BMP (Buffalo Music Players) BREAKING EPISODE: Sam Goddess

Sam Goddess will be at Duende tonight at 7 p.m. to release her body of work "Hot and Cold Lover"

Stemming from classical training, Goddess (real name by the way) has mastered several instruments and feels compelled to create. Just working a job isn't enough for this artist, she must make music. 

So go on over to Duende and if you'd like to pre-game, why not take a listen?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:08

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SPEAKER_03 1:58

Hello BMP listeners. I am Benjamin Joe.

SPEAKER_05 2:01

And I am Max.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

You are listening to the Buffalo Music Players Podcast. With us today is an actual Ms. Goddess, Sam Goddess. She is a multi-instrumentalist here in Buffalo, and one of her albums is coming out on April 17th, I believe. Would you like to go and uh introduce yourself to listeners?

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yeah, absolutely. Hi, my name's Sam Goddess. I go by the artist named Goddess. And yeah, you are right. I'm having my first full-length album uh called Hot and Cold Lover come out on April 17th, which is also my 30th birthday. Oh, congratulations on your birthday. Very serendipitous. That's how I want to start my 30s is with an album release. Now, where are you from, Sam? Are you from Buffalo, Virginia? I am, yeah, from West Seneca. Okay. Lived here up until college, and then I went to University of uh, I'm sorry, SUNY Potsdam, the Crane School of Music. And then I went to the University of Ottawa for my master's.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

Ottawa, cool. I've been to Ottawa a couple times. I was born in Ottawa, and I stayed there until I was two, and then we got the hell out of there because it's way too cold.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

It's really cold.

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Yeah, it's wild there. That's awesome. That's awesome. Okay, tell tell us a little bit about your musical journey. Because you have a lot of stuff on Bandcamp. I've seen like cello um sing uh solo work and um also the your debut goddess, which I thought was really great. Uh some of those songs are great, like you know, the Dreams one, like getting lost under evergreen trees. I was like, that's a damn good there.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, uh, my musical journey, I mean, I've always been singing. I like as a kid, my family is very musical. Both of my parents might are they were in like a blues band together, like a cover band. Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_05 3:46

Um, you have a really like jazzy voice.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, but was have been singing forever. Um, and uh uh my grandparents too would play guitar all the time and harmonica. Oh wow. Yeah, I would do the classic, like uh put together a whole routine in my basement and then have my parents come down and be like, okay, sit down and watch me perform to like Hannah Montana in the basement. Very nice. It's very fun. But uh all throughout like middle school, high school, um, I was doing I was training vocally too. I was doing like classical uh training and uh I have jazz background too, while also playing cello, and then I decided to go for cello. Well, actually technically uh music ed. And then I got two years into that degree and was like, wow, I hate this. Like I like teaching children, I just don't want to teach in a school. I'm happier when I'm performing, anyways. So I decided to just go the performance route. Wow, that's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just kind of do it. Um, and now here I am. And um, yeah, after my master's actually I stopped playing cello altogether. Oh no good. Yeah, well my degrees are in cello performance, both of those. I don't think I said that. Um, but yeah, I stopped like altogether just because I was like just getting so overworked. It was just years and years and years of like, okay, you have to practice X amount every single day, otherwise you will never make it in life, or you'll never get a job, whatever. But yeah, that was that was wild. So I took a break, and then after those two years, I was like, I overloaded myself with playing in all of the orchestras that I could in the area and just kind of kept building stuff, and now I do like singer-songwriting stuff, but um, I'm also in two string quartets too, like a bunch of orchestra.

SPEAKER_05 5:39

Yeah, so you just never slow down even when you try to.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Yeah. Yeah, it's um I keep telling all of my friends like either one of two things is gonna happen. Either I'm going to go actually insane, like certifiably insane, and lose my mind, or the album will come out. So it's one of those two things. So we'll see what happens.

