Hotel Vegas, Wednesday, June 10th, a pretty good crowd for a midweek night, and mostly
dudes. GOOD. opened with "Did You Hear That". The bass line gets you in the chest before
your ears catch up. By the second song, I was completely sold. I made it literal 40 minutes later
when I bought a vinyl from the lead singer. The first thing I noticed is that the four identities
onstage are almost comically distinct. Start with the drummer, Vincent Milazzo, in a pair
of villainous glasses, who later revealed to me that he plays with his eyes closed, which is +1
in badass. The bassist, Jacob Masson, held a kind of calm maturity, and no, it wasn't just the
bald head. It was the grins he'd throw across the stage to the other guys mid-song, the button-up,
the way he stuck around afterward to be a genuinely supportive audience member for the band
that followed. I never got to talk to him, but I'd trust him to tell me if my tattoo placement sucks.
Less so on any jealous banter. Then there's the guitarist, Luke Nienow, in a world of his own.
His gaze barely left the guitar, the floor, or the row of pedals in front of him, the entire set.
To be honest, I assumed he had one foot still in high school; turns out he's a grown man
with classical training and a jazz education at the college level. No complaints. None. The
three of them form a cohesive, genuinely unique presence up there.
And holding the center of it is Luis Parra, who has a level of honesty and humility within vocal
performance that makes watching GOOD. emotionally drawing. In terms of stage presence, he did
not deviate from the various identities of the band; controlled, but still facially expressive. He held
a comfortable and genuine amount of eye contact with the crowd, at one point encouraging us to
fill a gap within the crowd and “get to know each other”,
which was needed and did in fact spur a level of confidence
in me to converse with the girl I was standing next to.
Something that really puzzled me with this band is that not
only are they abnormally talented, but it’s also hard to
decipher the members’ long-term investment.
What is this to them? What do they want to happen with
GOOD.? And why is it just the lead vocalist all over
their Instagram? Is the popularity within Austin of
“I’m in multiple bands” caging the creative and
outreach potential of GOOD.?
When I landed an interview with them, I got more
answers than I knew to ask.
What is your earliest memory of music?
Ask Luis about the first time music really got him, and he
goes back to being nine, sitting with his dad, burning CDs off
Limewire. He was big into Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic
Adventure 2 Battle on the GameCube, which let you jukebox
every character's theme. He wanted Dr. Eggman’s track
called "I Am the Eggman" on the next CD. Limewire got it
wrong. What came back was "I Am the Walrus" by The
Beatles. His dad told him you're not gonna like that.
Luis insisted, and it was the first time he heard
music do something like that. "That song's just a clusterfuck," he said.
"The lyrics make no sense, there's a bunch of samples, which is crazy for the 60s,
and it feels very psychedelic." Until then, his whole reference point was his parents'
music, Willie Colón, Sérgio Mendes, and his mom's Earth, Wind & Fire. "When I heard
The Beatles, I was like, holy shit, what is this?" He went to Borders, bought the White Album, and started
teaching himself guitar.
Luke got there slower. His dad, “very old”, in Luke’s words, always had 50s and 60s doo-wop when the
two of them would work on a project together. In the car, it was Alison Krauss, Live at Union Station, which
Luke says he didn’t appreciate at the time, but now clocks for the musicianship on it. His parents played
Christian music, and he doesn’t think he was truly pulled by anything until middle school, when his friends got him into
early 2000s hard rock and some nu metal. Then came Luke’s version of the Limewire error.
He was looking for “Smoke on the Water” on Rhapsody, pre-iTunes, loading songs on an LG flip phone,
and didn’t know the original was Deep Purple. Didn’t know what Deep Purple was, so he bought a version
of the song that turned out to be G3: Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and John Petrucci playing live in Tokyo,
three ridiculous guitarists shredding. “I didn’t know that guitar could sound like that,” he said. “That
was sort of my I Am the Walrus moment.”
Why your bandmates? And why Austin?
Before GOOD., there was Fourth Time Around, a band Luis and Luke played in together in San Marcos.
When their singer moved back to McKinney, that band was effectively over. Luis wanted to keep going,
this time writing his own music. GOOD. started in January 2017. The original drummer left around June
of that year. A friend of Luis’s reached out, saying he’d found someone. Luis pushed back at first, but once
they sat down with Vince and played together, it clicked. Vince was 18, two years below Luis at the same
high school. He joined that August and has been there ever since.
The bass spot took longer to settle. The original bassist, Jesse, was a close friend, still on the first album,
and someone the band deeply cares about. After Jesse came a bassist who didn’t work out and eventually
moved to Virginia. Then Sebastian, whom they spoke about with real warmth, left to start his own project.
