Singer-songwriter Goat (a.k.a. Andy Rosen)

You might not be familiar with him by name, but if you’re a Clevelander, do a little digging on this quirky musician who goes by the name Goat. Born Andrew Scott Rosen, Goat grew up on the North Coast, son of Cleveland Indians baseball great, Al Rosen. And if you’ve been to a professional sporting event, or seen an indie flick or even overheard a car commercial on TV, you might have "heard the call" of that Goat and not even known it.

Goat grew up on display, in baseball clubhouses across the country, and had a fair amount of his family’s personal life (including the well-publicized suicide of his mother) end up in the papers. Dipping into depression, Rosen sorted out all of his feelings on a piano that his grandparents gave to him. By the time Rosen was to decide his life’s calling, the thought of pursuing music far outweighed the boxing career he had dreamed of as a kid. His dad, a music lover, encouraged him to follow his heart.

Many years later, Goat's sound was hailed as "Beck-meets-Bono” by Billboard magazine, his voice recalling a grizzled Randy Newman. When Goat was signed to a major label deal with Sony, his hit “Great Life” became the toast of the town and the centerpiece of a Kia car commercial… but only after Sony dumped him, scant weeks into the deal. “So much for the junction of art and commerce,” he laughs.

Goat performs solo acoustic at Wilbert’s this Saturday, September 9 and he’s not one to miss. Excited to get back to Cleveland, Goat confides that Cleveland still feels like "magnetic north" to him. He checked in with Cool Cleveland from the back of a Chevy Astro van, tongue planted firmly in cheek, on the way to Chicago for a gig last week. We talked about life in Cleveland, growing up “Tribe” with his dad, the music industry, the late singer-songwriter Chris Whitley and Twisted Heart, Goat’s first album for indie label Engine Room records.

Cool Cleveland: What was it like growing up in Northeast Ohio? How much impact did it have on your songwriting?
Andy "Goat" Rosen: My household really took music very seriously. Being in Cleveland was a huge experience. The clubs, the Cellar Door, Record Revolution… the music scene there was and is great. It definitely had an impact on me during those formative years, along with all of the poppings I took in school! (laughs) Cleveland’s a tough city to grow up in, man! It makes New York look like a walk in the park sometimes.

I’ll get you a “Defend Cleveland” shirt, even though it didn't defend you back then!
I’d wear it. C'mon! You know I would! (laughs)

Can I talk about the bowling balls and your other Cleveland youth shenanigans?
I don’t think the statute of limitations has expired yet! We should skip that, I think. (laughs)

Any jock vs. art clashes with Dad during those formative Cleveland days?
No, not at all! It was all just jock, no art! (laughs) Seriously, my Dad loves his music and that totally rubbed off on me as a kid. I remember hearing Chet Baker and Vickie Carr a lot—Dad used to make me believe he had a thing for her! We tease him about that all the time. He had a cool turntable and whenever we drove we listened to 8 tracks over and over again. He never pushed us to go into sports, any of us.

What about Municipal Stadium memories?

Totally! I have memories wandering around that stadium; being handed off from player to player, hanging out with all of them during spring training and through the season. Man, that locker room at Municipal Stadium was the size of a shoe box!

How difficult was it for you and your family to live in a spotlight pointed so squarely on “Dad the Third Baseman” for so many years?
The tough thing about that was all the personal stuff getting into the press. And that stuff is always going to happen. Going to school and having some kid pop off to you all the time comes with the territory, but it was hard getting all of it second hand as a kid. I never heard Dad begrudge the press, though. Not then, not now.

OK, so end the suspense. Why the name Goat? Andy Rosen is perfectly respectable.
It never helps, believe me! (laughs) No one ever says “Hey, that’s a great name!” But we're going to be driving through Chicago tonight, so we’ll drive by [Wrigley] field and take away the [Chicago Cubs'] curse of the Goat. I’m throwing the gauntlet down! (laughs)

Actually, I do get asked about the name a lot. It comes from when I was working down at Thistledown race track, actually. It was a cold rainy day and all the juvenile delinquent friends there that day dared me to pet a goat in a pen there at the track. So, I did it, turned around in this corral full of shit and the goat started knocking me down. Goats are freaky like that. Once they start, they don’t stop. They get very angry. After I got outta there, I ended up in five welterweight bouts with my friends. You know, hands over your head, head down, swinging like mad… that’s the terrible, Cleveland-based story. (laughs)

If you hadn’t moved to New York, you might have followed dad’s pro sports footsteps and become a boxer—
I did go out west to Nevada to become a boxer, but that didn’t happen. I spent more time talking to musicians than I did learning how to fight. Maybe that Thistledown experience was a bit of foreshadowing and cinched it for me. (laughs)

Instead, you ended up working with Nils Lofgren, Will Rambeau, and the legendary Otis Blackwell, and eavesdropping on Mick Ronson and Ian Hunter at the studio you worked in there. That had to be a kick in the shorts.
I just thought that’s the way things were supposed to be. It was fantastic. I landed in a really rich place. Once you start [in the music business], the reality can become a beast. Who thought so many misbehaved people could get a job!?! (laughs)

You’re getting a lot of play in indie flicks, television and commercials lately. And that Kia commercial was huge exposure for you. Does it feel odd to have your work to become “jingle material,” with compositions that are fairly idiosyncratic...?
Yeah, but I guess it would take a lot more than that to seem odd to me. I felt, and continue to feel, terrific about it. That Kia commercial was a real battle, though.