SPEAKER_05 6:02

Well, I appreciate that you know the risks and you still take them.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

So yeah, you just kind of have to. And it's you know, being in the music industry to any degree is so scary, and it's so just like it's really uncomfortable a lot of the times because you have to just a a lot of it's networking and just who you know, who you don't know. Well, not who you don't know, but um and a lot of it is just like throwing yourself in people's faces, which is very uncomfortable to do, especially if you're not used to it. But yeah, my advice is just just go, just do it. Who cares?

SPEAKER_05 6:36

Yeah, no, it's scary. You gotta bet on yourself every day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:40

Uh who were some of the faces that you had to go and throw yourself in front of?

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Um, a lot of uh conductors in uh in the the area. So I see.

SPEAKER_03 6:53

Yeah, shout out conductors.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Shout out Buffalo Philharmonic. Oh my goodness. That orchestra is an orchestra that I've looked up to for years. Oh my goodness. I studied with the principal cellist, Roman Maknilov. Oh he's a wonderful cellist. Um, he's still principal there. Go see the BPO if you can. Oh yeah. Go see them. Um I've worked with Joanne Folletta, and she uh is the conductor there. She is one of the greats of like ever. She's incredible. Um but yeah, just like I mean, that's like grand scale, like conductors and whatever. Um but a lot of just like the um community conductors, and then you know, you get gigs with them, and then they say, Oh, I need a cellist for this, or they'll recommend you, and then it's just a lot of like going up to people, hi I'm Sam. I have a master's degree in cello. Like, can I play for you? Oh god. I'm an extreme quartet, can I do X, Y, and Z for you? So you're always auditioning kind of uh kind of not taking like formal auditions, but more so like you know, you get a gig and then playing the gig is kind of your audition in a sense. So like if you play the gig and it's gonna get more gigs. Sure, and it goes poorly, you just won't get called again. Kind of deal.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

But how easy is that that? I mean, it seems like if you're running around from gig to gig to gig, trying to chasing around like 500 bucks or something like that all week.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Yeah, it's it's hard. So I have a day job. Oh so it's like I mean, I would love to just gig, I feel like.

SPEAKER_05 8:26

No shame. Everyone's got a day job. For real. The the secret of this pod is every musician has a day job.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Yes, because you just have to like to support yourself, which is it is what it is, whatever. Um, but yeah, it's it's a lot. So working, you know, a day job and then being a musician by night, like I'm exhausted all the time.

SPEAKER_03 8:45

Did you drink coffee? Is there any like particular like microbrew that we should be subjecting ourselves to or to go and have that day and night schedule?

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Yes, um, espresso all day. I actually my day job is uh I manage a cafe out in Clarence, probably. Uh-huh. So I'm hopped up on espresso always. Um, you know what actually really helps if you have like a half hour, drink a shot of espresso, take a nap for like 20 minutes, and then wake up because by the time the espresso is a good one. I don't know if I can do that.

SPEAKER_05 9:15

Like drink an espresso and then go to sleep. You've got some kind of like supernatural power over the other.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

I had quite thought the it was getting too modern.

SPEAKER_05 9:23

I can't do that. You must have some kind of X-Men gene or something.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Maybe. I don't know. But it's it's it's something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:31

If it works for you.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

It it does, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

So tell us more about um the uh the uh singer-songwriter part of your job. I mean, where does inspiration come for all these great songs? I mean, everybody should take a time to go on the bandcamp, go go to Sam Goddess's uh Instagram page, go to her LinkedIn, and then go to the bandcamp, then you'll find all of her stuff right there. And it's the latest one, Goddess 2024, I really enjoyed.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Thank you so much. That project was a project where I was like, I just am so sick of making excuses for not putting out music, not putting in the work, and just not. I I don't know. That was a project where I was like, I have these five songs that don't I still go back and forth because I listen to that project and I'm like, do these songs work together? I don't really know. Some of them are.