When they announced Sebastian's last gig at their album release show, people from other bands were offering
to audition that same night. Around 11:30 pm, Jacob, a longtime friend from another band, Farmer’s Wife,
that they’d known for years, showed up at Luis and Vince’s house. He said he wanted in “before the vultures
got here.” It wasn’t really a question; they sat down, played, and it made sense.
So why stay in Austin? They’ve left before. There was a tour out west in 2023, Tucson, San Diego, LA,
Vegas, that everyone remembers fondly, less so the lack of money. In Luke’s words, more like a vacation;
they happened to be playing along the way. Almost ten years into being an Austin band, they’re now talking
about going somewhere together and calling it home.
What excites you about the upcoming album?
On the back of GOOD.'s first vinyl, A Room Full of Elephants, there's a credit line: lovingly recorded
everywhere we could. It meant Luis’s house, it meant Luke’s parents’ shed. And it meant the cigar lounge
on Cesar Chavez, where Luis used to work, which let them stay and record after hours, sometimes until 6 am.
For their upcoming release, they are recording in an actual studio. With an actual producer, Jaden, whose
entire job, the way Luis describes, is “where(ever) our brains stop, he’s like, it could have so much more.”
A lot of the newer material starts the way you’d hope from four friends who like being in a room together:
someone plays something in practice, Luis goes ‘hold on, do that again’ and they build a song around it.
What’s unique about the songwriting process of this album is that only one song has ever started from a
bass riff, and it was Luis’s riff on "Did You Hear That". So far, three of the nine tracks on the new release
started from Jacob, which is kind of historic for GOOD. He’d bring a bass riff to practice, Luis would
hear it, and the band would go from there.
Another first: strings. Which sounds like a small thing until Luke talks about it. He grew up on a
Christian rock band called Red that fused orchestral strings with heavy guitars, and he's wanted to
make something like that for as long as he's been playing. Pair that with Jaden's pushing, and Luke
says this is easily the most cohesive thing they've made; their first album was a stack of songs they'd
been playing for years and just needed to get out, songs that don't necessarily belong next to each other.
This one was built as a single unit.
No release date yet, "definitely by the end of the year," still in post-production, down to string parts and
final touches. But Luis, fully aware it's the most cliché thing a musician can say, says it anyway:
"If there was ever going to be something, it was this one." After ten years of recording wherever they
would have them, I believe him.
Is this your only band? If not, why?
Luke: "It's my only band."
Luis: "Same. I mean, technically, I'm in another band, but it consists of three of the same members. We trade off and have fun.
Jacob's in Farmer's Wife, and every once in a while I rap."
AZ: "Everyone in Austin seems to be in multiple bands. Why is that?"
Luke: "That's just the nature of having a live music scene. There's a lot of musicians here, and we start projects and get into
each other's projects."
Luis: "We just locked in and focused on this one. I don't know any band in Austin that's truly in it for the money, because
that doesn't really exist."
Luke: "If you want to make money, you're playing weddings, not your own music."
Hotel Vegas, Wednesday, June 10th, a pretty good crowd for a midweek night, and mostly
dudes. GOOD. opened with "Did You Hear That". The bass line gets you in the chest before
your ears catch up. By the second song, I was completely sold. I made it literal 40 minutes later
when I bought a vinyl from the lead singer. The first thing I noticed is that the four identities
onstage are almost comically distinct. Start with the drummer, Vincent Milazzo, in a pair
of villainous glasses, who later revealed to me that he plays with his eyes closed, which is +1
in badass. The bassist, Jacob Masson, held a kind of calm maturity, and no, it wasn't just the
bald head. It was the grins he'd throw across the stage to the other guys mid-song, the button-up,
the way he stuck around afterward to be a genuinely supportive audience member for the band
that followed. I never got to talk to him, but I'd trust him to tell me if my tattoo placement sucks.
Less so on any jealous banter. Then there's the guitarist, Luke Nienow, in a world of his own.
His gaze barely left the guitar, the floor, or the row of pedals in front of him, the entire set.
To be honest, I assumed he had one foot still in high school; turns out he's a grown man
with classical training and a jazz education at the college level. No complaints. None. The
three of them form a cohesive, genuinely unique presence up there.
And holding the center of it is Luis Parra, who has a level of honesty and humility within vocal
performance that makes watching GOOD. emotionally drawing. In terms of stage presence, he did
not deviate from the various identities of the band; controlled, but still facially expressive. He held
a comfortable and genuine amount of eye contact with the crowd, at one point encouraging us to
fill a gap within the crowd and “get to know each other”,
which was needed and did in fact spur a level of confidence
in me to converse with the girl I was standing next to.
Something that really puzzled me with this band is that not
only are they abnormally talented, but it’s also hard to
decipher the members’ long-term investment.
