Q&A: goodtree’s Search for Answers and Exhibition of Fragility in “Oregon Man”

 
 
 

A BACKYARD FULL OF WEEDS, A WOODEN STAGE, A HAGGLE — of senior students. The week before my college graduation, I went to a Victorian-style home north of Magnolia Avenue and listened to kids I knew from the school’s radio station perform a rendition of Wilco’s “If I Ever Was a Child.” The cover was as moving as it was homespun. Two of the cover artists were Nick Ladue and Mason Robinson, who would go on to form the psychedelic-folk duo goodtree. 

“Oregon Man,” their latest single, has the dirt-under-your-fingernails lyricism of a Walt Whitman poem, the delicate production of an early Alex G track, and the melancholic speak-singing charm of Kurt Vile himself. 

Over plucky guitar chords, goodtree poses stripped-back questions that are startling in their urgency, in their timelessness: “What is life without pain and sorrow? / But what is life is that’s all there is?” The song was born out of a trip to Oregon, in which Ladue spoke with a cohabitant of the farm they were staying at about how to detach and how to ground yourself in nature.

Produced by Noah Weinman, whose solo project, Runnner, and production work for Skullcrusher is equally atmospheric, “Oregon Man” is all rootsy instrumentations and a lap steel melody from heaven. Weinman possesses the ability to build a sonic landscape of swooning synths that hand delivers listeners to somewhere else — somewhere quiet. 

Goodtree has now graduated from college and graduated from cover songs. Read below to find about the inspiration behind their latest single.

LUNA: How did goodtree come about? Do you feel that being friends before being a musical duo helped you to find your footing when creating your first song together? 

GOODTREE: We’ve been friends since the very beginning of college and that definitely helped. We didn’t start playing music together until the early days of quarantine — just jamming and playing covers mostly. Having very similar music tastes already and naturally hanging out all the time, we decided to see if we could do it ourselves. It was really just for fun, and we had the time. It’s still crazy to think how far we’ve come since then.

LUNA: What was your intention behind writing “Oregon Man”? What do you hope listeners take away from the song?

GOODTREE: When Nick wrote the demo of it, they were staying on a farm in Oregon for a couple weeks and had met this guy there with such a unique perspective on fleeing into nature and the significance of self. Being out on the farm away from people, it was hard to not reflect inward and use nature as an excuse to do so. But these ideas are universal, and wanting to flee and “find peace” in nature is a concept we both romanticize. With “Oregon Man,” we hope it connects with others who similarly are looking for peace but are having trouble finding it or what it means for them. 

LUNA: On “Oregon Man,” you worked with Noah Weinman, who has produced for Runnner and Skullcrusher. What was that creative collaboration like? 

GOODTREE: Noah is incredibly talented and just such a genuine person. His project, Runnner, was already such a big influence for us, and it still blows our minds that he wanted to produce these tracks. We went to his home studio for a few days earlier this year and were able to record there during the day. It was very surreal. He just understood the vision and knew when to contribute ideas of his own while playing off what we wanted. Noah also played on the song (lap steel, acoustic guitar, synth, bass guitar) so his distinctive sound is all over it. We have nothing but respect for him, and you should absolutely go check out his music and his production for Skullcrusher.

LUNA: What would you say your biggest sonic influences are? 

GOODTREE: The earliest sounds that we both responded to were probably this ’60s Western folk wave of artists like Townes Van Zandt and Blaze Foley, along with this subgenre of psych folk, with artists like Kurt Vile and Bill Callahan. The two of us got equally obsessed and fell into these kind of rabbit holes with this particular niche, which led us to more artists and sounds we both responded to. Partially what attracted us to this style of music too was that it felt very tangible and real. The instruments are pretty guitar-driven, and we loved the idea of having a banjo be a driving force in our sound. 

LUNA: You both were involved with college radio at USC — do you feel as if being a part of this community fostered an environment where you could develop your creative faculties? 

GOODTREE: I think it’s fair to say we both loved our time doing college radio at USC! We made lots of great friends, many with whom we still keep in touch. A lot of those radio people got involved in live music shows and sound engineering, which definitely brought us all a lot closer when we started playing shows last year. But having that foundation with KXSC introduced us to a community of people who just love music and going to shows. 

LUNA: You’ve done some live shows around Los Angeles — tell me a bit about that! 

GOODTREE: We wanted to start doing shows in the spring of 2021and felt we were ready to play in front of friends, so we just set up a stage in my backyard, had a couple other friends perform, and it ended up being really successful. We thought it’d be fun to continue throwing our own shows, so we put on several shows throughout the summer with over a hundred people attending and then played at a few other shows in the fall. It felt really good to bring a sense of community back to music after not having that for so long and having to stay at home. Now we are sadly geographically separated (Nick is in LA and Mason’s out in Tennessee) but have fortunately managed to turn our focus to recording.  

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