TNG Reader and GWU grad student Chad submitted this interview.

What do gay singer-songwriter Tom Goss, a hooker with a heart of gold, and a 14-karat bust of Dolly Parton have in common?  No, they are not all things that have been jizzed on by Kenny Rogers!  It’s the heart of gold.

Did you just roll your eyes?  It’s okay.  I know that for a DC resident, this time of year can be contemptuous.  Our beautiful city is reawakening from its gray winter slumber, only to be maddeningly overrun by tourists, uninitiated to the concept of metro escalator fast lanes.  A single day of mild weather serves as a beacon, drawing out cruisers and couples, out-of-towners, shitting dogs, and whatever they call those awful midget things under the age of twelve… until every blade of grass is bent like a supplicant under their swell.  And I think maybe our cold hearts get refrigerated, somehow, in government office cubicle-land, because they stay frosty long after the rest of the city has thawed.

Dear reader, there is hope for our icy hearts.  It comes in the form of 27 year old Tom Goss; native of Kenosha, Wisconsin.  A former college wrestler, with skin a pale alabaster and electric blue eyes; his features are as captivating and charming as his personality.  Goss moved to the District in 2004 to attend Catholic seminary, but finding ensconced there an undercurrent of hypocrisy and sexually predaceous behavior, he quit after a year and a half.  Disillusioned with God, and infuriated with the situation, Goss yet came through the experience with his indelible innocence and optimism in tact.  Finding a job running a breakfast program for the homeless through a local nonprofit (Charlie’s Place), Goss sought to fulfill a calling for social justice now through more secular means.  Having taught himself to play the guitar, music became a tool of personal reconciliation as well as an outlet for sharing hope with others.  Nearly four years later Goss has garnered a loyal following for his refined acoustic pop style and his catchy, honest, and heartwarming lyrics.

Monday, while driving to New York City to start a two month, 50 city tour promoting his newest album, “Back to Love” (available nationally April 7^th), Goss was kind enough to talk to The New Gay and briefly impart to even this cynic a gleam of sentimentality.  Get to know Tom Goss a little more in the full interview below, and check out Tom’s website for a sampling of his music.

Come treat yourself to a night with this DC treasure.   You can see him perform this Thursday and Friday at Nellie’s (9pm), or check him out on tour in a town near you, including Chicago (4/11) and Denver (4/23).

The New Gay:  Your new cd is entitled “Back to Love”… back from where, Tom?  A trucker-stop glory hole in South Dakota… or somewhere less specific?

Tom Goss:  [silence]

TNG:  [restarting...thankfully Tom lost cell phone reception under the Holland Tunnel  and didn't hear me begin the interview as a complete ass].  Tom, what was the genesis of this album, and its sentiment?

TG:  When I was making the album, I had tons of songs.  I just started to pair them down to the ones that were really resonating with me.  And, at the end of the day, they were all about love.  Romantic love, familial love, and also the tragedy of love.  I lost my grandfather this past year, and I’ve watched some relationships with people who are very close to me just crumble.  So I was writing about all these different things.  My motivation for writing, and frankly for waking up every morning, is… you know… somehow hoping that there is more love in the world each new day than there was the day before.

TNG:  Did you feel abandoned by love after your experience with the seminary?

TG:  No, not by love, I don’t think.  I definitely felt abandoned by God… and I guess they could be considered one in the same.  That all seems like two lifetimes ago.  I was hurt, but I never felt like there was no love left.  My first album, in 2006, dealt a lot with that process and my struggle with spirituality.  But then I found the love of my life… and, yeah, it’s pretty easy to write love songs when you are madly in love.

TNG:  You came out in DC, right?  Did you find support or comfort in the gay community here during that time?

TG:  I guess the answer is yes, I was in DC when I came out.  But I think my situation was fairly unique, because I was still in seminary at the time.  So I didn’t come out and really have an active gay lifestyle.  I was fairly isolated, and was living a very different life than the average gay Washingtonian.

TNG:  Has your relationship with the gay community changed over the years, do you feel more integrated?  Or do you feel at odds with gay culture?

TG:  I’m very integrated in my community, and I love the DC gay community, but  in a lot of ways I don’t think I fit the normal gay prototype.  I love my life, and I have a lot of gay friends, but I don’t really go to the clubs.  It’s not like I’m at odds with gay culture, but I just don’t feel like I fit the mold in a lot of ways.  Maybe I just have an atypical lifestyle… I mean, I don’t drink, I don’t dance, and I play the acoustic guitar.  [Laughing] So that’s three strikes against you in the typical gay scene.  But our community is so diverse, I feel like I can be myself and still be perfectly integrated as gay, even if I don’t do a lot of stereotypically gay things.

TNG:  What is it like on tour?  Does it energize you and your songwriting, or is it a draining experience?

TG:  It’s definitely a rollercoaster of energy!  I’m going to be in 50 cities in the next two months… you name it, odds are that I’m there.  And sitting on the road, driving 4 to 8 hours a day, is definitely draining.  But for me, music is a way of communicating.  I love telling my story and hearing other people’s stories.  So that part is really exciting when I play shows and get to talk to people afterwards.  I feel very honored to have the job that I have, and to have people share stories with me in such abundance… really touching and intimate stories… deep and personal conversations that I really, frankly, have no right to share in.  It’s amazing that people feel comfortable doing that, and that I can trust people to listen to what are some of my deepest failures and regrets, and trust them to be gentle with that information.  The people around me make my life more vibrant, they are very precious to me.