SPEAKER_03 10:21

I think you put them together pretty well.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Thank you. Thank you. I I don't know. But it's also like, I don't know if you guys can relate, I'm sure you can. Um, like going back to a project and listening to it, and you're like, wow, that is wild. Like whether a good wild or bad wild. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but that project was really fun. I had some of the first song on that is is it the first song or the last song? I don't remember. Uh, one of the songs for me, I wrote that song in high school. Like on Garage Band. And then I got Logic Pro, that's what I use now. And um, I I see that you're using Garage Band right now.

SPEAKER_03 11:02

We could use Logic Pro, but you can't use both of them at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

No, but they're such a good program. You can do so much good stuff in Garage Band and Logic. It they're wonderful programs. Um, but I like had that and then my laptop died because it, you know, I was working on it in 2024 and I wrote it in high school, so I like had to go through and just by memory, like kind of rewrite the song in Logic and just like I think it was this loop that I used here, I don't know, but that was really fun. I love that song. I love the vocal stacks in that song. Like when I was putting all the stacks in there, I remember just like looping all of the stacks and just like sitting there listening to it for probably longer than I needed to.

SPEAKER_05 11:46

You engineer your own stuff too?

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 11:48

How'd you how'd you learn that? Just out of necessity?

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Trial and error. Trial and error, which is again why I go back and I'm like, ooh, some of those mixes I really don't like. Um, but I was just doing everything myself, just like I am for this current album. I just am figuring it out as I go, and uh, I've you know now two years have two more years under my belt since that first project came out, so hopefully this album will be mixed a little better.

SPEAKER_05 12:16

Engineering must be like kind of like hell for you because you have like a really trained ear, so you can like see like really minor things and they probably bug the shit out of you.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

It's a nightmare. It's such a nightmare. Um, and I I have uh great friends who are in the music industry and you know have done sound engineering before, so I'll like if there's something I just cannot figure out simply by like YouTube or Google, like I will just contact him and be like, okay, this is what I'm trying to do. How do I accomplish this? And then he's like, Alright, hop on Discord, like I'll show you you know, uh stream your your screen and and we'll we'll do it. But yeah, sound engineering is and producing no, I enjoy producing more than sound engineering. I really don't like mixing and mastering. It's such a nightmare.

SPEAKER_05 13:02

It's very hard.

SPEAKER_03 13:03

It's really not easy. I can't do it at all. I mean, if I even tried, it would just be a uh a very wonderful desk demonstration of what you should not do when trying to go and mix it.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Hey, you never know though. You never know. I some of the best advice I had for it was well, just do whatever sounds good to you. Like this is your project, like it's not anyone else. That's some good advice for any any any any yeah, just do whatever sounds good to you. If you want the bass boosted like crazy and you want your car to shake when you listen to it, do it.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

Let it go.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:39

I do like listening to Trinidad by Geese. The button does, you know, this is a bomb by car lyric.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

And then giant mounts of bass come through, and I'm just like, yes, this is this is what I would bump to in the 90s. Absolutely. I would do that.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 13:54

What's your um nationality since your last name is Goddess? Like, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

Where does that come from? Oh. Interesting story.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Oh, it sounds like one. It is. So it's spelled G-O-D-U-S. Oh. I am Polish, German, and Italian. Gotcha. Um, and my places in Buffalo. Yeah, you literally just all of yeah, pretty much. I am a true Buffaloan. Um, but uh my I have a theory. So it was my Polish great-great-grandparents that came over uh through Alice Island, and um I don't know what the actual Polish last name is. Um I have my theory is that G-O-D is like true to what it was, and that they were like, You're in America now, stick US on the end. That's maybe what they did. I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 14:44

There's all those island people, but you're fucking up all the names. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

