With the release of his new album Go Son and the Disappearing Act, Virgil’s Scott Gossen proves that the adage “everything old is new again” can make perfect sense.
In the first decade of the 2000s, Gossen was playing with a group of Niagara musicians under the name Scott Normandy, a nod to his grandfather. They released two albums: 2007’s My Future, My Past and No Regrets in 2009.
The plan was to achieve success in the music business and make songwriting and performing his career. By the middle of 2011, Gossen had renamed the group—featuring guitarist Mike Tuyp, drummer Allan Campopiano, and bassist Joel Durksen— to The Newark City Band. They released the seven-song EP Learn How to Live that had an edgier, more upbeat sound than the previous albums.
But by then he and his wife Brun had just welcomed their first of three children and Gossen’s priorities began to change. Those “rock and roll dreams” he sang about in the EP’s song Get Close were put aside for family life and to take over his father’s lawn care business.
With his kids a bit older by 2023, he began to put more time into music last year. That resulted in an album of new songs called February, released in that month in 2024. For the record’s sold-out album release show at Oast House, he brought back his old bandmates Campopiano and Durksen. With Tuyp unavailable because of his commitments to Toronto’s Devin Cuddy Band Gossen’s friend Evan Wiens stepped in as his replacement.
“That was a crazy night,” he laughs while meeting with The Local in his loft studio. “It got a little out of hand. It was a bit of chaos, but lots of fun.”
The whole experience sparked Gossen’s desire to get the Newark City Band back together under the guise of The Disappearing Act and to dust off some songs written over a decade ago.
“Every winter Al and I would get together and snowball ideas back and forth,” the singer and songwriter says. “The first song from this album we demoed was Summergold back in 2011. And Cruise, the first track on the album, we demoed in 2018. After February, we all thought we needed to finish this album.“
Gossen (the Go Son moniker is a play on his last name) admits that revisiting the old songs drummed up some weird memories of where the band members were at over the past 13 years. But Gossen, now 42, says the subject matter of the ten songs still relates to his life today.
The title song “was written when I first started seeing some of my friends losing their parents,” he says. “As you get older you start experiencing that. Those ideas of someone being gone in half-a-second inspired that song.”
Wouldn’t Be Life leads off side two of the red vinyl version of the record. With the refrain “If it was easy it wouldn’t be life; if you could just grab it then why would you fight," the song shows a great deal of maturity. It’s written by someone with the knowledge that the best things in life come with a struggle.
Summergold is obviously about a lost romance, perhaps one that happened some long ago August:
“Summergold, you would never let me go, I suppose I’ll get used to it,
Summergold, just when I needed you the most, you decided not to show,
Where’d you go, dear.”
The whole album has a wistful, vintage, ethereal folk feel, with Gossen’s tasteful acoustic playing front and centre on songs such as Enough, Millions and Counting Sheep. Tuyp’s tasteful electric guitar work adds an excellent punctuation on all songs, while Campopiano’s drumming is a big highlight. Durksen adds to the beat on bass while Gossen sings lead with his signature vocal style,
Unlike on February, the new album was a real band effort. He says all four band members had input into the arrangements for each of the songs, which were written and produced by Gossen and recorded in his loft above an old peach packing shed.
.“It was a lot of fun,” says Gossen of the process. “We did most of it over a few winters and it was cold up here. I remember recording some of the vocals between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. There were some exhausting times, but we really created some magic.”
They’ll be creating magic again this Saturday, November 16 in another loft, this one at Niagara Oast House Brewers for another sold-out album release show.
And his family is getting into his act. His daughter Hannah will join the band on one song at Oast, and he’s been working on music with his 20-year-old nephew, Harrison Gossen, who helped Scott out on a song called Shadowing Me this summer.
“He’s been getting into engineering and recording,” says Gossen. “And he’s a really good drummer, too. We’ve been talking about doing an album together this winter. My plan is to do an album every winter.”
It may have taken a few years, but Scott Gossen has found the sweet spot for balancing his music career with his family and business life through this reappearing act.
You can hear Go Son and the Disappearing Act on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services and find out more on Scott’s Instagram account.
