Deep Gold’s is an instantly identifiable voice. The Maine-based singer-songwriter is a dark and sultry crooner, quietly grinding the vocal gears a la Leonard Cohen on “Everybody Knows” or Bob Dylan circa Time Out of Mind. There’s a gravelly, slow-burning richness to his delivery that can mesmerize with a howl or a whisper, not to mention a subtle, fatalistic wisdom well beyond the enigmatic twentysomething’s years.
In 2016, following the demise of his Brooklyn-based band JOAN, the Miami native moved from New York to a remote island off the coast of Maine, and began writing the songs from which he’d cull his new self-titled debut. “Where I live now, it’s a pretty isolated place—you can only get there by ferry,” Deep Gold says. “Last summer, though, I happened to meet this songwriter from Nashville, Willie Breeding, who was in town with his girlfriend visiting. It’s funny—he was a bit of a fish out of water here, but we shared our music, and he was very kind. He set me up with what he thought would be the best producer and studio for my music. I trusted him, and it worked out nicely.”
The studio and producer Breeding recommended for Deep Gold? Nashville’s The Bomb Shelter, where Alabama Shakes famously recorded their breakthrough record Boys & Girls, and Jon Estes, who has worked with artists from Kesha and Robyn Hitchcock to Steelism, Music Band, and Natalie Prass. When Deep Gold made the trip south, Estes recorded the core tracks to tape, giving the music a rich, authentic sound. He also handled bass and keys on the sessions, tapping Jeremy Fetzer of Steelism to play guitar, Bryan Brock on percussion, Alexis Saski and Maureen Murphy on backing vocals, plus three-piece horn and string sections, which added some lush counterpoint to Deep Gold’s sparse, moody songs.
“Jon really is a genius in the studio,” Deep Gold says. “I’d already written all the songs going in, but there was a huge amount of interpretation to his credit because it’s a pretty big album as far as the arrangements go. I didn’t touch an instrument the 10 days we were in the studio, which suits me because I use guitar in a very basic way as a writing tool. So I was able to concentrate on the vocals and conveying my stylistic and genre ideas to Jon. He really understood what I was going for, and was essential in helping bring my vision of the record to life. It ended up being a refreshingly raw expression of the material.”
The songs on Deep Gold’s debut have a wide thematic range. “Don’t Worry” manifests as a proverb. “Hot Dogs for Sale” gets inside the head of a tube-steak vendor in the throes of an existential crisis. And the satirical “JFK” imagines the young president’s ghost haunting the White House and all subsequent commanders in chief.
Deep Gold’s lyrics are unadorned, direct and often rooted in potent imagery. “I can almost see the pastures / They’re rollin’ underneath the open sky,” he sings on “Rain,” “I can almost hear the nighthawks / With their haunted and relentless cry / Oh how I wish that I could be there / Before the land turned to dust.” “The Waters Rose” references the flood unleashed on New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Both songs tackle the human relationship to environmental destruction and the world’s rapidly shifting climate, representing “a deep sorrow over the forced change happening as people move away from a connection with the Earth and toward something unprecedented in human history. It’s causing a lot of pain,” Deep Gold says, “a loss of identity and of places where people have lived for generations.”
Though he admittedly doesn’t listen to much music (preferring to draw inspiration from either personal experience or classic American authors with “a strong sense of dramatic story and moral reckoning”—writers like John Steinbeck, Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin), Deep Gold holds Randy Newman in the highest regard as a songwriter, and also acknowledges the impact of a holy trinity of iconic artists—Waits, Cohen and Dylan—on his aesthetic.
“When I started writing for Deep Gold, I realized I was fitting into that same ‘man in a black suit with a deep voice’ tradition, though I’m more influenced by them stylistically than lyrically. That said, I admit I’m walking a street they’ve paved, and I’m embracing that because it’s something people can instantly relate to.”
Long before Deep Gold was making music, he was writing poetry. “I didn’t pick up a guitar until I was 20 years old,” he says, now 28. “I was writing short and pointed poetry—instead of explaining something complicated, my poems would just poke at it, in their brevity bringing up whole worlds by association. But I found that, being this kind of poet, there was really no venue for it.”
For a time, he tried turning his poems intro street art, creating stencils and spray-painting his words across walls and bridges. “I thought what I was writing was really for the public, and needed a pop audience. Eventually, though, I picked up guitar as a reprieve. As soon as I knew two chords, I started writing immediately. I found it was the most effective form of communication for what I’d been doing all along. So I just dropped everything else and went for it with music.”
The name Deep Gold means many things to its creator. It’s the color of the guitar he plays, a Gibson Les Paul Gold Top. It reflects the honeyed tone of his voice, and also hints at something precious that’s been unearthed, like gold from a mine, a once-buried nugget of truth or beauty now revealed in song. It also invokes his publishing company, The Golden Door, an image taken from the inscription at foot of the Statue of Liberty.
“My grandfather gave me a gold coin when I was a kid,” Deep Gold explains. “His parents were killed in the Holocaust, but he survived and escaped to the U.S. after the war with absolutely nothing. He was one of the millions of immigrants to pass by that statue en route to Ellis Island, and he really lived the American Dream—got an education, started a business, found a secure and free life for himself and his family. Later, I realized the gold coin was symbolic. So many Jewish people in Europe were persecuted for so many years that they kept their savings in gold coins because it was the easiest thing to take with them if they suddenly had to flee persecution. The gold coin was something from my grandfather’s history, but it was also emblematic of his journey to the United States. It’s a story of suffering, and of America—one that has really shaped me. It has a lot to do with who I am, and my mission in music.”
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