My last name is Joe, it's spelled Joe E. I can just assume that the guy at the Ellis Island was just like, I'm gonna make this easy for you.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Yeah, I'm like, so I'm assuming it was, you know, G-O-D and a bunch of consonants and whatnot. Yeah. So but that's that's the story on that. Again, I don't know if that's true, but I'm just gonna assume that it is, because you know You seem like you have always known you were gonna be a musician.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Like you just kind of have like, you know, because I and I I'm the same way, like I always knew that I was gonna be doing something creative. I always knew I was gonna be a writer. It was just kind of like stuck on to me. It's like you play baseball, then the meantime you write short stories, and that's what you do. And I've been doing that for my entire life. So I it's really it it always makes it feel happy to meet other people who have that same just like you know, I mean, because there's so many times, like I've met so many people who are like, I don't know what I want to do with my life. Like, I have no idea. I'm in college, I'm in high school, I'm like after college, I still have no idea. I'm not grown up, and it's just like wow, that must be really difficult for you.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Can you tell what what it's been like in the other side story where you always knew you were gonna be I mean, because a certain amount of perfectionism it probably comes with sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Yeah, it's interesting. I I was reading a book a few years back, I don't remember the title. It was something about like how to manifest your perfect life or like something something of that sort, whatever. Um I'm like, please tell me the secrets of this. Please tell me. Yeah, okay. Like uh but it was like kind of one of those kitschy, like how to manifest your life. Um and I was reading it, and a lot of it was talking about like each of us has a like the correct, not I don't want to say correct, but like a path that we're supposed to be on in life. And everything kind of starts falling into place when you start to find that path. And you'll find a lot of like uphill battles when you're not on that path. Right. So like when I was not doing music, I was just like working a job, and like I felt like super isolated, even though I wasn't. I was like living with someone in a house, I had a beautiful dog, like I don't know, I just wasn't making music, and I felt so like lost, and I got super depressed, super anxious, like it was just not a good situation, and then I started writing music again, started doing this uh the EP I was working on slowly, and that kind of like brought joy back into my life, and then finding you know, rejoining all the orchestras and starting playing cello pretty regularly too, like that helped so much, and it's just been like I I just feel it. You can just kind of feel like yeah. You're on the right path. Exactly. Like things just kind of started uh kind of like falling into place too with orchestras and gigs and songwriting stuff, and um my one so I'm in two string quartets. Shout out both of them. Shout out both. One is Equinox String Quartet, we do more yes, we do more like folk stuff and uh more classical, and then we uh I'm in Canela string quartet.

SPEAKER_05 18:03

Shout out Canela.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Shout out Canela, I love them. Um I love both of them. Uh but Canela does more like Latin American tango music, um, which is so fun to do, and we actually do um my one violinist in there, Vanessa Snowden. She's also a Canada Snowden. Yes, she's also Yeah, literally, right? She um she does, she's a uh singer-songwriter as well, so the two of us will do our um originals with them with Canela when we play out too. So that's really fun. But a lot of the singer-songwriter stuff kind of like we did music as art this past uh summer, which that was my first time even being there, ever going, and I like got to play. It was really fun. I did a bunch of my um a bunch, I did two songs of like my originals at that, and then we just got like gigs at Duende, and then we got a gig at um Pausa Art House, the chess house. Oh my goodness, I have been wanting to play there forever. Yeah, just just believe in yourself and just be crazy and live in the delusion of like I'm going to make it. That's what I'm doing. Yeah, that's so cool.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

Yeah, is there a um any shout-outs of musicians or uh composers, I suppose, in the area? Um we used to do a little thing here where we'd play a clip of a local band or artist. Um is there any, you know, a friend or or whatever it might be in your musical life? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Definitely, um, definitely check out Soph. It's S-O-P-H with an exclamation point. Uh she has an album out. It's called Search of Some sorry, Search for Some Sort of Sense. My favorite song on there is the malpractice of Dr. Mirror. She is incredible. I actually think she recorded a lot of that album in this room. Um I know she recorded here.

SPEAKER_03 20:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Uh-huh. So she is incredible, such a free spirit. Her music is so good, so raw. It's really great.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

You've got involved with unprofessional. The others called that you consolved with unconventional. Fell you're a poem when you've been molded with unintentional. You see Doctor Doctor No, please, straight to Paris and Christmas, the choice of foundation.

