Goo Man
An Interview with the St. Louis sensation, the amazing Goo Man!
Goo Man is a musical sensation that cannot be fully described in such a small allotment of words. Hailing from St. Louis, the Goo Man himself, Luckas O’Donnell, chooses not to limit himself by defining his genre, but instead takes a holistic approach to his craft, blending influences from various genres and time periods to create a sound that is truly one-of-a-kind.
Living up to his name, his music really sticks with you. It’s entrancing, with his soft, yet strong vocals mixing into the dynamic backing of the guitar in such a way that you can’t help but keep listening on repeat. His attention to detail is palpable in each track, with each note feeling as though it was cherry-picked. There are no skips when it comes to Goo Man; and for me personally, I’ve spent the past several weeks listening to his most recent release, “Take in The Noise”, unable to step away from the snappy drums and the dreamy vocals for longer than a couple of days at a time.
In all seriousness, this guy—this man—this Goo Man—knows what he’s doing. Both recorded and live, he is absolutely sensational, knowing how to make you feel as though you’re at a concert for yourself and yourself only, even in a room full of people. I had the pleasure of seeing him perform at a Valentine’s Day show put on by Off The Record Press a few months back with Marble Teeth, May5a, and Olive, and I could not be happier with my experience. I was blown away by the confidence of his set, feeling each strum, each drum beat, reverberating across the walls of the small room and hitting me deeply. His music slowly blooms to fill any space it encompasses, and I could feel the audience hanging onto every line. I was more than happy with my experience.
After seeing this, I knew I had to sit down with him and discuss his work. I was lucky enough to sit down with him this past April at my favorite coffee shop—shout out to La Finca for being so welcoming—and talk about all things Goo Man. From his name, to his style, to his dog, he answered all of the questions I had for him; and now I have the honor to share it with all of you.
Without any further ado, I present to you:
An Interview w/ Goo Man
[Originally recorded April 25, 2025]
The Basics
Where does “Goo Man” come from?
Luckas: So, the name itself—it’s not really anything super-duper crazy. When I was like 14 or 15, I was playing with a bunch of bands that were in St. Louis with all my friends; and at a certain point I was like “Oh, I wanna make my own music.” So—yada, yada, yada—I just wrote a bunch of stuff, and I didn’t know what to release it as because I felt like “Luckas O’Donnell” doesn’t roll off the tongue as like a “cool rock star name” or whatever—no offense to myself. I was just trying to figure out something to differentiate it in some way from my actual name, and then I was talking to a bunch of people, and all my friends were giving silly names that I would never in a million years use.
Then somehow it came up with my parents, and then my parents were like “Oh, you should use ‘Goo Man’” and I was like “What is that?” and they said “Oh, it was your name when you were a baby!” My parents have this thing where they’re always like “Don’t you remember this thing from when you were a baby?” and I’m like “No, of course not, because I was a baby.” I think everyone has this experience. So, they were telling me essentially they used to call me “Goo Man” when I was really, really little, and their only explanation is that all I could say was “agoo,” which is what every baby says.
So, apparently, that was my nickname, and then they were like, “Why don’t you use that?” I was like, “Idk maybe,” and I used it as a working title when I was planning to release my first stuff. Then I was like, “Good enough, I’ll keep it.” Now I’m at a point where I love it. I think it’s just silly enough and has that level of “What even is this?” that I love. But yeah, it’s just a random nickname I got when I was like 2, and it never stuck until like 2 or 3 years ago. Or I guess longer, I don’t know.
You mentioned that you were working with bands in St. Louis before doing solo stuff—what inspired you to start music in general? When did you start doing music?
Luckas: When I first started playing, I started on guitar and only guitar, and I wanted to do, like—I think I just wanted to play rhythm or lead guitar and not sing or anything initially when I was probably around like 9 or 10—one of those two, I don’t remember—but I know going on at least 10 years old. I don’t really remember why I was super drawn to the idea of playing music, but I think for a little bit there I was just getting into the normal early adolescent music of The Beatles and Nirvana and stuff—Green Day and shit like that—and I was really interested in it, and at some point I was just like “Why don’t I make it?” or something.
