolux in downtown Boise, Idaho, on May 7th. You can find future tour dates and purchase the band’s latest album through their website.
AM: Location plays a big part in your songwriting. On your latest album, you have switched focus from the American South to Alaska and Canada; what prompted the change in scenery?
Adam Nash performing with Goodnight, Texas at The Neurolux, photo by April Massey
Patrick Wolf: I think we have had a migration over the course of our albums. The first album was Appalachia with songs about the civil war, the second album moved west with references to east Ohio, and the third album had songs about Tucumcari, New Mexico, Barstow, California, and now we are going north. Maybe we will be in Russia for the next album, maybe space.
Avi Vinocur: Maybe the Arctic Circle.
Patrick Wolf: Maybe Kibbutz, maybe space.
Avi Vinocur: Prince Edward Island.
AM: Your sound is heavily steeped in the storytelling traditions of folk and blues. Are those traditions essential to the identity of the band?
Avi Vinocur: I think so. I like to have the instrumentation and sound match the era of the content, almost like a television show or script. It makes sense to me for it to feel and sound that way. We have been playing around with that a little by bringing in different instruments and sound effects. We started playing electric guitars a couple of albums ago.
Patrick Wolf: Part of our original palate was to have a mandolin, banjo, acoustic guitar, very folky, and traditional Americana. Even though not all of our music has ended up being strictly traditional, that is still our foundation. We have been branching out and building off that, but it is still our centerpiece.
AM: Much of your subject matter draws on some fairly dark and heavy themes. Where do you pull inspiration from for your songwriting?
Avi Vinocur: A lot of our songs come from stories I have heard or read or even made up. I probably have some internal attraction to darkness and heavier things. My dad died when I was very little, and I have always been okay with and like talking about death. I have always been open to grieving publicly and discussing grief with other people. So, stories in that vein have always been attractive to me, and I like bringing that into my songwriting.
Patrick Wolf: I love sad music; it is way better than happy music.
Avi Vinocur: I agree.
Patrick Dyer Wolf performing with Goodnight, Texas at The Neurolux, photo by April Massey
AM: In the past two years, your song “The Railroad” was featured on the hit Netflix series Tiger King. You were also invited to contribute to Metallica’s highly anticipated Blacklist project. What were those experiences like for you? Did they change anything for the band?
Patrick Wolf: We were pitched Tiger King under a different title, Big Cat Country. It seemed like a sleepy Netflix documentary about wildlife from the one-sheet we were given.
Avi Vinocur: I think they phrased it as a “private zoo documentary.”
Patrick Wolf: We thought, “oh, that sounds nice.” They said, “well, we cannot give you that much money; even Nick Cave is taking a pay cut.” But we were like, “great, we will do.” We forgot all about it, but a few months later, we started getting texts from our friends saying, “dude, you did not tell me you were in Tiger King.”
Avi Vinocur: We were like, “what song? Did we agree to this?” It was very surreal. Eventually, it started to be everyone I knew texting me. For a while, it was five texts a day, at least, from people asking me about it. We watched it finally, and it was insane; we had no idea. There were about six months between them asking to use our song and the series dropping, and I think the story developed more in that time, which ended up making it a lot different than what was initially pitched to us.
Patrick Wolf: With the Metallica song, they invited us to do it. Avi told me about it on a Monday; by Tuesday evening, he had sent me the demo of what he wanted to do.
Avi Vinocur: I work for Metallica sometimes as a day job, dealing with their equipment, audio guys, and backline guys.
AM: Subtle humble brag.
Avi Vinocur: They are wonderful people.
Patrick Wolf: Day job on stage at the Chase Center, whatever.
