Exaggerated Art Tunes

Eric Goodwin is a caricature artist known to some as an extreme exaggerator specializing in various styles of extremeness. He also does a couple decent impressions, enjoys singing until his voice gives out and currently lives in San Diego, California. I sat down with Eric on his flea-infested, animal-print couch in his “studio” to get the scoop on his upcoming music album.

Article Transcript

Hi, Eric. Thanks for allowing me to do this exclusive interview with myself! I can only guess at how busy you must be these days.
I sure am busy, me! Good guess! You know me well haha. How are ya?

Good, thanks! And myself?
Just as good, thank you! Shall we get started?

Hey, who’s interviewing who here? Hahaha
Hahahaha! Sorry, I lost track there for a second ;(

Same here haha. Well let’s get started. What kind of album are you working on?
Hopefully a good one.

I agree. Care to be more specific?
Oh I care, all right. I try to put the care in caricature ;) To answer your question, it’s a comedic music album all about the caricature lifestyle!

Any particular genre of music?
My goal was to have each song have its own style and emulate, spoof and celebrate different types of musical genres, merged with electronica, as almost all the instruments used are digital. There is also some real electric guitar, some spoons (yes, spoons!), keyboard, kazoo and other fun stuff I recorded! There are tastes of pop, punk rock, rap, early hip-hop, country, bluegrass, folk rock, ’80s music, EDM, emo and more. Each song is an exaggeration of different ideas regarding the art form and of emotions we caricaturists feel (such as joy, frustration, excitement, depression, anger, love and fear) with a funny and honest twist, just like caricatures themselves!

Wow that sounds like quite the diverse album! So what ties all those different- sounding songs together to form a cohesive album? Caricature, baby. Every song is about caricature.

Sounds interesting, baby. But didn’t Adam English already do an EP about caricatures called Sketched Out? Yep.…

So what is the point of you doing one, too? HOW DARE YOU! … Um, well, this is a VERY different-sounding album. Every song has a different topic about the caricature lifestyle, and none of my songs sound anything like his or have the same topics he already discussed. I promise! Trust me! I trust you, me. We trust us. What were your biggest influences and inspirations while working on these songs? Adam’s EP definitely got me inspired. It’s really well produced and really catchy, clever and fun. Weird Al has been inspiring, as a couple of my songs will be similar to what he does. The Lonely Island, Tenacious D, and Flight of the Conchords have all had a HUGE influence on me for this album, as they are all fantastic at making really fun and catchy songs that are also brilliantly dumb and funny. Bo Burnham has made some very clever and funny songs, and I love his stand-up. Eminem, Lil Dicky, Childish Gambino and Hopsin all produce their own beats, have their own unique style and are great at both rapping and singing. And other influences are all the bands and music I’ve listened to my whole life. What made you want to start working on this album in the first place? I’ve always been into music just as much as art, and I’ve played around with making fun, little beats off and on since college. After having drawn caricatures for 9 years, I still love it, but I’ve also been itching to try out other creative endeavors! The animation I made last year for my self-roasting rap (it’s on my YouTube channel under my name) definitely made me want to make lots more music. I also wanted to give back in a way to the caricature community, an amazing community that has truly filled my life with passion and joy and friendship and love for the past 9 years. “We Draw Faces/Beautifully Ugly” is the first song I made and is pretty much a theme song for caricature artists and an introduction to our world for non-caricaturists. After working on that song, I brainstormed and started playing around and quickly had more and more song ideas and realized I had more than enough for a full album! Shameless plug for your amazing YouTube channel under your name, Eric Goodwin, by the way, Eric (Goodwin). Will you have any guests featured on the album? Yep, I’m glad you asked! So far I’ve had Mae Adao, Chris Chua and Sae Mee Yoon help out, and Nate Kap and some others will hopefully be featured as well! How many songs should we expect? Somewhere in the 8-to-18 range. That’s quite the strange and vague range! Yeah, it’s pretty tough to know at this point since so many songs are just in the demo stage, and I have most of the final vocals still to record, which will pretty much help me decide how much I like the songs. Plus I’m limited by my own self-imposed deadline so that I stay focused. Any expected release date at this point? My goal is to have this album come out before the ISCA con in November, if possible. Lots left to do! If I have to, it’s possible that I might split the album into 2 EPs or just release one song at a time for a while. But I really hope to release one solid album. That’s what I prefer when I listen to music: a solid album from start to finish. I take it that you’re pretty much doing all the work on this album? Yessir! The production, songwriting, recording, mixing, advertising, artwork, music videos, you name it! I’m probably having an “expert” friend of a friend do the mastering though just to pump up the volume and make the audio sound extra crisp. I’ve studied a lot of music theory and mixing techniques while working on this album, so I’ve come pretty far in music-making compared to what I had done previously, but I’m still very much an amateur. However, I AM a perfectionist, so you’d better believe I’m trying my absolute hardest at making my music as good as I possibly can for my first outing in the world of music! Anything else you’ve learned during all of this so far? From recently taking improv comedy classes, I’ve learned quite a bit about acting with emotion, believability and character and how comedy can come from that. In a way, I understand myself better and also feel like I’m reinventing myself and starting over. Pretty deep, huh? Sure. Any other goals, hopes or expectations for this album? I really hope it doesn’t suck! I hope it inspires caricature artists of all levels of skill and experience. I hope people can relate to the songs. I hope people laugh and want to learn the lyrics and sing and rap along. A song or two might even change the approach, mindset and enjoyment that people get from drawing caricatures! This album is definitely FOR the caricature community, but it would be cool if other people enjoyed it too and maybe learned something about our world :)

So what makes you think people will want to listen to this album? Isn’t this a helluva pedestal of power and ego you’re placing yourself upon?
Geez, you might be right … Harsh question, dude, DANG. Well, some people have enjoyed my stupid impressions, crazy caricatures and weird sense of humor, so I’m hoping this album kind of bridges that gap of creativity. In a way, this is everything I enjoy and love to do all in one place: comedy, music, art, impressions/ voices and creative writing, all expressed together.

That does sound pretty cool, actually! How would you describe your first single that you’re sharing with us here?
“Dont Draww Ma Famlee Sillee!” is from the point of view of an exaggeratedly and stereotypically dumb hillbilly customer who’s at the fair with his family, set to a fun bluegrass hillbilly beat. You’ll hear him say a lot of things that we caricaturists hear all the time that annoy us, and you’ll especially enjoy the tune if you’ve ever worked at fairs. It’s a real crackerjack of a jam!

Can’t wait to take a gander with my earholes! Thanks for taking the time to talk to myself, Eric.
Any time, me! I hope that those of you reading this will enjoy the song and are looking forward to hearing the rest of my tomfoolery when it hopefully comes out in a couple of months :)