Meet Chance | Singer/Keyboardist – The Baby Goats

Hi Chance, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Oh, I’ve been in bands since I was a teenager. It’s second nature. Started playing piano when I was 7… I love every little aspect about being a musician, even the hard parts (and those are plenty). I’ve been in a signed act, I released independent solo music. But this band feels different.

Thing is, I had been writing guitar forward music for a while and a couple of years ago I thought…what if…what if I went back to my synth roots?

So, I bought a used Moog Sub 37. Near mint condition. The price was right, and I just felt compelled to go in a new direction. When it arrived, I didn’t even have a stand for it. I just put it on the floor, on this little round red rug in the center of my one-room recording studio that I have in my garage. I turned it on, plugged in my headphones, and started playing.

There’s this beautiful, almost narcotic feeling when getting a new synth (or, really, any new musical instrument): You spend the next 5 minutes I mean 12 hours with it, before you even realize you haven’t been breathing any part of the outside world…AT ALL. You only know what’s in front of you. It’s absolutely present tense and I guess you could say it’s like plugging into some kind of energy conduit; your mind just hyper focuses and the whole thing is a “close your eyes” kinda dream state.

Sat on the floor, didn’t even power up Pro Tools; I just used voice memos on my phone, and I recorded any sound I liked and the subsequent riffs that were inspired by it. I think I wrote 10 songs in just a couple hours.

A few weeks later, I had two separate conversations, one with our drummer, Greg, and one with Lance, who would soon become our guitarist. Greg had already been playing with me for a little bit in my solo project. He had brought up wanting to perhaps go in a different direction. I said, well have I got a little story to tell you!

Oh, I should mention how the three of us found each other:
True story: we all met at our kids’ elementary school (CHIME Elementary in Woodland Hills). This whole crazy thing is completely organic: Greg and I met playing in a parents’ band for an annual fundraiser the school did called CHIMEapalooza. Lance and I met while our kids (my son & his daughter, both in the same grade) were receiving some kind of “Outstanding Achievement Award” ceremony that day.

Lance and I started talking about each other’s music. He previously saw Greg and I play at one of my solo gigs, and at some point I suggested “Hey man, let’s write some songs.” He came from a metal background, but was completely onboard to trying something new. I remember him emphasizing, “Dude, don’t worry; I listen to a lot of stuff!”

So we traded music. He’d text or email me a riff, and I would write lyrics/ melodies, maybe even arrange it into a full fledged draft. I’d send him a germ of a song, and he’d play a riff over it to take it to the next level. I can’t remember when we had our first practice —the three of us in a room together— but we probably started doing things in earnest RIGHT ABOUT a few weeks before the pandemic hit. Since we didn’t really play out until people felt safe(r) about going out to clubs, spring of last year was our first real show.

Sitting around early on, we asked ourselves:
“Hold on. We’ve all been in bands. Let’s not do it the same as before. What if instead, we forgot…and let go of… all the cynicism of being in this absurd music business (which is horrid now), and just pretended for a moment that we were new to this? ”

We reduced it to a simple question, really: “What about music actually makes us happy? And if there are things about music that make us happy…then well…how about. WE. DO. THAT??”

From that conversation, The Baby Goats were born.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Well, first, I should explain us, sonically…an elevator pitch, if you will: The Baby Goats are three punk/rock/metal dudes who built a trojan horse out of an old disco club, wheeled it on stage, and dared you to DANCE to us.

Maybe not what you’re expecting, but it’s real easy to be a rock band while breaking shit and screaming endlessly at the system (sound and fury, signifying nothing, etc etc). But I like being a hell of a lot more subversive. For me that would be writing melodies, the drummer playing four on the floor, funk guitars, new wave synths and a big fucking wink that underpins our tendency to do it differently by yea, making our music danceable. That to me is punk spirit: swimming against the stream.

Rock listeners might think, I’m confused… how did I end up tapping my foot, oops, and now I’m dancing to this? People who like to dance might think, hold on a second: this shit has guitars and I’m not supposed to like guitars anymore…but ??

All that subversive attitude aside, don’t get us wrong: this ain’t sarcastic. We LOVE the music of our influences and the archeological digs we’ve mined. We’re in awe of Blondie, Niles Rogers and Chic, Talking Heads, LCD SoundSystem, DEVO, Faith No More, The Cure, New Order…the list goes on.

So that is the songwriting vibe of The Baby Goats. Maybe we’ll avatar some music from the greatest couple of years in music (1978-1979!!!), along with some MTV new wave, or an Andy Summers or Jim Martin guitar part (both seemingly antithetical but I argue from the same spirit), or some kind of sampled loop or single hit chaos that Greg concocted while messing around on our SPD SX drum pad….all with no bass guitar. That sub 37 synth I play? That’s our bass. And this is who we are.

At the moment, The Baby Goats play primarily around Los Angeles. Come see us live, and you’ll get what I mean.

Beyond that exists a lot of constant activity, namely social media promotion (sigh)… as well as the shows themselves (f*ck yes).

I do the graphic design of our posters etc, and the video editing of our media content. Greg does a lot of networking at/with clubs and promoters, and helps with getting gigs. Lance and I share recording, engineering, and mixing duties. We record all of our practices. Our attitude is we have no interest in putting something mediocre on stage. So we work hard to build up our show and present a band that sounds good live.

