Artist:     Steve Goodman

Album:     Artistic Hair

Label:     Omnivore Records

Release Date:     7.19.19

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John Prine, his artistic lifelong friend, cowriter, and other things, recalls the first time he met Steve Goodman face to face. “It was around 1970 in the backroom of The Earl Of Old Town (a legendary Chicago folk club), where I met a short stout fellow, who wrote the best damn train song I ever heard”

That song of course is the much-recorded “City Of New Orleans.”

This reissue form of Artistic Hair now has double the amount of performances it did when it first came out three and half decades ago, Listening to Steve’s live recordings from here, there and everywhere on this release brought back a flood of memories for me, including the first time I saw him strut his stuff on the legendary stage of The Bitter End in Greenwich Village and the last time, which was the only time we ever talked. Goodman was a “musician’s musician” who has been gone almost as long as he was with us, and he always shined brightly, be it on stage or in the studio.

Standouts for me on Artistic Hair are the numbers he does with Jethro Burns, “Tico Tico,” and one of Jethro’s hits from his Homer & Jethro days, “Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes” (a parody of Perry Como’s hit). As wild, wooly and hilarious as Shel Silverstein’s “Three Legged Man” and the audience participation gets on “Let’s Give A Party”, they are balanced out by his renderings of “It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie’ and “The Water Is Wide.” Both brought back a flood of bittersweet memories. There was the time I picked up a real life “Turnpike Tom” on the Jersey Turnpike and took him all the way to Washington, DC. I listened to his tall tales while a cassette of Goodman’s first album with that song on it played along. Then there was the last time I saw Steve. I was trying out a Martin D-35 12-string in Matt Umanov’s Greenwich Village guitar shop, looking downward at the guitars face listening intently to it sing to me. I just so happened to playing an instrumental version of the best damn train song John Prine had ever heard. I heard that smiling voice say, “Now that’s a catchy tune,” and I looked up and there we were, almost eyeball to eyeball. I was sitting, Steve was standing. We only spoke for a minute, but he left me with a quip I still use today on stage. “Funny thing happened after I wrote that tune: it began to pay my rent!”

—Ken Spooner