S.G. Goodman’s childhood bedroom conveyed her growing interest in aliens. It was decorated with a Space Jam poster, a lava lamp and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Her toys consisted of a plastic Buzz Lightyear and a replica ray gun from the movie Mars Attacks. At one point, she painted the walls yellow.
While she was growing up in Fulton County, the room was her escape hatch, her hideaway from the world, from her brothers and from daily chores on the family farm. It’s where she listened to music: the Space Jam soundtrack and Christian music on her JVS stereo system and surreptitious mixtapes, borrowed from friends, on a Sony Walkman. Alone, with tunes playing, her mind was free to wander.
“I was definitely a daydreamer, loved being alone since I was a kid and loved whatever type of privacy I could get,” Goodman recalled.
Today, Goodman shares many of music’s grandest stages with some of its biggest names. Yet even as her profile grows, she continues to make her home in Western Kentucky—Murray, where she went to college. While Buzz Lightyear is long gone, she still delights in opportunities to hide away in peace.
“Depending on the amount of time that I have at home, I literally might not leave my house, just to recoup,” Goodman said. “I would say I am not an extrovert; I just have some social skills.”
The recharges are vital, if infrequent. Her 2023 touring schedule is packed, and, with each stop, more and more people are taking notice of Goodman’s unique sound. Following a summer of touring with Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit, Tyler Childers and Margo Price, Goodman made her Grand Ole Opry debut in September, sharing the stage for her song “Space and Time” with Erin Rae, who Goodman said was her “first champion” in Nashville, and Childers, who has covered the song.
“It was kind of a strange full circle, getting to perform that song with two people who believed enough to share it,” Goodman said. “Erin Rae shared that song in demo form with my current manager, and then there I was singing with Tyler, who believed in it enough to want to cut it himself, and he doesn’t really need other people’s songs to cut. It’s rare to have such a good writer wanting to cut somebody else’s song.”
Price was also on the evening’s bill. The Opry date came as she and Goodman were in the midst of a run of shows together.
“Opening for Margo—getting to open for another woman—is really special because in the industry, there’re just a lot of guys all around all the time,” Goodman said. “So, it’s really nice to kind of have mentorship from another woman in the industry, and we just had a good time.”
A few weeks after the Opry, Goodman won the Emerging Act of the Year Award at the 2023 Americanafest in Nashville, then trekked out to Colorado to reunite with Childers for two nights at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Childers hails from the mountains (Lawrence County), Goodman from the riverbanks, but she said she feels a kindred bond with her fellow Kentuckian.
“With Tyler, we come from similar-size areas, kind of similar backgrounds even to an extent, and in the same way with his band, they’re just all good ol’ country boys that are kind and humble and take care of their crew and their people, and it just felt like home,” she said. “It’s pretty simple. There is something comforting about things that feel familiar. And I would say being out with Tyler and his band and crew, there was a sense that I was around people who were familiar to me.”
Goodman said that, culturally speaking, there are plenty of similarities between Western Kentucky and Appalachia, but that, like the mountains in Eastern Kentucky, the river gives her region its flavor.
“One thing that maybe sets it apart is just the history of the Mississippi River and the types of cultures,” she said. “Like where I grew up here, it’s called the Bayou de Chien, but we pronounce it ‘By-da-Shay,’ so there’re like little remnants of—just on the river—French, Cajun-type stuff.”
In her corner of the state, the Mississippi River is the lifeblood for farming families. It keeps the land fertile but can wreak havoc in the event of a sudden rise. Goodman grew up fishing on the river but also spent many arduous hours picking up driftwood, or “chunks,” from the family’s fields after floods. Images from the land permeate her lyrics in the form of killdeers, cottonmouths and cypress knees. She attributes her high-lonesome sound to growing up singing three times a week in her Southern Baptist church, but—like the covert mixtapes of her youth—there were other influences, too, such as punk shows in nearby Mayfield and barn shows in Graves County, where she first met fellow musician Kelsey Waldon at age 16.
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The omnivorous musical diet persists today. Goodman said that her most prominent memory from the past few years isn’t the Opry or her 2022 NPR Tiny Desk Concert but an evening that occurred a few hours downstream from Fulton County in the Mississippi Delta, far from the bright lights of growing stardom.
It was a cool night in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in late December 2022. Goodman had made the trip south with a friend. They toured the Delta Blues Museum and poked around in the downtown shops. They drove out to the crossroads, ordered hot ham and cheeses from Abe’s, then made their way over to Red’s Lounge to listen to some blues.
Red’s is an old-school spot. Decorations hang from the ceiling, and beer is served from a cooler, cash only. On this night between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, the sink in the women’s bathroom wouldn’t shut off. Goodman and her friend arrived early. They took in the ambiance as the band members made their way in and began setting up. Goodman started talking with one of the men.
“What do you play?” she asked.
“Guitar,” he responded. “What do you play?”
When Goodman answered in kind, the man took note. The set began. The room heated up. About an hour and a half in, he walked over to Goodman and handed her his guitar.
“I want you to play,” he said.
Goodman had a blues riff prepared in her mind. She took the guitar and dove in. It was the thrill of a lifetime.
“That might sound weird for folks, because yes, I just got to play the Opry, I’m playing the Ryman [Auditorium in Nashville] this year, playing Red Rocks,” she said of the moment’s significance. “There’re other venues that I would love to be able to play one day, but those all have the potential of being able to do it and do it more than once. I don’t believe I’ll ever be at Red’s juke joint in Clarksdale, Mississippi [again], and get to have a guitar in my hand.”
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The story keeps with Goodman’s humble, low-key ethos. While her profile, success and industry connections might point toward a move to Nashville or New York City, she is content to live in Murray. It has a good record shop in Terrapin Station, a tasty diner in Rudy’s on the Square, and she’s an hour from her hometown of Hickman. Like her childhood bedroom, it’s a comfortable retreat. Quiet. Authentic.
“I am a small-town girl; I like living in rural areas,” she said. “I don’t need to have every restaurant accessible to me in the world. There are all the things that a lot of people enjoy about city life and, I mean, they’re great, but I’ve never had to have them. I’ve never known what it was like to have them, so it’s not something I’d go around missing.”