Hi Linda, thanks so much for joining us! I always like to start with an origin story question. How did you get started in music? What was your musical background like?

After my twin sister and I were born in Ohio, our large family with five girls moved to Mexico City, where my first musical memory was hearing Latin pop on the radio. Our mom would also sing and play show tunes on our baby grand piano. After that, we moved to Chicago and taught ourselves piano from an old jazz fake book and learned guitar from a Beatles sheet music book.

Our older sisters’ album collection filled the house with an eclectic mix of Neil Young, Brasil ’66, Queen, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Joni Mitchell. Our twin sister dynamic made us quite competitive about who got more piano time, which, upon reflection, made us better musicians. My happy place was always on the piano bench, and I started writing original compositions and songs when I was 12.

I later attended The Chicago Academy for the Performing Arts, and after graduating from the University of Illinois, I started gigging around Chicago as a jazz pianist and vocalist. My twin sister, Laura Good, and I started writing songs together and formed an alternative pop band which became The Twigs.

I relocated to Los Angeles in 2000, and in between The Twigs’ gigs, I played keyboards with other bands, which led to my unplanned side career as a touring keyboardist with hard rock bands including Jane’s Addiction and The Mars Volta, and then with Lisa Marie Presley for her first two records on Capitol. Any time I had a day off on tour, I worked on writing my own songs, which led to my first solo album, Love Is a Curious Thing, in 2009.

Since then, I’ve added “musical writer” to my rotating list of projects, as the first full-length musical I co-wrote, LADYSHIP, debuted in 2019.

I absolutely love your music from LADYSHIP the Musical and I’m so excited to hear more about this project.

I’m delighted you love it! I’m a big history buff, and LADYSHIP was conceived after watching a documentary about the British colonization of Australia and how a small percentage of the convicts sent there were women, most of whose crimes were small ones of poverty and survival. The more I dug into the history, the more I learned how unjustly maligned the women were and how they actually saved the failing colony, a fact many are unaware of.

Concurrently, my sister Laura was living in Australia and immersed herself in the convict history there. We compared notes on these heroic women and felt their stories of survival could be songs, and that a musical could unite their stories of forced immigration in a compelling way. Many of the convicts were Irish, and we used traditional Irish folk songs as inspiration, weaving them together with contemporary rock guitar and rhythms in the score.

For the transported women, even surviving the harrowing boat journey across the seas was a victory in itself, so we focused the show on that part of the story, and a musical inspired by true events was born. LADYSHIP premiered at The New York Musical Festival in 2019, and now the show is being produced in many incarnations at theaters, colleges, and high schools.

We most recently produced and released a soundtrack of the show in 2023, LADYSHIP the Musical: Original Concept Recording, using many of the original NYC actors. I played piano, electric guitar, bass, Irish drum, and added background vocals on the album as well.

Have you worked on musicals historically? How did you get started with that, and what is composing and writing a musical like?

Since moving to Los Angeles in 2000, most of my composing work had been in alternative pop, indie film, commercials, and TV and film syncs of my songs and music production. I had done shorter musical revues before and was a musical director for comedy improv, including Second City back in Chicago, which was often like composing mini musicals on the fly. I knew I wanted to write a full-length musical and have the show be women focused, but I was searching for a story that lit a spark in me.

Most musicals take an average of seven years or more to be written, developed, and hopefully produced. Finding a story you feel compelled to tell is ultra important, as that will keep you going through many rewrites, and the fact that usually no one is paying you to do it, at least initially. You have to really love the art form of musical theatre, and I truly do.

Experiencing your own music and words performed live on stage by Broadway actors in collaboration with dancers, actors, dramaturgs, costumers, and others is magical. It is a complete contrast to the often solitary job of a composer working alone in a quiet room. We also chose to write the book of LADYSHIP in addition to the songs, as well as doing all of the orchestration and production, which seems insane to us now given we had three weeks to mount the show for the first festival. We wanted to be the architects of the whole thing on our first try just to see if we could do it. It really helps to have a co-writer. Once it gets to the production stage with the cast and crew, that’s when it really gets fun.

I’m a teacher and composer also. I’m curious what your experience is like balancing both of these pursuits.

It is an ever evolving balance, isn’t it? As a performer, composer, and teacher, I feel they inform each other all the time. Teaching keeps me open to what music students are listening to currently. I’m curious about why and how they are responding to what lights them up musically. Since my own musical training started before internet streaming, I realize my students’ pool of easily available music is potentially wider now, but streaming has also changed how people value music as part of their lives because it is so easily and cheaply consumed, for better or for worse.

Teaching is absolutely its own art form, and I love the term “teaching artist,” which I see being used more often now. Sometimes I learn more from my students than I anticipate, and it keeps me in a beginner’s mind, which is often a helpful intention to have. Patience is a necessary skill as well. Maybe we can call ourselves patience artists too.

Can you tell us about your film work? What is a project you’ve worked on that you remember most, or one that you particularly loved working on?

Because I come from the world of rock bands and pop music, I came to film scoring non traditionally. Though I studied composition in college and minored in film, I wanted to pursue the craft of songwriting after I graduated. Self producing my own band led to other record producing jobs, where I would arrange string parts and program drums, which is its own kind of underscoring, supporting the story whether it’s a film scene or a song on a record. Being a multi instrumentalist helps.

I got called in at the last minute to compose some music for a short film where the director wanted non traditional ukulele under an ocean beach scene. I grabbed my tenor ukulele, went to the studio, watched the scene, and composed a piece on the spot. My memory of it was that it was fun because there was no time to overthink, do first drafts or demos, or compete with any temp music. Probably because I grew up playing jazz piano, I’m very comfortable improvising, so with a little instant feedback from the director, we got it done quickly and organically. One of the easier sessions.

Anything on the horizon you’d like to share with us about life, work, or inspiration?

After focusing on writing the musical for the last few years, I’m now moving back into instrumental composition and film scoring. I’m also recording and releasing new music with The Twigs, as this year we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of our debut album. I will also be recording and releasing my second singer songwriter solo album this year.

I’m also cooking up new ideas for the next musical, one that I intend to be sung through with 90 minutes of nonstop musical theatre, a challenge I am looking forward to.

I’m excited about discovering new ways to collaborate on creating and recording music, pointing more toward incorporating live music and shared experiences. I’ve spent a lot of time in dark studios editing on DAWs by myself in the past, and now I want more live, in person collaborative experiences that feel nourishing to me. Hopefully, as the technology for creation and distribution evolves, it will also evolve to support creators themselves in a fair and ethical way.

Interview by Connor Cook

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