Gooding Times

There are certain places one expects to find electronica, such as New York and Los Angeles. Wichita, Kansas, better known as a breeding ground for such alt-country groups as Split Lit Rayfield, is conspicuously absent from that list. Yet residing in this reliable hotbed for Midwest-themed acts is the singularly named Gooding, who dabbles in synthesized symphonies. However, at the time of this interview, he’s at a Laundromat in downtown Berkeley, California.

“We’re quite excited about this Laundromat,” Gooding raves into his cell phone. His current tour has taken him to such prestigious clubs as the Roxy in West Hollywood and the Fox Theatre in Boulder, Colorado, where he opened for Dave Matthews collaborator Tim Reynolds. Nary a washing machine’s path has been crossed yet on this trek, however, which explains Gooding’s enthusiasm. “It’s been long enough that you should probably be able to smell us from old KC,” he admits.

If so, Gooding’s personal funk should be at least somewhat proportionate to the funk he drops on his latest album, 3X. Insistent grooves are in order as Gooding insinuates himself into each of electronica’s varied faces, moving with ease between them, constantly achieving emotional crescendos. “There’s a dichotomy between the darker trip-hop songs and the more upbeat funk songs, so there’s a little bit of a range,” Gooding figures.

Gooding started developing said range as a Lawrence resident playing gigs with Safety Orange, a band represented in sample form on 3X‘s “Licorice & Grape Kool-Aid.” “From Afro-Repair Shop, that’s Chief Justice on there at the beginning,” Gooding explains. “The hook from that is from an old jam that we used to do, and I pay tribute to that lost act, which sold very few records but had a good time.”

In the breadth of styles that it covers, 3X mirrors Gooding’s career. Last year, he delved into drum ‘n’ bass on Collection #1 and the self-titled Gooding. In 1998, he released the politically motivated industrial epic Factory Blue. The live show in support of that album, which included original video footage of its story, eventually proved exhausting for Gooding. “Coming off of Factory Blue from a couple of years ago, people kind of expect conceptual things because that one had a real strong animal-rights message and was pro-environment. 3X is really more us having a good time. I think I kind of cathartically got through some of that, and it was time to start having a good time for a few gigs, or we were going to end up shooting ourselves. That Factory Blue stuff will get you depressed.”

Gooding has no one to blame but himself if his music inspires melancholy feelings, because there’s no one but him in the studio. Each of the records released under the name Gooding is 100 percent just that, from writing, arranging, and performing to producing, engineering, and mixing. However, on stage he’s joined by longtime friend (and fellow Safety Orange member) Jesse Reichenberger on drums and Bryan Kelly, another old buddy, on bass.

“I met Jesse right when I got in Wichita in seventh grade, and we met Bryan in about 10th grade,” Gooding recalls. “We used to play together in the jazz band. We’ve been in various projects over the years, but we kind of got back together for this tour.” When performed with Gooding’s full band, Gooding’s songs stray from their electronic roots. “We’re really a rock band,” he says. “We have electronic elements, but there’s a lot of funk and rock, and there’s just a lot of different elements of live music in our stuff. I tend to produce the records trying to use lots of different sounds and to stretch the boundaries a little bit, but it all comes back to drums and bass and guitar when we’re playing live.”

Actually, that’s drum, bass, guitar, and video, as Gooding continues to employ visual media in his shows. For this tour, Kansas City resident Rick Gibson created and edited images to accompany selections from 3X, and this footage is played back with a click track during the show so the band can keep in sync with what’s on the screen.

“For one of the songs, ‘Licorice & Grape Kool-Aid,’ there’s a real literal take on that,” Gooding reveals. “It shows a pitcher of Kool-Aid spinning around, and we just edit the way that it spins around. It’s like some of the stuff you used to see on Amp on MTV, where you just take a very simple second of footage and, just like sampling, use little video loops and just move things around right with the beat. The video stuff really enhances the show, and since we don’t have a lead vocalist per se, most of the stuff is instrumental with little vocal snippets. It really keeps the people’s attention. It gives them something to focus on, and they get over the fact that we’re kind of a nonconventional act.”

Gooding has been crafting some more conventional songs, but they won’t be released under his name. He’s collaborating with Reichenberger on a new project called Tall, which will feature vocals, although it’s sure to include some unorthodox elements, given Gooding’s history for defying convention. Perhaps this adventurous spirit contributed to his decision to settle in Wichita instead of a hipper, albeit more cliché, musical mecca. “We needed to go somewhere where it was cheap,” he explains pragmatically, “where I could buckle down and record the records and we could rehearse and save up money to stay on the road.”

The move from Lawrence to Wichita also made the founding of S3 Records possible. (Its Web site, www.s3records.com, is a virtual home for all things Gooding.) “The only way you can do it as an indie is to absolutely get out there and just grind it out and put the word out,” Gooding says in a determined voice. “We don’t have the payoffs and the trips that all the majors do, but when we find people that are really open to new music, we try to make friends and put on a good show. We’re just lucky to be able to play music for a living.”