What is this to them? What do they want to happen with
GOOD.? And why is it just the lead vocalist all over
their Instagram? Is the popularity within Austin of
“I’m in multiple bands” caging the creative and
outreach potential of GOOD.?
When I landed an interview with them, I got more
answers than I knew to ask.
What is your earliest memory of music?
Ask Luis about the first time music really got him, and he
goes back to being nine, sitting with his dad,burning CDs off
Limewire. He was big into Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic
Adventure 2 Battle on the GameCube, which let you jukebox
every character's theme. He wanted Dr. Eggman’s track
called "I Am the Eggman," on the next CD. Limewire got it
wrong. What came back was "I Am the Walrus" by the
Beatles. His dad told him you're not gonna like that.
Luis insisted, and it was the first time he heard
music do something like that. "That song's just a clusterfuck," he said.
"The lyrics make no sense, there's a bunch of samples, which is crazy for the 60s,
and it feels very psychedelic." Until then, his whole reference point was his parents'
music, Willie Colón, Sérgio Mendes, and his mom's Earth, Wind & Fire. "When I heard
The Beatles, I was like, holy shit, what is this?" He went to Borders, bought the White Album, and started
teaching himself guitar.
Luke got there slower. His dad, “very old”, in Luke’s words, always had 50s and 60s doo-wop when the
two of them would work on a project together. In the car, it was Alison Krauss, Live at Union Station, which
Luke says he didn’t appreciate it at the time, but now clocks for the musicianship on it. His parents played
Christian music, and he doesn’t think he was truly pulled by anything until middle school, when his friends got him into
early 2000s hard rock and some nu metal. Then came Luke’s version of the Limewire error.
H He was looking for “Smoke on the Water” on Rhapsody, pre-iTunes, loading songs on an LG flip phone,
and didn’t know the original was Deep Purple. Didn’t know what Deep Purple was. So he bought a version
of the song that turned out to be G3: Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and John Petrucci playing live in Tokyo,
three ridiculous guitarists shredding. “I didn’t know that guitar could sound like that,” he said. “That
was sort of my I Am the Walrus moment.”
Why your bandmates? And why Austin?
Before GOOD., there was Fourth Time Around, a band Luis and Luke played in together in San Marcos.
When their singer moved back to McKinney, that band was effectively over. Luis wanted to keep going,
this time writing his own music. GOOD. started in January 2017. The original drummer left around June
of that year. A friend of Luis’s reached out, saying he’d found someone. Luis pushed back at first, but once
they sat down with Vince and played together, it clicked. Vince was 18, two years below Luis at the same
high school. He joined that August and has been there ever since.
The bass spot took longer to settle. The original bassist, Jesse, was a close friend, still on the first album,
and someone the band deeply cares about. After Jesse came a bassist who didn’t work out and eventually
moved to Virginia. Then Sebastian, whom they spoke about with real warmth, left to start his own project.
When they announced Sebastian's last gig at their album release show, people from other bands were offering
to audition that same night. Around 11:30 pm, Jacob, a longtime friend from another band, Farmer’s Wife,
that they’d known for years, showed up at Luis and Vince’s house. He said he wanted in “before the vultures
got here.” It wasn’t really a question; they sat down, played, and it made sense.
So why stay in Austin? They’ve left before. There was a tour out west in 2023, Tucson, San Diego, LA,
Vegas, that everyone remembers fondly, less so the lack of money. In Luke’s words, more like a vacation;
they happened to be playing along the way. Almost ten years into being an Austin band, they’re now talking
about going somewhere together and calling it home.
What excites you about the upcoming album?
On the back of GOOD.'s first vinyl, A Room Full of Elephants, there's a credit line: lovingly recorded
everywhere we could. It meant Luis’s house, it meant Luke’s parents’ shed. And it meant the cigar lounge
on Cesar Chavez, where Luis used to work, which let them stay and record after hours, sometimes until 6 am.
For their upcoming release, they are recording in an actual studio. With an actual producer, Jaden, whose
entire job, the way Luis describes, is “where(ever) our brains stop, he’s like, it could have so much more.”
A lot of the newer material starts the way you’d hope from four friends who like being in a room together:
someone plays something in practice, Luis goes ‘hold on, do that again’ and they build a song around it.
What’s unique about the songwriting process of this album is that only one song has ever started from a
bass riff, and it was Luis’s riff on "Did You Hear That". So far, three of the nine tracks on the new release
started from Jacob, which is kind of historic for GOOD.. He’d bring a bass riff to practice, Luis would
hear it, and the band would go from there.
Another first: strings. Which sounds like a small thing until Luke talks about it. He grew up on a
Christian rock band called Red that fused orchestral strings with heavy guitars, and he's wanted to
make something like that for as long as he's been playing. Pair that with Jaden's pushing, and Luke
says this is easily the most cohesive thing they've made; their first album was a stack of songs they'd
been playing for years and just needed to get out, songs that don't necessarily belong next to each other.
