Louise Goffin previews ‘Songs From the Mine’ album in Hollywood

Singer-songwriter Louise Goffin transformed her record release party at a Hollywood recording studio this week from a solo acoustic affair into a full-band presentation less than 24 hours before the event.

“I realized that all these great musicians had RSVP’d to come,” Goffin said shortly before playing four selections from her “Songs From the Mine” album, which arrives July 15, “so I asked them if they’d play a few songs with me.”

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FOR THE RECORD

An earlier version of this post identified the trombonist and keyboardist at Goffin’s listening session as Delaney Davidson. Mike Thompson played during the session. Delaney Davidson played trombone on her album.

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The result was a warmly evocative preview of the album’s endearing folk-pop thanks to Goffin’s own piano and ukulele playing, sweetly buoyant vocals and supporting contributions from veteran studio bassist Bob Glaub, drummer Butch Norton, guitarist-singer Billy Harvey, cellist Oliver Kraus and trombonist-keyboardist Mike Thompson.

“Songs From the Mine” is the first time Goffin has formally produced herself, although she sat in that chair for her mother, Carole King, for King’s Grammy-nominated 2011 holiday album “A Holiday Carole.”

It wasn’t a big leap to produce herself, she told Pop & Hiss: “I’ve always been very hands-on with my records.” Fully taking the reins, she said, turned out to carry no tension between songwriter-performer and producer.

“I worked from my checklist of things to do,” she said. “This just felt like a record that wanted to be born.”

She turned to crowdfunding to help pay for the album and noted that one of the premium tiers she offered to backers was a handwritten book of the lyrics of each song.

Of the two supporters who bought in at the level, she said, one was her father, Gerry Goffin, the veteran rock lyricist who, with King, wrote many of the biggest hits to come out of New York’s fertile Brill Building songwriting scene of the 1960s. Gerry Goffin died June 18, at 75, less than a month before the release of his daughter’s latest album.

On the album, released on her own Majority of One Records label, she received a little backup from a couple of high-profile friends: Alice Cooper and Johnny Depp, who added vocals and hand claps to the sultry rocker “Watching the Sky Turn Blue.”

Click here for an audio stream of that track.

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