A brief chat with My Goodness

Yellow Scene: What’s the state of the Seattle music scene right now?

Andy Lum: It’s funny – there’ a lot going on here. It’s interesting. The Seattle scene is all over the map. We’ve seen the folk scene getting big, and we have artists like Macklemore – a more mainstream hip-hop or pop thing. I feel like it’s identified with more the underground dark rock and hardcore. When we’re here, we identify with that scene, getting more involved with the smaller post-punk thing which is going on.

YS: You have a new album, Shiver + Shake – are you happy with how it came out?

AL: Yeah, we’re super-happy with it. We worked with this guy Rick Parashar. He was super-involved in the Seattle rock scene in the early-to-mid 1990s. We did it at the studio he used to own – a cool, legendary kind of place. We taught each other things during that process, which is always really good. He was really good at stripping away some of the unnecessary parts of our songs and focussing us as songwriters. That’s what you want the most when you work with someone. When I listen back to Shiver + Shake, it’s really cool. I joined the band in the early part of 2012, started writing songs with Joel, and it was cool to go through that new process and then learn a lot from Rick.

YS: Do you like playing Colorado?

AL: Oh man, I’ve been through Denver so many times with different bands, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad show there. It’s awesome. I played the Marquee years ago in a band I played in called Wild Orchid Children. I’ve come through on tour with a couple of different bands when I was doing hired work. I’m super-excited to come back – it’s been way too long.

YS: What can we expect from the set?

AL: You can expect a lot of Shiver + Shake, but we have been toying around with three or four new songs that we’re definitely going to play. The new material is much more like party-ish. They’re faster songs, a little bit punkier, and they’re a blast to play. People can drink a lot of beer and dance.

YS: When this tour’s done, what’s next?

AL: We’re doing a short west coast run, and then I think we’ll go into the studio and record these songs we’ve been working on. We have some covers to release, and then probably put out a new EP at the end of the year.