John Salem’s new album, “Goodbye California,” spotlights the Wichita-based musician’s eclectic and singular approach to songwriting and performance. While critics and music scribes often reach for comparisons in describing music, Salem’s work offers no easy comparisons. Sophisticated pop from the ‘70s or ‘80s? Maybe. Jazz-inflected singer-songwriter forays? That might work, too.
The pianist/vocalist/composer himself might agree that whatever confluences helped forge his style, they’re less than obvious.
Released recently to streaming services as well as on vinyl, “Goodbye California” provides a glimpse not only into the longtime musician’s musical acumen, but his character as well, with songs populated by stories of heartfelt experiences that are never sentimental nor off the mark.
Salem writes about a number of personal matters across the record, including people close to him who he has lost across the years. They include his late friend Tanya Tandoc (“Meet Me Down at The Soup Kitchen”), and his son, Nick, who died in 2009 ( “You Never Know”). He says, “I might say something to you today, randomly, that might stay with you for the next 10 years as something significant that helps you with your life. You never know what you might have said or done with or to somebody to help them get along.” Another, “Lisette,” was penned for another friend who died earlier this year, LaNita Roark. “She was one of my best friends, and I wrote that song in 2024 as a love song. We were dating and I was over the moon over her,” he said.
With a career that now spans decades, he has recorded not only in his longtime homebase of Wichita but in Nashville as well, amassing a variety of credits and earning accolades from the likes of songwriter Steve Earle and former Bob Seger/Chicago guitarist Dawayne Bailey.
“Goodbye California” is available on digital streaming platforms and can be purchased at JohnSalem.net. Copies should also be available now (or soon) at The Record Ship, Watermark Books, and Spektrum Muzik (which celebrates its grand re-opening in Delano on Saturday, April 18).
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Where did this record start?
It started in my brain. The oldest composition on the record is about 20 years old, so it’s been in the making for a long time. I write all the time. Let me say another thing about this record: I’m a big fan of bands that write and produce and perform and record together and you get to hear that dynamic. This record is not that. This is a completely manufactured record from the ground up, all in the box. [Recorded digitally.] I’m it. I’m the engineer, producer, writer, performer. I sing just enough to barely get the songs across. This is not an album for singers. This is just my songwriting.
I get an inspiration and follow where it leads. I do enough compositions [and say], “Well, maybe I could assemble those into a body of work.” This came from probably 30 songs. I got rid of 20 to get it down to 10. That was my process.
Not that I always play spot the influence but I was trying to corner where you come from musically and I couldn’t quite find any easy analogs.
Brian Wilson, Randy Newman, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Leon Russell, The Beatles, Lowell George, Little Feat, The Band. That’s kind of where my heart and soul has been. But I also play jazz and R&B and lots of other things. I guess it’s pretty eclectic. I guess I wonder around until I find the best way to express myself. I gave up trying to write for somebody else. I just write for myself. I just write to express myself. I get so much from that, it makes me feel so good, that it’s therapeutic for me.
Every once in a while if I get somebody who responds and says … and this happens occasionally, not very often but when it does, it’s very fulfilling … They’ll reach out to me unsolicited and say, “That song meant a lot to me, I heard it at the right time and it helped me get through this or get through that,” that’s all I need to hear. That’s enough for me.
What about the title “Goodbye California”? It’s the title of the album and the lead cut. I assume that that’s significant somehow.
That is the lament of an eight-year-old boy and his family moving him and his big sister from Southern California to Wichita. That’s my song about what happened to me when I was eight. I lived in a world of sunny days and beaches and visiting Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.
Then we moved to Wichita which I didn’t hate because my grandparents were here and my cousins were here and it was where we visited during summer break. But to move here was kind of a shock for me. That’s what’s that song’s about. It’s the way that I tell my story from an eight-year-old boy’s perspective. I’m not trying to be cute or quaint, that’s just how it came out.