From there, I was just—I loved playing, practicing, the actual practice of playing music—not necessarily performing it, I was very scared to perform for quite a while. I think when I was like 13 or so—it had been a good couple of years that I was taking lessons at that point—and then I finally played a really small recital through the place I was at the time, STL Rock School—it used to be called Dave Simons when I was there but now its called STL Rock School. But I played a recital there and they were trying to calm my nerves about it; they were like “Dawg, you’re gonna do great!” and then I played and then I loved it. Immediately, one of the dudes who was the head of the school was like, “You should join the top-level band,” called All Star. I joined, and I don’t know what it was, but from that point on, I was just like “I just wanna play shows. I wanna do this, I wanna do that as much as I can.”
That band was really focused on improvising and learning songs by ear and stuff, and that was a big stepping stone for me. Once I just started meeting people outside of that—like people I met at school or people in passing or whatever it was, online, even—that played music, that was when I started getting into gear about playing with other people. And yeah, from then it was just kinda like a natural progression of like. “I spend most of my time when I’m not at work or at school playing music by myself.” And so at a certain point, I was like maybe I’ll learn how to write and record music by myself. Now it’s gotten to a point where I mix, master, and record everything by myself. I’ll hopefully be as sustainable as possible, is my idea—something along those lines.
The Specifics
Are there any acts in the area that you enjoy that you’d like to shout out?
Luckas: There are so many people I feel like. Off the top of my head, some of my bestest friends—my very closest friend Johnny, he plays in Goo Man and this band Nine Volt, and also in Hank, and I just played last night with Nine Volt at Platypus. It was really fun, I love those guys—that whole band—they’re just really good buddies of mine. They're really fun, they're doing so much interesting stuff. And then Hank, too, which is another band with John, and then Sam, the drummer from Nine Volt, is also in Hank. All of those guys are super nice.
Their music, to me, sticks out in a really, really good way from St. Louis. I feel like we have a lot of parties that go on here, and I feel like there’s a lot of people who just embrace the party culture a lot; but then there’s other people that—not to say that party culture rock stars are not artistic or something—but there are people who I think don’t care about the party side, which is where I fall. I’m not a party person at all, I’d rather organize my own show that’s much smaller and more intimate than have a whole bunch of people in a party environment. And I think Hank, Nine Volt, and then my buddy Owen plays in this band Olive—they are very much—they’re like doing something very different, and I just like it. I like playing with them, I like playing shows alongside them, listening to them—they’re just really cool all around.
How would you describe your style?
Luckas: I don’t know. I’m not really big on describing my music—or really any music—as one specific thing or the other. I guess like, to me, if I had to put any descriptors on it, I would say it’s vaguely psychedelic, vaguely rock, vaguely folk—just all different types. I like a lot of different things, and I try to show those influences in different ways, but I don’t want to copy anyone. I try to stray away from being derivative if I can, I guess.
I’ve had people say that my music is “jangly” or something. I promote it [music] around school—I go to Webster—and I promote around Webster very much so. Everything I put up is silliness-oriented, if that makes sense. I try not to be very overly serious with my promotions or anything; it’s a mixed bag, I guess. Something along the lines of silliness, psychedelic, noises, musings—I don’t know, things like that, things of that nature…I try to do everything myself, independently, so I guess in that regard it is indie, but I don’t necessarily think that my music is indie in the same way of like, “Oh that sounds like Mac DeMarco” or something like that. I do like that kind of music, though.
I like older music, and newer music; I try not to stick within specific boundaries. I try to stylistically have my own voice, but for the most part, I just like to mess around and do stuff by myself. For the longest time, I didn’t have any guitars with distortion in my music, and more recently, I’ve been trying to work on that and the dynamics of it, playing with more suspense, and just things like that—just evolving in a certain way. But I don’t wanna lose the artistic vision I’ve had for however many years, I’m just elaborating on it.