SPEAKER_05 21:11

This just then, a double scoop of bad news. Man, life just isn't letting up. I feel like the walls are closing in, and I don't have a way to stop it. I wish there was somewhere I could go. Some place where I could just get away from everything. And just be creative.

SPEAKER_04 21:33

There is. The Buffalo Creative Workshop. Who said that? The spirit of creativity. I heard you're playing, and I fell to do the healthy. Okay, in the Grid Arrow building on Elmwood Avenue. Use our space, our art supplies, and equipment to your heart's content. Let us hope you beat back the stress and feel centered again.

SPEAKER_05 21:56

Wow, that sounds great. I'll check it out.

SPEAKER_04 22:00

Always remember, if the world has your creative spirits in a rut, come to the Buffalo Creative Workshop for a pick-me-up. More about Buffalo Creative Workshop can be found at Buffalo.creativeWorkshop on Instagram.

SPEAKER_03 22:19

And we are back. Um, so uh Sam here, uh Goddess, I should say, is um going to be releasing her album, Devut album. Uh what's it called?

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Uh Hot and Cold Lover.

SPEAKER_03 22:31

Hot and Cold Lover. It's gonna be at uh Duende at uh on the um April 17th. And I was just wondering what went into this album? Like what what where where is the muse from or where's the inspiration from?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah, um well, Hot and Cold Lover started out as a concept of like um I I wanted to write about how I am in relationships because I'm I've been told always you're very hot and cold. And I'm like, okay, well, that's a great album title, first of all. I like that.

SPEAKER_05 23:03

KD Perry.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Yeah, literally. Uh-huh, pretty much. I'm like, so okay, how can I run with that? And um I have a lot had a lot of kind of like love songs, but not even love songs, more just kind of like songs that I wrote to help me get through breakups, really. Um so a lot of them are like that makes it sound like it's gonna be like a sad album. It's not at all, it's very like jazzy and bluesy. Some of the songs are sexy, some of the songs are like fuck you songs, um, call out songs, pretty much. So it's kind of everything.

SPEAKER_05 23:40

Is it like a celebration of like catharsis?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Ooh. Yeah, I would say I would say it kind of goes through my experience with the past like three relationships. Um yeah, and like all the the emotions that come with all of that. So it's um yeah, it's it's cool, and it's uh um fuller and more like bluesy jazzy, whereas the first you get like senses of like jazz just in my voice and like vocal runs from the EP that I have out, but I'm really digging into like the like we're in like a honky tonk bar, and like you you hear a guitar and like this soulful voice. Um, yeah, so that's kind of what I'm what I'm doing. All in my house. All in I have a home studio, I've got a bunch of different mics and a room that's mostly quiet. Yeah. So sometimes you'll hear like a truck go by and I'm like, oh, but that was a really good take.

SPEAKER_05 24:48

It's hard to get like a fully quiet room. I mean, even here's got his like.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. But through doing that, I've learned so many recording techniques, and I have a bunch of string players on this album. I'm actually doing my last round of uh recording sessions with them next week. And I just have them come into my studio. I have two shotgun mics just pointed right at them, and I'm like, okay, play. There you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

That's incredible. Are they playing with you at the developed show?

SPEAKER_00 25:17

They are. So that show I'm so excited for. It's gonna have I'll have three violins, I'll have two violas, a drummer, and a bassist. Um, and then me, I'll be singing, playing guitar, um, maybe playing bass, I haven't decided. And then the last piece, uh uh, the last song on the whole album is just a string piece, so I will be playing cello at the very end.

SPEAKER_03 25:44

That sounds like it's gonna be very nice.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

It's gonna be awesome. I'm so excited for it. But yeah, it's gonna be a whole production. Still have a lot to figure out with all of that.

SPEAKER_03 25:53

But well, guys, if you are listening to this, is the show is probably right about ready to begin. Um it maybe a week before, maybe a week less, I'm not sure. Um Thank you for listening to the BMP podcast. Um, I hope you have a very good day, and uh have a good one.

SPEAKER_05 26:10

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unknown 27:49

It's the BMP pocket.