Dave Goddess Group is 'Back in Business,' coming to Bethlehem, after career turns, COVID

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Forty years ago, singer-songwriter Dave Goddess was fronting The Daddy Licks Band — at the time, the Lehigh Valley's most successful rock group.

The band was headlining shows all along the East Coast, with its popular album "I Got Wheels" and new wave singles such as "Just a Little (Goes a Long Way)" and "Kids Out Lookin' for the Real Thing" getting substantial radio play. It seemed a breath away from the big time.

But The Daddy Licks Band, as music groups do, eventually broke up. Goddess moved to New York and briefly left the music business before returning a dozen years ago and releasing a half-dozen albums since.

Now these years later, Goddess is back with a new disc, "Back in Business."

And just as The Daddy Licks Band captured the carefree days of the 1980s, "Back in Business" captures not only the more complexities of life these days, but the topics that are more prominent in Goddess's life: Deep reflection, nostalgia and even an awareness that life is finite.

Goddess also will be back in the Lehigh Valley.

He'll play those songs, and others from his past, at an "unplugged" show by his Dave Goddess Group at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 24 at Godfrey Daniels, 7 E. 4th St., Bethlehem.

Tickets remain available at $20.50 in advance and $25.50 the day of the show and are available at www.godfreydaniels.org.

“This is a song about memory, reconciliation, second chances, and the baggage we tend to carry around with us," Goddess says about the new disc's title cut on his website, www.davegoddessgroup.com.

"We’ve all screwed up, but how do we rectify our mistakes? Does the past really matter, or is it more important to simply move forward?”

Getting back in business

Goddess, in a phone call from his New York home, said “Back in Business" was written during the coronavirus pandemic, when "things were very, very weird in New York, like all that time," which likely contributed to its serious and reflective tone.

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Dave Goddess Group

"Don't forget, I really couldn’t even go out of my house for a long time," Goddess said. "And you were functioning in a very weird way. In New York, all the businesses were closed and everything else.

"And I had — and I never had this before – a ridiculous amount of time. So I just started writing songs and I didn’t know how many I was going to do, how many I would write or whatever, but I just kept doing it because it just went on for, I don’t know, a year or so.

“And I was trying to look past — it was really depressing, but I was trying to look past the pandemic and I was thinking, ‘We’re gonna come back from this and everything’s gonna be OK, and eventually we’re going to be back in business.

“And so that became the theme of the record. I didn’t know how I was going to record it, but eventually, I felt comfortable enough to get together with some of my old bandmates, and eventually, we went into the studio and knocked it out."

Goddess said he had his usual band mates, Chris Cummings on drums and Mark Buschi on bass, and brought in steel guitar player Robbie Bossert (who also will join him at Godfrey Daniels), keyboardist Craig Kastelnik, and fiddler Nyke Van Wyk.

The result gave the songs a distinctly roots-rock sound, influenced by Bob Dylan, but also, he said, by The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, The Byrds, and Neil Young.

“It’s more of a quiet, reflective record," Goddess said. "It’s a little rootsy and folksy.

“So really, 12 songs … I just felt like, I don’t know, I had a lot to say at the time."

Songs about not wasting time

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Dave Goddess Group

Some of the subjects Goddess wrote about are important life moments.

"Hey Romeo" is about his beloved uncle, who Goddess said was "the closest thing I had to a father."

"He was a very interesting Bohemian guy," Goddess said. "He was like a comedian and he had a radio show and he was a songwriter.

“He had a partner, and they used to come and they would sit in the dining room at my house and they would write songs. And I was wandering around, listening to this, and being peripherally a part of it.

“And they would write these songs ... and they would record them. And then they would get on the radio. We’d be in the car and we’d hear the song on the radio.

“So the whole thing sort of came full circle to me, and obviously affected me pretty much, ‘cause I thought, ‘This is the greatest thing ever.’ … And when he would leave, I would just miss him so much.”

Another song, "Something Worth Waiting For," is about relationships.

"Of course, we’ve all been through that — looking for the right person and made a lot of mistakes along the way and you think that things are gonna work out and things don’t end up exactly right.

“And one thing I’ve learned is that you do have to be patient with this stuff. … I try to live like that: Keep going in the right direction and not be in a hurry with anything.”

Perhaps the most reflective and insightful song is "Pretty Soon It Will Be Too Late," which reflects on the passage of time — and whether it already has run out.

“Of course, the older I get, the more conscious I am of, you know, time is important and you don’t want to fool around you don’t want to waste it. Because pretty soon it will be too late," Goddess said.

"I try not to think of it too much, but I love what I’m doing – I love music and I love writing songs, I hope I can keep doing it. But eventually, you won’t, you know, for one reason or another.

"So literally a third of the songs I’ve written in the past few years is about not wasting time or just being conscious of it — trying to use it as best you can.

“You can feel like your time’s kind of passed, you know. As a rock ‘n’ roll musician, it’s had these days, ‘cause it’s time has passed. But you love what you love and you just wanna keep doing it. … [the song says] You’re out of touch in so many ways, and I feel that way.

"I see things that are popular or that pass for entertainment these days, and I think, like, ‘Wow, these people are getting cheated.’ They don’t have great music like I feel like I did as I was growing up.”

Back in the (music) business

As it does for many in the Lehigh Valley, The Daddy Licks Band still holds fond memories for Goddess.

“We had some success, and when we stopped doing it, we continued to record and play a little bit after that — actually for years," he said. "We got more bites from record companies [and] I got offered a record deal.

"[But] they took it back. Somehow it fell through."

At that point, "I had to get a job, because I had to support myself. So I got this job in New York and eventually … my brother and I started a business."

Goddess said he became an editor and "did that for seven, eight, nine years."

But during virtually all of that time, Goddess said he continued to write music — songs that would become his first solo album, 2011's “Something New.”

"And I was recording that as I was writing," he said. "So I really didn’t take that much time off — maybe I didn’t play for a few years."

He formed Dave Goddess Group in 2012.

“And so then we sold the business and now I’m being a musician again," he said.

He's released a half-dozen albums since, including the critically acclaimed "Last of the West Side Cowboys" in 2018.

These days, Goddess said, he's playing more shows with bassist Buschi as an acoustic duo. "I got the thought that I really should boil these songs down to their really simplest essence,” he said.

He played shows at Bethlehem's Musikfest in August.

And, as COVID fades into memory, he said he wants to get out so people can hear the songs from "Back in Business," Goddess said.

“Being a musician is a hard thing, and trying to succeed in this is very difficult," he said. "And I guess it did kind of break my heart for a while and I did try to quit, but I couldn’t.”