Interview: Dazy

James Goodson Discusses His 'It's Only A Secret' EP

James Goodson (aka Dazy). Photo by Gordon Phillips.

James Goodson is on a roll.

The one man studio band known as Dazy launched with a series of singles in 2020 followed by two EPs and the comprehensive MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD collection in 2021. Since releasing the breakout single “Pressure Cooker” with Militarie Gun in 2022, Goodson has continually refined a signature sound built on crunchy ‘90s guitars, programmed beats and huge pop rock hooks.

Dazy unleashed the excellent debut album OUTOFBODY the same year, followed by the complementary collection OTHERBODY in 2023. Goodson and a revolving crew of live musicians have performed and toured ever since, sharing stages with artists such as Guided By Voices, Angel Du$t and Wishy, among many others.

In late October 2024, Dazy released the three-song EP It’s Only A Secret (If You Repeat It). It includes a collaboration with MSPAINT on the title track along with the tracks “Big End” and “Weigh Down On Me.”

I sent Goodson a handful of questions about It’s Only A Secret in November, but he’d already released the follow up EP I Get Lost before I posted the interview.

“I’m sure I’ll land on another LP eventually, but right now I’m kind of trying to go back to the more rapid-fire way of releasing things that I did when I first started Dazy,” Goodson said, adding, “I like shorter releases. I just think they’re looser and more freewheeling in a way that helps me keep my chronic overthinking at bay.”

The conversation below explores Goodson’s prolific songwriting approach, his love of collaborations, a few notable ‘90s and early 2000s influences, and the music and podcasts he most often listens to in the tour van.

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James Goodson Interview

Congrats on the It’s Only A Secret EP. Are these new songs or have they been kicking around for a while?

James Goodson: Thanks, Steve! To be honest, I can’t even remember when these songs started coming together, so it’s definitely been a bit. I think some of them went as far back as right after the LP came out in 2022, but then some of them are also from this year. And all of them got quite a bit of tinkering all the way down to the wire.

You launched the EP with the killer title track, a collaboration with MSPAINT. How did that partnership come about?

James Goodson: I was a fan of them from the jump. I got turned onto their first EP because it came out on Convulse Records and they’ve just gotten better and better. I met them through Convulse and the Militarie Gun guys and I’ve always kinda had it in the back of my head to try and get Deedee to sing on something.

I wrote ‘It’s Only A Secret’ with Deedee in mind and sent over this demo where I was sorta doing a silly whisper impression of how I imagined them singing it. I was relieved that the idea came across ok and they were into it. I think when I first started writing that song I wanted it to sound like some kind of Lemonheads meets Basement Jaxx freakout, but it mostly came out sounding a lot like The Transplants—who I love and think deserve a critical reappraisal, but that’s a whole other conversation…

I really appreciate how much you lean into collaborations. That's something you see a lot more in the pop and hip hop worlds, but not as much in guitar pop. What do you think that is?

James Goodson: I dunno. I guess ‘rock music,’ broadly speaking, probably tends to be a little more traditional? Sometimes I think it’s just because rock bands get a little itchier about what they can/can’t pull off live, and maybe having songs that feature non-band members feels like a challenge in that way. But I see a lot more freewheeling collaborative stuff happening nowadays, which is cool.

I think as far as Dazy goes, I’m just trying to lean more and more into the fact that it’s not really a ‘band’ or a ‘solo project’—it’s just sorta both and I don’t wanna let the rules of either get in the way of me doing something that I think is cool creatively.

The EP's lead track, "Big End," has a real '90s alternative rock feel to it. What was your inspiration for this song?

James Goodson: That one’s been around for a bit so I can’t quite remember, but obviously ‘90s alternative in general is pretty much the core foundation of all my stuff. With that song I was trying to bring what I think of as the Dazy 1.0 traits (big poppy hooks, lots of fuzz) towards the Dazy 2.0 production (more focus on the beats, chops, samples). Probably was listening to a lot of Garbage, honestly.

You play live/tour a lot. Are you able to write while you're on the road, or is that a separate discipline for you?

James Goodson: I guess I write a little bit on the road. I still get ideas and try to catalog them in some way—but I never get anything finished while touring. My ‘process,’ if there is one, usually starts with either a chord progression and a melody that I like, or making some drum beat in Garageband—those things things definitely still happen on tour but then it’s a matter of returning to it when I’m home and have the ability to really dig in.

"Weigh Me Down" has a slightly different feel than the other two tracks. Did you take a different approach to that one?

James Goodson: Yeah, that one came from a batch of songs where I was trying really hard to not lean on loud guitars as much. I think I looped that little opening riff and it all came together around that. There’s really only one fuzzed-out guitar on that track, which is a true feat of self-control for me.

I think for a long time I was convinced that crazy loud, feedbacking guitars was THE thing that defined Dazy but pretty much everyone around me is like ‘no man, it’s the hooks.’ So, I’ve been trying to let that be the guiding principle a little more and allow myself to try new things with the musical container they’re in.

Will there be another full-length album?

James Goodson: Just glancing at the demos in my iTunes right now—I have enough songs for about ten albums, and that’s just the songs that demos that are more fully formed… So it’s never really a matter of having the songs, it’s more just about figuring out how they fit together or the overall direction that I feel like a proper album needs to have—basically a bunch of mumbo jumbo that musicians get in their heads about and listeners don’t care about at all haha.

What are you listening to in the tour van these days?

James Goodson: In the van we definitely live by ‘the driver picks the music,’ but everyone is usually pretty conscientious and plays a lot of crowd-pleasing stuff. No one puts on some weirdo shit that only they like unless everyone else is asleep… So that means we listen to A LOT of ‘80s/’90s/2000s radio hits.

For the super long drives we definitely do podcasts, Bandsplain is the big one. My friend Lou has been playing drums for Dazy a lot lately and she’s from the UK so she likes to play the BBC morning shows that aired many hours ahead of wherever we are in the States. I get a real kick out of those.

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