Do you plan to stay in St. Louis, at least for the time being? Are you interested in exploring other scenes?
Luckas: I’ve found a lot of potential in St. Louis. I feel like so many people say it’s a really boring city. I’ve encountered a lot of people who are like “Oh, I’m just gonna move to Chicago, or Nashville, or New York”—wherever the place is—because they say St. Louis is very boring. For me personally, I say all the power to them, they can go ahead, but I don’t know if that will lead you to success or not. Personally, I don’t think that it would, but the biggest problem I have with it is that it leaves a big hole in St. Louis.
For me, I want to try to foster as much community as I can and as much involvement as I can as I get more familiar with setting up bigger shows and all that stuff—meeting new people, and I want to try to figure out group promotion. I used to do this account called Sugar Creek on Instagram that was all promotion, and I’d post a weekly video—for a while there it was with one of my buddies, but then it was just me—of all the shows that were happening that week, and all the music that was coming out that week, and all the stuff that was about to come out or just came out—stuff like that.
I really like that idea of getting a really strong foothold in St. Louis to help bring more life into the community, but I do really want to explore other places. So, I think, for me, that just looks more like travelling and doing smaller tours or stays in other places. I have some friends in Chicago and we’ve talked about playing shows up there and organizing different stuff, and for me that would be perfect because it’s a whole different scene to get into, but at the same time it’s decently nearby so I don’t have to move there to get a feel on it or be involved in some way. I probably won’t be as solidified as I am in St Louis, because this is my hometown, but I do like the idea of checking out other places; just not necessarily moving there indefinitely or long term or anything.
I don’t know, I know a big thing—Chicago has a really, really good scene, to my understanding. I have a decent amount of friends who live up there who all work on this label called Trash Tape that they run. They’re doing amazing stuff, and it’s very inspiring to me to just see them playing shows and going on tours and stuff. The way they’re doing it, though, is the same way I want to do it: very self-sufficient with the ability to travel, where you’ll get to experience another city and how their scenes work and everything, while still having your home base safety net, wherever you may be… All that to say, I’m very committed to St. Louis, but I’d love to take a trip to different places and just experience it.
The Miscellaneous
Finally, on a somewhat off-topic note, I saw that your dog is mentioned multiple times in your music. How does your relationship with your dog or other animals influence your music?
Luckas: To me, as of a year or so ago—probably going on 2 years now—I’ve been trying to write more regularly; because, for a while there, I would write inconsistently, where I would write one song every couple months. And at a certain point, I was like “I just wanna break out of this, and figure out what to do about it.” So I realized that, for me, at least, inspiration never dawns upon me; I have to exercise it like a muscle, and for whatever reason, I feel like I am consistently, repetitively inspired by mundane things in daily life. For me, one of the things in my daily life is hanging out with Hugo [his dog]. So, naturally for me, I just started writing songs about him.
“I Love My Dog” was a joke song I wrote 3 or 4 years ago, so that was even before all this, but since then, I have a back catalogue of a lot, a lot, a lot of music I need to get finished up on. There’s a good number of views on the songs that are about Hugo, and then my girlfriend’s dog, Rue, and then my friend’s cat—just things like that, animals I love.
But I don’t know, something about being an animal that just gets to hang out all day and do whatever, to me, just seems very, very cool and very nice. At the end of the day, we’re animals, and my ideal situation is to be able to relax and enjoy hanging out and doing nothing…Probably a majority of my summer will be spent hanging out with Hugo, or by myself, or with whoever, doing nothing and sitting in the sun, if I can. I don’t know, it’s just meditative or something.
Make sure to check out Goo Man on Instagram and on all streaming platforms! For a good place to start, I personally recommend starting from the beginning with his 2020 album, “Agoo!”, a catchy, homey-feeling compilation that has stuck with me since I first heard it. I hope you all have enjoyed my first piece as an official contributor at The Bobcat Press! I’ll catch you all soon with another interview with more kickass St. Louis area acts!
