Remi Goode started out as a classical guitarist, but now emerges as a rising figure in the alternative folk community. Her debut album, Things I’ve Said Before, represents the singer-songwriter’s process of learning how to write songs and create herself as a folk artist. With tracks that explore the depths of her mind recorded in places from her bedroom to a studio, Goode crafts an intimate portrait of growth and self-discovery through an album that hundreds of people helped fund.
Goode, through a Kickstarter campaign launched in 2025, reached her $25,000 goal to bring this album to life. Her gratitude for her community of supporters shines through in conversation and across her website.
I had the opportunity to speak with Goode about Things I’ve Said Before and what it’s been like to make and release the album that started as a personal experiment in songwriting and self-expression.
You have been releasing music for a while now, so how does it feel to now have your own solo album out?
I have been releasing music for a little while, but I feel like I have been playing music my whole life, so it feels like the album was a long time coming. We, my partner Gabe [Lehrer] and I, have been working on it for a long time, so it feels like a relief to finally have the record done and out. We have been playing these songs live for a long time. I feel so familiar with them, and they feel like they already have a life of their own, but they just haven’t been out as recordings yet. I am definitely happy that they are out and have their own life.
How has the response been, in general and for yourself? How does it feel to see people listen to these songs?
It’s been good. We just had our Nashville release show a couple of nights ago, and that was really great. There were definitely more people there than I was expecting. It was really nice to play the whole record live and celebrate it. Having some people help us with the release has also been great.
What inspired you to write for this album? Was there a specific theme that threaded through the songs that you didn’t realize when you were writing them?
I definitely didn’t know I was writing an album when I was writing it. I was kind of just wanting to learn how to be a songwriter. It’s my debut, so it’s my first foray into trying to consider myself as a songwriter and wondering if I could even do this with my life. I definitely didn’t go into this thinking it would be a record necessarily, but as I went along in the writing process, there were moments where we were like, “Okay, this will be the record.” Then I would write more songs, and then I would decide other songs wouldn’t be a part of it, and then we would keep changing our minds, and that’s part of why it took so long.
But looking back at the end, once it was finished, I then realized what it was all about and what I had been writing about all that time. That’s when I tend to write about, of course, the relationships in my life and with myself, just like a lot of people do. Part of the reason I called the album Things I’ve Said Before is that sometimes you feel like you repeat yourself. I feel like I repeat myself a lot as a way to get thoughts through my head. Things that are hard for me to accept, like letting things go, hard truths, the fact that not everybody sees the same things the same way I do, or that there is more than one truth in the world. It’s a way of being okay with living in the grey area of things and having to accept that things aren’t black and white all the time. That’s what ended up being the through line that I wasn’t super aware of while it was happening.
Diving into the album, “Overseas” is one of my favorites, and I love it as the album closer, so I was really just wondering how you came about the order and the selection for the order of this album.
There are kind of two halves to the record, partially because of how we recorded it. Gabe is a bedroom recorder; we have a home studio, and he’s always had home studios in the various apartments that we’ve lived in. The first five tracks we recorded in various rooms, and then the last four tracks we were able to record in a studio with some overdubs and stuff that happened at home. The two-halves situation kind of goes along with the dualities in the record. That’s part of the order. I had some ideas about certain spots. I wanted “Don’t Drive Me Home” to be first because the record is named after that song. The title is derived from one of the lyrics in that song, so that is kind of a secret title track. “Overseas,” I played last at shows a lot, so that felt like an homage to the live shows. It’s not necessarily a perfect concept album where there is a story.
On your website, you talk about how you raised over $25,000 on Kickstarter to fund it, and I was wondering how this process was and how it felt to reach your goal when you did.
The Kickstarter thing was pretty crazy. We did that last October, and that was definitely never something I thought I would do, but I’m very glad we did. It opened a lot of doors for us as far as being able to afford different types of marketing and being able to make some of the music videos and stuff that we have made since finishing the record. It was definitely something that I wasn’t really aware of before I started working with Erin Anders, a manager here in Nashville. We have been working with her for a few years. She’s not our manager, but we have been working with her on a consulting basis for a while, and she’s had artists run Kickster campaigns before, and I’ve never heard of it.
She kind of convinced us to do it, even though the whole thing made me very uneasy; it is kind of a hard thing to do. But, I have seen a lot of people here in Nashville do it, maybe it was something I just now noticed because I have done one, but it was definitely a journey to raise an amount that big. It was a hectic month for sure, reaching out to everyone that we knew and doing all these kinds of incentives and different things to try and remind everyone about it. It was really exciting when we finally hit the goal.
That’s amazing. I just have one last question for you: how has it been touring this album? Any standout moments from performing these songs that mean so much to you with a crowd?
We are at the beginning of the tour and have done a couple of dates in Tennessee and one day in North Carolina so far. We are about to go out for the two longer legs of the tour in the Midwest and Northeast. I am really excited to actually go out and be away from home for a while and feel like we are actually on tour, because we have only been doing little weekend runs so far.
The highlight so far has for sure been the album release show just the other night, just because it feels like we are so new to Nashville. We have only been here for two years, and it just felt very supportive already by all the folks that came out. We had my friends opening for us, Rachel McIntyre Smith and Abigayle Oakley, and they were incredible. We got to play with the band for the first time since we moved, so I definitely missed performing with them. It was just really nice.
