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PEDDLING A MUSICAL GROOVE - ACOUSTIC-FOLK ARTIST BRUCE GOLDISH SAYS HIS
PASSION AND ENERGY FOR MUSIC COMES FROM WITHIN.
Duluth News Tribune (MN) -
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Author: will ashenmacher news
tribune staff writer
Duluth native Bruce Goldish truly has the
California state of mind.
He's amiable. Mellow. Breezy. He even has trouble remembering his age when
asked.
But that all stops when Goldish picks up his guitar.
"Sometimes they describe it as finger-flogging, the way I play,"
says the acoustic-folk musician. "If I don't play the sweet stuff, the
sweet, slow stuff with harmonics, my fingers really fly, and I really flog
those strings. It comes from the inside. The energy comes out of my fingers."
Goldish , who's 57 and lives in Santa Barbara, discovered
guitar as a student at Duluth East High School when he saw his friend Craig
Monson playing.
"My jaw dropped, and I sat down and said, I have to play, too,' " Goldish
recalls.
Music became a big part of his life when he was 21 and set off to Europe to
be, as he put it, a vagabond. He had fun until he found himself in
Switzerland with no money.
"I thought I had 600 bucks at home I could access, but I couldn't. So I
had 20 bucks," Goldish says. "But I had a guitar,
so I started playing on the street for money."
Busking, as it's called, paid for him to continue his Jack Kerouac stage,
visiting France, Germany, Spain and the Mediterranean party island of Ibiza.
Those play-or-starve weeks in Europe amplified the role music plays in his
life.
"I think I have more tenacity from that," Goldish
says. "When I'm in my groove, I can disappear in the music and play for
six hours without stopping. There's something in that that oftentimes reaches
people."
After returning from Europe, Goldish worked a series of
unusual jobs as he looked for "the best place in the world to
live." He was a massage therapist, a bouncer at the Brass Phoenix in
Duluth, a carpenter, a construction worker and, most unusually, a salesman of
"genuine llama-skin bags" that weren't actual llama skin.
"It wasn't a glamorous job," Goldish recalls.
Santa Barbara eventually proved to be his Shangri-La. He compares the city to
Duluth, citing its mutual hillside locations and proximities to water (though
he sidesteps the issue of climate).
Now a critical care nurse, Goldish tours nationally once a
year.
This time, he's touring the country in an RV - an experience that's putting
him in some comical situations. When first contacted by the News Tribune, he
was chowing down on macaroni and cheese with his two teenage nephews in the
Wisconsin Dells. A second time, at the end of an interview, he revealed he
had been cleaning dog excrement off his sister's carpet during the
conversation.
Comedy aside, Goldish says his April 13 stop at the Amazing
Grace Bakery and Caf UNKNOWN_HIGHBIT_e9 will be especially meaningful. He
said many of his songs were inspired by Duluth and the North Shore, so he'll
be playing the songs where he was inspired to create them.
But stopping in Duluth once a year might be enough for Goldish
. After all, he's got that sun-soaked life in California to get back to.
"Santa Barbara's number one right now," Goldish
says. "But Duluth's right up there."
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