Boca-Spawned Goolsby Plots (Temporary) Florida Return

It's been slightly less than a year since four-piece indie rock band Goolsby played its final South Florida show at Propaganda in Lake Worth. After that musical farewell, 23-year-old frontman Paul Simundich packed up and headed to the Northeast, where he spent some time in Rhode Island working around the...

By Courtney Hambright

July 8, 2011

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It's been slightly less than a year since four-piece indie rock band Goolsby played its final South Florida show at Propaganda in Lake Worth. After that musical farewell, 23-year-old frontman Paul Simundich packed up and headed to the Northeast, where he spent some time in Rhode Island working around the clock at an Old Navy and a bookstore before heading up to Brooklyn and reforming Goolsby there. Locals who've spent the last year missing the band's wry delivery of ecstatic live performances that come packed with a mix of tight poppy rock songs such as "Wild Once" and "Imaginary Friends" as well as affecting ballads such as "Intergalactic Love Song" will be excited to learn about Goolsby's July 15 homecoming show at Propaganda nightclub in Lake Worth with Lavola, Alexander and Young Circles.

Well, don't crack the celebratory PBRs and call all of your imaginary friends just yet.

Though you will surely be able to get yourself a heady dose of Simundich's dizzying showmanship -- hopefully, he's still got enough South Florida in him to perform barefoot as he did in the old days -- at this one-off show, you'd better not get used to it. The band's current four-member line-up of transplanted South Floridians -- which consists of Simundich on guitar and vocals, Jake Beal on drums, Nate Lyons on guitar and Mitch Paster on bass -- isn't moving back any time soon. Bummer.

The occasion for their visit? Reached via telephone, Simundich explains, "We're all coming down for the same wedding, so we decided to book a show."

Goolsby performs "Imaginary Friends" live at Propaganda, July 29, 2010-- video by Gingerman309

Day in and out, they're working to entrench themselves in New York City. "We're 9-to-5ing right now," Simundich says. "I got a job at an architecture firm. The drummer Jake Beal works there. I'm kind of like a filing representative, an expediter."

According to Simundich, the band too gaining traction in the Big Apple. They're working on new recordings to follow up their 2010 EP Amanda and have recently started playing shows. "We've been getting shows really easily, a lot easier than I thought we would." Nothing is firm yet, but, Simundich says, "we're hoping to get picked up by a little label. I'm pretty sure they like it."

The Sunshine State isn't entirely gone from Simundich's mind though. Some of the newer tracks, such as "Hoop Dreamz", a song about playing basketball with his brother's friends at FAU, recall his days as a South Floridian. Simundich has also penned biographical songs about his subtropical pals. "While I was living in Providence," he says, "I wrote five or six songs about friends of mine in Florida." Before you go and feel too special, you should also know that one of the band's new songs "Judith" is about the dog of a photographer who gave them a free photo shoot. Those who like Goolsby's love songs best might be disappointed to learn that dogs and old friends are what inspires Simundich's tunes these days: "I'm trying not to write songs about girls, so I'm writing songs about dogs and stuff."

No worries, though. Goolsby will be playing plenty of old favorites for its South Florida crowd. Simunich says that he's both excited and nervous about the band's homecoming show: "I feel kind of weird about it because I haven't been back in a year. I decided in the span of a week that I was leaving in the first place. I haven't talked to anybody. It should be kind of interesting. I don't know what to think really."

Goolsby. With Alexander, Young Circles and Lavola. 8 p.m. Friday, July 15 at Propaganda, 6 S. J Street, Lake Worth. Tickets cost $5. Click here.

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