The return of Peter Goetz
Peter Goetz plays Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach tomorrow night in the post-premier show after the Taylor Steele’s new film, “This Time Tomorrow.” Agent Orange also plays.
Peter Goetz gets around.
For the last decade, Goetz has travelled the far-flung corners of the world, working as a crewmember and more recently as a director on television shows such as Survivor and The Amazing Race. He’s been to 65 countries so far and one gets the sense he’s just begun.
Goetz, a Mira Costa and UC Berkeley graduate, is the opposite of the ugly American, those prototypical tourists infamous around the globe for bringing cultural arrogance and downright disinterest to the places they visit.
Goetz learns languages and studies cultures. Often, when the TV crew picks up and goes home, he stays behind.
“That’s always been my goal,” Goetz said. “Trying to represent the exact opposite of what everyone in those countries expects an American to be, especially during the Bush regime – eight years of travelling internationally, I was trying to raise the better side of the American flag.”
Six years ago, after three grueling back-to-back-to-back seasons of Survivor, Goetz travelled on his own to Peru and directed the documentary Sofia, about the ground-breaking world champion surfer Sofia Mulanivich. The film itself was a departure from most surf movies in that it had a story arc and social import – Sofia, beyond being a transcendent athlete, had become an inspirational model in her native country. In no small part because of the film, she became a global figure; the film has had an enduring power, still playing regularly at film festivals worldwide.
“It was kind of a perfect story,” Goetz said. “I’ve always wanted to try to help make the world a better place. It’s kind of a cliché, but it’s like, find me a story that can inspire people to really dig deep and persevere and follow their dreams – that is what Sofia is about.”
Wherever Goetz has travelled, he has also slung a guitar over his shoulder and found songs to sing and stories to tell outside the lens of his camera. It was a habit that began, actually, in Berkeley, where he started playing guitar and wrote his earliest songs, including one called “Outside Observer” that became both the title cut of his first album in 2007 and sort of a statement of intent for what was to follow.
“That was the second song I ever wrote in my life,” he said. “I wrote that in Berkeley on Sproul Plaza, just kind of watching all these people walking by, kind of the frenetic nature of life, everybody kind of chasing dreams. It’s kind of an early, raw song, but definitely sort of launched me into a life of observation.”
His newest record, Indian Summer, represents is a vast expansion of his musical range. Once upon a more genre-challenged time, you’d call it world music – reggae and Brazilian rhythms course through his songs – but in Goetz’s case, a better description might be trans-global pop. Goetz has got a gift for hooks and a generously open spirit; he’s been compared to Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz, but he’s far more adventurous, in life as in art.
“The thing is, art is very experiential – whatever road blocks you hit along the way or crazy and colorful journeys you have the honor of enjoying,” Goetz said. “All those stories that cross your path end up becoming like tangible items, like a recorded song or a film. It’s a way to document different chapters of your life. I want to continue to make art as long as I am lucky to live, and then have something to look back on and be like, ‘I did live.’ It wasn’t all spent on a 9 to 5 job trying to make the quarter. I don’t discriminate against those folks, but for me, it’s not how I want to roll. For my funeral, I’d like to have a couple of my albums playing and some imagery scattered around. I think it’s a good way to have some sort of proof you did walk this planet.”
“It’s almost like a duty,” he added. “When you have the capacity to get out and explore, you sort of have to bring something back, right? To be able to share it, and it might be those crazy chats you had over a whiskey at some dingy bar in the backwoods of Bali or wherever.”
Indian Summer has a strong Brazilian undercurrent, including two songs co-written with members of the great Gilberto Gil’s band. It’s a natural fit. Gil was the leader of the tropicalismo movement in the 1960s that fused cultures and art forms in such a revolutionary manner that he found himself jailed and finally exiled (before returning to become the nation’s first black cultural minister). Goetz, in his way, is continuing that very tradition.
“You mix whatever really catches your ear,” he said. “That is just the byproduct of loving Brazilian music for so long, then falling into the right circle and being able to come up with a sort of fusion of sounds and styles. I also think the California lifestyle and sound sorts of blends with the Brazilian Carioca sound – it’s like they are long lost brothers, or cousins.”
But perhaps the strongest current that runs through his work – one harder to describe but impossible to not detect – is the influence of surfing. Somehow, his is music borne of water.
“I still every morning get in the water, and I think it sort of sneaks in by osmosis when you are creating,” Goetz said. “That fluidity and that flow and just kind of laidback nature of wanting to listen to something that is not too harsh on the ears but takes you on a journey like a wave. There are so many different kind of waves, just like different songs. I guess I have a certain sound, but I want every song to go to a certain place.”
Goetz is playing at Saint Rocke in Hermosa Thursday night after the premier of Taylor Steele’s film “This Time Tomorrow.” The night is also a fundraiser for the Jimmy Miller Foundation, which supports the healing of mental and physical illness through surfing and ocean related activities and is named in honor of a great young waterman who died prematurely but whose memory continues to inspire. The show has special meaning for Goetz, who knew Miller well.
“He was one of the local cats that taught me about the value of travel and exploration,” Goetz said. “I had the honor of going to New Orleans with him and one of my best bros from growing up, Casey Glenn, and the two taught me the ropes – how to truly experience a culture, music, and respect the ladies. I’ll never forget that trip…a seminal trip hanging with two travel vets six years my senior. He was an inspiration to do many of us growing up in Manhattan in the junior guard circles.”
“That really makes this night special.”
Peter Goetz plays Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach tomorrow night in the post-premier show after the Taylor Steele’s new film, “This Time Tomorrow.” Agent Orange also plays.