You mean, royalty-wise?
Well, they liked the song a lot, and they courted me pretty hard over it... but in the end, they were actually attempting to get someone to rewrite “Great Life” that for the commercial. They were going to call it “Good Life.” (laughs) Ain’t that something? Eventually, they came back to me and decided to use the original, which worked out really well. It gave me pissing rights for, like, 35 seconds. I remember speaking to the label and distributors when that record first came out. They were saying, “blah, blah, blah… television doesn’t sell records!” Then, months later when the record had basically suffocated because of the lack of support, the song went to #1 in a few markets with that commercial. Guess I’m on a terrific, jagged timeline that makes no sense! (laughs)

Your work appears in the films “Waltzing Anna” and Marc Meyer's new indie, "Approaching Union Square." How did those opportunities come about?
Marc Meyer Googled “G. Love & Special Sauce” and came up with me under the price is right. (laughs) That’s really how that happened, man. And “Waltzing Anna” happened because I reconnected with some folks at Universal and Ruffhouse [records], who have been trying to help keep me from being top secret for years. Good people, really.

So, if you make music and people can get access to it, amazing things can happen?
It’s really not about knocking down people running stores and holding a gun to their head anymore. Having friendly champions helps and keeps the conversation going, because they know the value of promotion. They’re such good friends; they never have to pay me. I’m shocked that Kia paid me. Shocked and awed! (laughs)

You mentioned G. Love. Your newer work is less Beck and G. Love and more Peter Himmelman and Randy Newman—a kind of metamorphosis for the people who might only be familiar with you on the surface.
Right. Not one loop or sample on this [new] record! Perhaps seeing the world from a ratty old Chevy Astro van has opened up my idiosyncratic songs—and my world—a little bit.

Ouch! Touché! So, the new album Twisted Heart is great, and it seems like there is a common thread among all of the songs. Tell us about that and how the album came together?
It all really worked because I had a great producer. Having to answer to someone is good, but I don’t recommend it to anybody! (laughs) I wanted to do something really different and better than last time. We did go a little jazzier in some spots too, like “Valium and Sodapop.” That’s where I want to live, man. I hope the next record is all that. Some of the songs are old, very old… to me, there’s the common thread from song to song, if there is one. Lyrically, there are some connections to the dedication of the record, which I made to a dear friend, Chris Whitley.

The two of you were friends. How hard was his death to come to terms with?
Chris told me to go and find my sound. I listened to a lot of the stuff that he said. I’m still defining myself because of it. He said it’s good to recognize yourself when you hear it. This kid, man. You never saw suffering visit anyone like that, like the blues players of old. “Twisted Heart” and “Come Today” are about him. It still just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Losing him made me brutally aware that you only find a couple of those people in your life and then you’re all out. That goes for everybody, so keep those people close. The whole world should stop and listen to his song “Dirt Floor.” He was a really good friend and a brother. It must be hard to harbor that kind of ability in this world. That’s a convoluted and distorted trip. I would have disintegrated under the talent he had. I couldn’t listen to him for months, but heard that poetry again recently and it was marvelous. I listen to his songs now and it’s easier.

Has that experience colored any advice you give to up-and-coming musicians?
Everyone wants to know what it feels like to hit a home run, to use that baseball analogy, when they really should just be true to themselves. That’s all I can say. In New York, people just play on the corner and a crowd will form out there like Jesus is talking. It’s something that can always happen and it’s up to the individual how to go about it.

How much of a relief is it to be on an indie label, in terms of artistic freedom?
Artistic freedom comes with record sales, honestly. This experience has to be something you can continue to search for joy in, much like life. I’m not bitter with my foray into the industry. I’m like a pinball and every time I bounce off of a bumper, something rubs off. That’s where the magic is. It’s not about trickery, or anything pre-packaged or pre-consumed.

How long are you on the road for Twisted Heart and what’s the plan for future recordings with Engine Room?
You know, it looks like we’re going to back this thing for a year! How about that? As many shows as we can, man. There are some festivals we’re going to get to, including a big one out in Montana. We have a lot of good friends at Triple-A radio and had some play on WAPS-FM in Akron. We’ll be in Chicago shortly for the show, but we’re really excited to get to Cleveland to play Wilbert’s. Cleveland rocks, of course!

You told me last time we spoke that you whispered that into Ian Hunter’s ear as a janitor in the studio, when he couldn’t come up with a working title for that tune--
(dead silence, then aside to manager) Yeah, I told him that! (laughing) Watch the road!! (laughing, then to CC) You know I was kidding, right?

Should have known better! All you goats are mischievous! (laughs) I hear you’re going to do the Sundance Film Festival that’s coming up in 2007. Any truth in that, or are you pulling my leg again…?
As far as I know, man. We’re putting it together, seriously. No joke. Going to play there.

That could have a huge impact for you.
I hope so, man. I need to have some dental work done! (laughs)

Goat performs at Wilbert's this Saturday, September 9. For more information, visit his website at http://www.goatrocks.com and Wilbert's at http://www.wilbertsmusic.com.

From Cool Cleveland Managing Editor Peter Chakerian peterATcoolcleveland.com

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