This one was built as a single unit.
No release date yet, "definitely by the end of the year," still in post-production, down to string parts and
final touches. But Luis, fully aware it's the most cliché thing a musician can say, says it anyway:
"If there was ever going to be something, it was this one." After ten years of recording wherever they
would have them, I believe him.
Is this your only band? If not, why?
Luke: "It's my only band."
Luis: "Same. I mean, technically, I'm in another band, but it consists of three of the same members. We trade off and have fun.
Jacobs in Farmer's wife, and every once in a while I rap."
AZ: "Everyone in Austin seems to be in multiple bands. Why is that?"
Luke: "That's just the nature of having a live music scene. There's a lot of musicians here, and we start projects and get into
each other's projects."
Luis: "We just locked in and focused on this one. I don't know any band in Austin that's truly in it for the money, because
that doesn't really exist."
Luke: "If you want to make money, you're playing weddings, not your own music."
I feel cosmically connected to GOOD. Every band member is incredibly themselves, and I’m not sure anyone who loves music can ask for more. I reached out for an interview at 8 pm at the Wheel on MLK. We drank, laughed, and talked until 1:30 am. Their genuineness within musicianship extends to who they are as individuals. This band deserves everything GOOD. They know their shit, and they know each other. And I feel lucky to have shared time with them. Considering changing this blog to a fan page. Truly. They’ll go far.
Closing Remarks
What is the most significant challenge your band has faced?
Luis: "If we're keeping it real, the fact that we're old and we don't know how TikTok works. I'm the face of the band and I'm 30."
Luke: "You're old. Wow."
Luis: "I know how to write a good song, I can play guitar, and I can sing, and the second of those three is an 'if'. It doesn't matter that we have 1700 followers and can bring a crowd. The TikTok just isn't there. That's the hardest part."
Luis: "Another big thing in Austin is you'll form a great relationship with these bands, and then they just die. They stop existing. So who do we even get to play with?"
GOOD.
Be Here Before The Vultures
What is the future you see for GOOD.?
Luis: "I want to keep making music with these guys for as long as it's responsible for me to do so. I genuinely think we have something here, and it's a truly unique sound. So the future is: we take it as far as it goes. We drive this car into the ground. I love playing a show and seeing how much it impacted someone, and every day I see that, I want to go hard."
Luke: "Even if that's one person"
ABSOLUTE ZER0'S CAPSULE SONGS
Everything
Luis's falsetto on this is genuinely breathtaking. I was standing in Hotel Vegas, considering unblocking
my ex and forgiving him on the spot, "I'll be everything that you need." Turns out I wasn't far off on the read of
longing. "I wrote that song about a girl that I had a dream about while I was in another relationship," Luis
told me, "and that made me realize I should probably not be. It was that kind of feeling of something
that's so perfect that it can't possibly exist."
It started as an acoustic version on an old EP back in 2018, and has since become Luis's favorite on the
album. It's also a quiet showcase for Jesse, GOOD.'s original bassist, someone whom they care dearly for.
Truly incredible lyricism and musicianship, as Luke, the guitarist, says, "the album version of Everything is
one of the releases from us that I'm proudest of," and one can only dream of writing a song that great.
A Room Full of Elephants
Also, the name of their first vinyl, and the song where Luis's vocal control goes from impressive to
absurd, the belting of the chorus live was truly unforgettable. The writing came from a specific itch:
"I had just gotten a new guitar, so I wanted to write a song that's fully based on a riff," he said.
"I was really into Manchester Orchestra and Death Cab for Cutie, so what I wanted to do was tell
a story more than tell people how I feel." The story underneath it is about losing a whole world at
once. "I had a completely separate group of friends when I was with an ex-girlfriend. When I broke
up with her, I lost touch with every single one of those people," Luis said. "So when I say 'I miss all
the benefits of a room full of elephants,' I miss being in that room. But if I were in there with all
of them, it'd be very clear, like, where the fuck did all of you go? You want to go back, but there's
no way you can."
Madonna
A serious gut-punch of a song. "That is actually about my other grandma," Luis told me.
"She passed away in 2019. She lived in Venezuela. Lyrically, it's fully up to interpretation.
That is my goodbye." What you're hearing on the record is a scratch take they refused to lose,
vocals cut live over the bass at 5am, in the cigar-lounge humidor. Not a song to listen to if
pre-gaming, a song you DO play to stare off and contemplate your Dad's
disappointment. I love it, and I'm sure if you know good music, you will too.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Lie to Me
Three Steps Forward
Maybe Someday
Bill Murray