T. Gold’s Mellow Muse Attracts Your Inner Eye
By Jason Wares
Have you walked from your house to Merritt’s Pasture just as the sun is coming up on a crisp morning and felt your soul flooded with the pleasure and contradiction of being alive? Do you ever think about how grateful you are for your community with the sweet sadness that comes with recognizing that you’d better enjoy it now because one day it will come to an end? Listening to T. Gold puts you right in that state of deep pleasure and contemplation.
T. Gold is playing at the Carrboro Music Festival (CMF) at 6pm at Weaver Street Market. Go listen to them! Gabriel Anderson, one half of the T. Gold partnership sat down with The Carrborean to discuss the band’s evolution, performance, and future.
If you’re new to T. Gold, start with their most recent album titled, “Life Is Wonderful and It’s Cruel.” The album begins with “Getting to Know the End,” an opening composition that focuses your mind. The beat lays back along with a resonant bass and warbling melody, a mix that calls for your attention and builds anticipation for the lyrics. Next enters a beautiful organ and the first words, “Just because it’s gone on this long, don’t mean it’s got to go on.” I think we all need to hear that now.
The other half of the T. Gold partnership is Gabe’s friend Saman Khoujinian. Gabe and Saman’s collaboration began in high school in Miami. The band went through several iterations: Virgins, Virgins Family Band, then Dad and Dad, and now T. Gold. Seeking out T. Gold’s previous iterations is worth your time. Your correspondent would point out that Virgins Family Band will also get you out of your seat and singing at the top of your lungs. Gabe points you to Dad and Dad. “Dad and Dad is a sleeper. There are three songs that we eked out during a six-month period. They’re hidden gems.”
Gabe generously credits Saman for T. Gold’s stunning work. “Saman writes the lyrics, he’s the lead songwriter. I just co-produce and am a deep partner.” Whatever the breakdown of work between the two, the result is sensuous and profoundly meaningful audio art. The instrumental part of the music at first listen has a deceptive simplicity. Its many layers reveal themselves during each new listen.
Gabe says that their production skills came from an early interest in recording music. “We started learning all the production stuff really early doing it ourselves. We were hanging mics off my dad’s pilates equipment, doing all sorts of tricky things. At some point early on, around 2010, Saman started getting into it and [producing] with other people.” Saman and Gabe both advanced to become excellent producers and Gabe says that “production very much became a part of our writing.”
Writing and producing at the same time leads to a complete integration of lyrics and music. A good example of this mix of songwriting and production is “Speak with Spirits.” You can almost hear the band choosing instruments, timbre, voices, and rhythm line by line. You feel part of their creative process and you choose your emotional reaction to the music and lyrics with each change in the song.
Another example, “No Mind to God,” is off T. Gold’s first, eponymous album. It’s a short song that begins with a simple guitar and spare vocals and builds to a quick multi-instrument crescendo. The poet makes his point and moves on. “Spaceman” is a song that Gabe says people lock into live. Whimsical, with surprising vocal turns and a beat that makes you want to get up and move along with the shuffling rhythm and melodic bass. Is that a spaceman singing along?
T. Gold is also firmly based in the Carrboro/Chapel Hill/Hillsborough musical community and is a major contributor to it through their very active label, Sleepy Cat Records. Gabe talks about his experience traveling to other music communities around the U.S. and returning home. “Here I can have a porch, and the ethos is music as practice and lifestyle and not music for career and making it to blow up or anything…although in the back of everyone’s head it would be nice .…Our ethos has been to have those conversations but not needing them and letting them go.”
In addition to the Carrboro Music Festival, T. Gold has several special events coming up this fall, including a possible Virgins Family Band reunion. On Halloween day, T. Gold and Sleepy Cat records is hosting their own festival called Cattyrompus. It will feature T. Gold along with Twain, Lou Hazel, and many other outstanding acts from near and far. Make sure T. Gold is on your CMF calendar!