SG GOODMAN

The antique spirit ofSG GOODMAN’s songs stays true to her Kentuckian roots, but she finds substance in modern, smalltown minutiae. In between tales of gardening with octogenarians, driving trucks as a 12-year-old and cutting one’s hair ‘by the signs’, she explains why her new album is inspired by ancient pagan practices of living by the phases of the moon. “This belief is meant to have action behind it,” she tells an intrigued Stephen Deusner over lunch at Rudy’s On The Square, “and not just feelings.”

‘‘PLANTING by the signs is a very, very old practice,” says SG Goodman as she slides into a booth at Rudy’s On The Square, her favourite diner in Murray, Kentucky. “I was reading about the idea in this series called the Foxfire books, which collect a lot of interviews and history from the South. I recalled people talking about it when I was a kid, including my family. When I was weaned off my mother, I was weaned by the signs. My brother cuts his hair by the signs.”

The practice, she explains, involves planning things out by the phases of the moon. Since the moon controls the tides, it must exert some effect on all water, including the water in human bodies. “Someone might say: you don’t want to put shingles on your house during what is considered to be a moist sign, because the shingles will curl.” That idea gave her both the concept and the title for her new album, Planting By The Signs, a stirring collection of songs about what it means to inhabit this westernmost corner of Kentucky.

Dressed in black trousers, thick boots and a brown workcoat from “the birthplace of country music” (as the tag on the pocket reads), Goodman interrupts her train of thought to order lunch. Today is Tuesday, which means the special is fried chicken. She asks for dark meat with sides of squash casserole, green beans and extra chow chow. “This is one of my favourite places in town,” she says in her thick Southern drawl. “It’s been around for nearly a century and was the first restaurant in Murray to have air-conditioning.” Rudy’s is, in fact, the very model of a smalltown American diner, with Norman Rockwell prints and a gigantic Johnny Cash poster covering the walls and a view of the imposing town hall outside. The waitress addresses Goodman and every other patron as “darlin’” and brings along a bottle of Louisiana hot sauce to replace the Cholula on the table. “I’m particular about my hot sauce,” Goodman explains.

As a singer-songwriter who counts Jim James, Tyler Childers and Will Oldham among her fans, Goodman is a minor celebrity in this small college town, although she’s never treated as such. She does bring a certain notoriety to Murray, and even to local businesses like Rudy’s or Wits’ End Records just down the street. The town is only two hours away from Nashville, but it’s a hard two hours along curvy two-lane highways. She makes the drive every so often to play a show or to pick up her girlfriend from the airport, but she has no intention of ever moving there. Goodman remains loyal to Murray and more broadly to Kentucky. This is where she developed a distinctive sound that mixes Americana songwriting with post-punk guitars, and it’s where she learned to wield her unique voice – a grainy, intimate tremolo that sounds like it comes from another time.