TNG:  What happens if you get really gassy on stage?  Can you just let it rip, and strum your guitar in a low octave?

TG:  You know; I’ve never done that [sounds amazed].  But I burp all the time!  You have to just turn your head from the microphone and burp during the song, which I do at least once a night.  You are drinking so much water and it just happens, but no one really notices.  I’ve never had the other gas issue, though.

TNG:  I usually feel more connected to someone when I can commiserate about the really god-awful things at work; you know like coworker incompetence, Dilbert cartoons taped in random places, or not being able to have a glass of wine when I want one.  Are there equivalently awful things for a musical career?  Like stalkers, or always having to update myspace?

TG:  There is an up and a down side to anything.  Thankfully, I’m as stalker free right now as I’ve ever been.  I’m really happy about that!  But, if you want, I can bitch for a minute about this guy who Facebook friended me.  I always try to write people back with some small little message.  And, since my new cd is coming out in about a week, I sent out a message saying that people could download the first single.  And this guy got really mad and started writing me nasty emails about how I was so self-centered and didn’t care about his life.  I don’t even know him.  That was kind of annoying, so I de-friended him.   But, for the most part I feel really lucky to be able to do what I do.

TNG:  How did you get started as a singer? When did you first start playing for an audience?

TG:  I got a guitar when I graduated from high school, and it wasn’t long before I was writing songs and playing for everybody.  I was a huge Dave Matthews fan, and a large part of my playing was just sitting around the parking lot at concerts playing songs my friends and I all knew.  So it was more about just being with and entertaining friends, and being able to have the music that we liked more accessible.

TNG:  What do you hope your music would express to first time listeners thinking about coming out to see you?

TG:  When I write my songs I always try to have the song be more hopeful at the end than it was at the beginning.  I hope that listeners can recognize that, and appreciate that… and can, as a result, feel as if there is more hope in their life than when the song began.  I don’t pretend to know other people’s lives or experiences, but I write about a lot of different things, and hopefully people can find a positive message that they connect with.

TNG:  You’re still involved with Charlie’s Place, right?  Can you tell me a little about what that organization is, and what you do there?

TG:  Yeah, actually I was in the office this morning.  Charlie’s place is a meal program for the homeless located in Dupont Circle.  We serve breakfast four days a week, we also have a nurse on staff, case management, free HIV testing, and counseling.  Right now my role there is development and community liason.  That essentially means that I deal with donors and write grants and sit on a local Dupont Circle board.  I try to be an active member of the community and someone that community members can go to if there are any issues or concerns, or if they want to get more involved in working with the homeless.

TNG:  You’ve been able to keep up that work while you’ve been on tour.  What does it mean to you to be able to do this?

TG:  It means I’m fucking crazy [laughing].  I never stop working, which can be hard.  But music is such an ego-centric job… I sit there all day and talk about me, and my music, and blah, blah, blah.  To be involved in something that is frankly more important than me and my music is really nice.  I do a lot of my work via internet or phone, so that makes it possible for me to get the job done.  And it is grueling sometimes; driving all day, doing my show, telecommuting to work; there is always a lot of work to be done.  But it keeps me grounded and involved in social justice, which is very important to me.

TNG:  Is it true that you are getting married soon?

It is true [excitedly]!  Oh, actually, my partner Mike and I just bought a house together in Pentworth.  We close tomorrow.  I saw we, but I am going to be in Boston and will be touring until June, so Mike pretty much has to move by himself.  But yeah, we are getting married in the fall.  We haven’t set a date yet, which we probably should do come to think about it, time is running out.

TNG:  Word on the street is that the ceremony will be on a minigolf course.

TG:  [Laughing] Well, I actually proposed on a minigolf course… the Upton Hills Regional Golf Course just off Wilson Road, in Arlington.  The tenth hole is really long… you can’t even see hole at the end.  I had it all planned out and had the ring.  We got to the tenth hole and I hit my golf ball, then I ran down the hill and I put it in the hole and yelled “I got a hole-in-one.”  Mike hit his ball, and I grabbed it and did the same thing, and yelled back “you got a hole-in-one too!”  And he’s like screaming at me, “you didn’t get a hole-in-one, you cheated.”  But when I did the same thing to his ball, he was like “no way, really?”… and he runs down to see.  Of course I’m there kneeling near the hole where the golf balls are.  Mike comes over, and he’s staring down at the ground and totally doesn’t even notice that I’m trying to propose to him.  I’m like, “sweetie… I love you!”  He keeps saying, “I love you too, where’s the ball?”  I gave him the ring, but being titanium it was really light, and I think he thought it was plastic or something.  He was so confused!  But once he realized, he started crying “oh my god, oh my god… can you do it again, I didn’t know what was going on?!”

So yeah, I’m not really cool, I never have been.  I’m pretty comfortable with that.  But we do really enjoy playing minigolf, and we have been trying to contact courses to see if we could have our wedding on one.  I think that would be a lot of fun!  And, I mean, doesn’t every minigolf course want to have a couple of homos from the city get married there?!  But so far, none of them have contacted us back.

TNG:  That proposal story was adorable.  Thank you Tom for being so incredibly giving with your time and cheeriness!  It was such a pleasure chatting with you, and we look forward to seeing you on tour!