Avi Vinocur: They asked if we wanted to participate in the project. They knew what a lot of the other bands were going to be covering at that time. Everyone could pick their own songs, so I asked if there were any that had not been chosen yet. There was a couple, but I was really drawn to “Of Wolf and Man.” After listening to it, I very quickly knew how I wanted it to sound, so I made a demo on my phone and sent it to Pat with an apology for already having done everything. I wanted it to be mandolin centric because I have played acoustic mandolin with Metallica before. So any of their five fans who have heard of us would be like, “oh, the mandolin guy.” Then, of course, we had to pick the wolf song because Pat’s last name is Wolf. It all fell together pretty quickly.
Chris Sugiura performing with Goodnight, Texas at The Neurolux, photo by April Massey
Patrick Wolf: Our guitarist Adam Nash did fourteen violin tracks on it that are kind of buried but give it this very otherworldly vibe. He also did pedal steel.
Avi Vinocur: Pat wrote a melody for it on fuzz banjo, and Adam doubles it with the pedal steel.
Patrick Wolf: The fuzz banjo part is a repurposing of this very metal riff from the original song. We just wanted to go super left field with it.
Avi Vinocur: And sneak in a few notable moments.
Patrick Wolf: Are these answers way too long?
AM: No, you guys are good. This is awesome.
Patrick Wolf: Did it change anything? I do not know. Did it change anything?
Avi Vinocur: Yeah, definitely. It showed us that we could record remotely because we had to. This was during peak pandemic in January of 2021. There were no vaccines yet. We had to find tests so our drummer, Scott, and I could get together. Scott came over to record the drums, I added my parts, Pat added his parts in New Jersey, Adam did his stuff in central California, and Chris played bass in San Francisco. We could do it remotely and still feel and sound like us. That was one big thing we learned. It has helped us get noticed by places that write about that kind of stuff. Someone at a show in Denver shouted for us to play “Of Wolf and Man.” If we had been playing shows when Tiger King came out, I am sure people would have been yelling for us to play the Tiger King song.
Avi Vinocur performing with Goodnight, Texas at The Neurolux, photo by April Massey
AM: Touching more on making music remotely, all of you live in different parts of the country. How does that affect your music-making process?
Patrick Wolf: We pass things back and forth online, obviously. When we get together physically, it is more focused because we have limited time.
Avi Vinocur: It is like a reunion every time we go on tour. Initially, when Pat was living in North Carolina, going out there was very musically inspiring, and I think he liked coming out to California as well.
Patrick Wolf: But now I live in New Jersey, and there is no musical inspiration.
AM: Springsteen territory.
Avi Vinocur: There is plenty of inspiration there.
AM: Do you think it helps being able to separate after being in such close courters on tour?
Patrick Wolf: It is the only way we have done it. For us, that is just the way we work.
Avi Vinocur: I think it would be more complicated and less focused if we lived in the same place. Trying to get together for thirty minutes between dropping kids off and picking the dog up. It is nice to be fully focused when we get together and be very dialed with our time so we can do photos and videos and work on whatever music we can.
AM: Last question for you, is there any music in particular that is keeping you company on tour right now?
Avi Vinocur: Viagra Boys. Do you know the band Viagra Boys?
AM: I do not, but I am going to.
Avi Vinocur: They are very good. They are nothing like us, but I have just been listening to them like crazy with my wife. They have a song called “Worms, ” such a great song. And a song called “Sports.” They are just great—super noisy, kind of in the same vein as The Idles.
Avi Vinocur, Patrick Dyer Wolf, and Adam Nash performing with Goodnight, Texas at The Neurolux, photo by April Massey
Patrick Wolf: I have been listening to Robert Ellis, a bunch. He has a song called “Topo Chico,” which is great.
Avi Vinocur: What else, Radio Lab, The Daily, the jiggle jiggle song from Tiktok. I have to have a better answer than this. There is a new Kevin Morby song with banjo, it is very Americana; it is beautiful and a great song. I heard it and thought, “does this mean everyone is getting into banjo again?” That bodes very well for us.
Patrick Wolf: Yeah, it has only been like ten years.
Avi Vinocur: It usually takes about thirty.
This interview has been edited and condensed