Music is so necessary while seeming entirely disposable at the moment. I think streaming has done this. We went from a society that held symbolic ownership of recorded music. It was a passage: you fell in love with a song or a band. You decided to spend money on them. You held it in your hands, you cherished it. Your love for it grew FROM THERE.

Now, you can randomly hear a song in a restaurant…or wait…nowadays….no more than 15 seconds of something…..you shazam the fucking thing….maybe(?) listen to it… eventually?… Maybe not? Maybe “like” it? Maybe add it to your library? Maybe inquire a little deeper? That’s the disposable vibe of it. We’re so overwhelmed by content feeding (I love you, Bo Burnham), hell I can’t even be bothered to finish this sent…

But what is not disposable is the experience of seeing a good band live: it is both ephemeral and permanent, BECAUSE it’s real. For one hour or so you see The Baby Goats live, and you’ll never see it like that again (ephemeral). But your memory will see it forever (permanence).

That’s why we feel our live show is the most important thing to us. It’s the last thing that is still entirely within our control.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Oh, you’re making me happy now. I love our city. LOVE IT. I could go on and on. And so I will.

My favorite thing to do with my family…imagine it like this….it’s a game we call “let’s go that way!”

Go downtown, maybe 4 or 5 PM and park. Pick up some pizza from Secret Pizza (East LA, really) or Danny Boy’s next to the Disney Concert Hall. But just a slice. You’ll need the room.

Stare in wonder at the awesomeness that is Disney Concert Hall & the Broad, and then walk across the street and take Angel’s Flight down to Grand Central Market…

And then? JUST WALK AROUND. People watch. Bring a camera. Walk down Broadway. Listen to the beat of the city. Wait, did that girl just flash somebody across the street? Giggle when the security guard just rolls their eyes. Look through the front door of the Bradbury building. Take pictures. Head back up toward the Conrad for drinks and a beautiful view.

Have a donut. Uber down to Sonoratown, which is still my favorite taco de asada in the city #flourtortillasforever. Later, El Chato truck, for the city’s best al pastor (and yes, those are fighting words).

None of this is any order. Introduce a little chaos! Just play the game as named. Laugh at the fact you had tacos AFTER having a donut.

Sushi? Woodland Hills. Brothers. There are an infinite number of great sushi bars here and yes, they stand up to Tokyo with ease. Brothers is still my current favorite. Thai food? My house. Wait, don’t print that; I just make food from Night+Market’s cookbook. I like them or Lum Ka Naad. There are others that are wonderful. Chinese? San Gabriel Valley. It’s amazing. We trek out there once every couple of months. Sichuan Impression, and INFINITE others. I said I could go on and on but I’ve barely scratched the surface of this town.

Club Decades or Bar Sinister at Boardners for dancing; Knitting factory or Harvard & Stone for live music. Hiking ideas are endless.,but the easy one I love just because it’s so “purdy” is Escondido Falls Trail around Malibu. I know, there are better ones, but that one has an anyone can do it vibe, but not so easy you’re bored. Plus, you’re only in town for a week and we got shit to do.

If you have to do the tourist thing, Getty is lovely but I prefer Norton Simon. And sure, do Santa Monica Pier at least once if you feel compelled. Pasadena is a lovely walkabout town too, and you’re just a stone’s throw away from THE SANDWICH at Roma’s. Perfection in simplicity.

Whatever it is, best friend of mine: try to do as many mom and pops as you can. Go into a small, empty Indonesian place off Corbin, or stop by a street taco stand called Naomi’s in Van Nuys and surprise yourself. All the chains can wait til you get home. LA is about mom and pops.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
A band like The Baby Goats has many, MANY shoulders that we stand on in order to even hope for success. Our families are first and foremost: what we do becomes infinitely easier because they exist. They sacrifice their time, their energy for us… this feels difficult to say, imagine, or fathom, but our world is sort of pointless without them.

We also have promoters like William Reed @ Club Decades (Boardners in Hollywood), as well as Dave, Brian, and Jasan from Cobalt Presents (they promote all over) who are early believers in us. Even when our crowd is small (and yea, compared to what we envision, we are very much still a baby band) … from the onset these promoters believed in our potential and gave us opportunity. And it means the world. Building a fanbase in this time is impossible without people like them.

Live, we have a lot of help: we have our manager Bobby, who sort of is a jack of all trades; he helps with set up, runs our light show. Just helps anywhere and everywhere; the epitome of support. Carlos is our video guy. He helps out tremendously so we can feed the evil monster, I mean, Instagram (wait, was that out loud?). My wife Christina helps with merch at shows. Greg’s son Cooper designed our first shirt. Everyone around us just tries to pitch in where they can.

And we’re absurdly grateful.

Website: https://thebabygoats.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebabygoatsmusic/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebabygoats

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebabygoats/

Youtube: http://youtube.com/@thebabygoats

Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/54gLlagH59ouZqDqpFzfgM?si=Chb3MgDwR6ynsBcwX96HZA

Image Credits:
The Baby Goats Photos 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7: Arisha Povolotskaia
The Baby Goats Photos 2 & 3: Preston Thalindroma