BETHLEHEM, Pa. — After a career that has spanned more than 40 years, Lehigh Valley-native roots-rocker Dave Goddess has the luxury of creating new music when inspiration hits.
Sometimes these days, that needs a little help, so Goddess said he occasionally pushes himself out of his comfort zone by driving himself somewhere he's never been to start a creative flow.
That was the case with his new EP, "Kitty Hawk," which was inspired by an impromptu trip to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the site of the Wright Brothers first powered flight.
“And then it just seemed like a good metaphor for a record or whatever. So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll call the album that.’”Singer Dave Goddess
“Just to know the grit that those guys had and the fact that they, like, endlessly faced failure," Goddess said in a phone call from his home in New York, where he now lives.
"And they just wouldn’t capitulate, they just wouldn’t give up. And they never did, and they did amazing things. They wanted to succeed and conquer the sky.
“And then it just seemed like a good metaphor for a record or whatever. So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll call the album that.’”
The public will get to hear songs from the six-track EP, and others, when Dave Goddess Group plays a show at 8 p.m. Friday, June 13, at Godfrey Daniels in Bethlehem.
The show, for which admission is free and gets everyone who attends a free copy of the EP, is sold out.
'I do what I want to do'
Goddess is perhaps best known as frontman for The Daddy Licks Band, which in the 1980s was the Lehigh Valley's most successful rock group.
It toured all along the East Coast, with its popular album "I Got Wheels" and new wave singles such as "Just a Little (Goes a Long Way)" and "Kids Out Lookin' for the Real Thing" getting substantial radio play.
“Sometimes I write a bunch of things, sometimes I don’t write for a while. But I don’t feel like I’ve got to write one either way, or that I need new material. I’m kind of beyond that."Singer Dave Goddess
More recently, he has performed with the Dave Goddess Group, a roots-rock group whose music is inspired by Bob Dylan, The Band and others.
It's continued to release new music such as 2023's "Back in Business."
Goddess said these years later, he continues to “think about [music] all the time."
"I’m constantly in some writing mode, even if I’m not writing," he said. "Although I do try to work at it on a regular basis.
"But I walk around looking for ideas, and if I hear someone say something in a restaurant or something, an interesting turn of a phrase, I’ll write it down.
“And I save all this stuff up, and if I’m sitting here with my guitar, I try and put it together.
“Sometimes I write a bunch of things, sometimes I don’t write for a while. But I don’t feel like I’ve got to write one either way, or that I need new material. I’m kind of beyond that.
“I don’t have an agenda, I don’t have a timetable. And I certainly don’t make any career moves. Like, at this point, I just do what I want to do and hope that that works out.
“But if something inspires me or something moves me, or interests me, I’ll try it, you know? I usually make it work — if I start something, I’m probably going to finish it. I try anyway.”
'Not a bad message for the times'
Goddess said he didn't know his trip to Kitty Hawk would turn into an EP.
"I started with just saying I’d put out a single or two and it transformed into a larger project," he said.
“I don’t do this often, but sometimes I do — just trying to jar myself out of my normal schedule. I’ll just, like, get in a car and go somewhere. Take a guitar and get a motel room, just kind of sit in there plunking around, trying to write some songs, see what happens. Just go somewhere different I’ve never been."
He said he found himself in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and "Just being there, and I went to the Wright Brothers museum, and it was, like, I just thought, ‘Wow.’ I know a little bit about this stuff, but not a whole lot.
“And then I just continued to write and record and for the past year, and it turned into an EP.”
The new disc's centerpiece is the single "Tin Foil Hat" — a song "about a guy who falls in love with a conspiracy theorist."
"She buys into all this stuff — Bigfoot and aliens building the pyramids and fake moon landing stuff and, you know, Paul McCartney’s dead, etc.
"I guess we see this all the time — these days there are so many people that seem to profit from pitting people against one another, and seem to try to gain advantage from doing that, and there’s just so much of it and so much ‘us-and-them’ and, you know.
"But in this girl, he just sees — he knows she’s crazy, but he’s fascinated by her, and at the end, the message of the song is, ‘I don’t judge her, I just love her, agree to disagree.
"Which is, you know, not a bad message for the times.”
'Revitalizes me in a certain way'
Goddess said he decided to hold the free release party at Godfrey Daniels to try to connect more with listeners in an increasingly remote world.
“I was playing less than I ever have, and I figured, ‘Well, I’ll just do this and I’ll keep putting this stuff out,'" he said.
"I just wanted people to come."Singer Dave Goddess
But while he said the new disc already has 150,000 plays on Spotify, "that’s just so distant. You can take pleasure in it — you don’t get money from it, but you can take pleasure from it, that people are hearing your stuff and listening to it out there.
“And that’s great. But it’s hard to connect to it, you know? So I thought, ‘I at least got to get out and play once in awhile.' So I’m going to."
Goddess said Godfrey's "to me is a really good place because it’s a listening room and people go there and they want to hear the music, they want to hear the words. To me, it’s such a great spot."
He said that he wanted the show to be free "‘cause I just wanted people to come."
"Because of that, you can feel the connection, and it revitalizes me in a certain way.”
