Today we’d like to introduce you to Renny Goh.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Renny. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’m from a tropical city-state of Singapore. Back in Singapore, I worked as a full-time singer for about three years, doing residencies in pubs, singing at events, and doing session work. This career choice happened after graduating from a degree in Sociology in college. It was an agreement with my parents that I could pursue music after getting a degree in college. As much as I wanted to go to music college as a kid, looking back now I won’t change a thing. Four years in Sociology really broadened my mind and proved to be pivotal to how I am now as a person. In many ways, I feel it prepared the musician in me, and it informed the way I want to live my life out as a human being.
Singing as a career in Singapore was fun and I managed to achieve some level of success. At some point, I got comfortable. I forgot (or maybe ignored?) that I used to talk about becoming an arranger, a composer. a piano player. I had always wanted to engage with music from a different points of view. I would have been perfectly happy carrying on the trajectory of my singing career if not for an incident in the family that became the turning point in my life.
Back in November 2013, one of my cousins was involved in an accident at the plant where he suffered about 72% full thickness burns, more severe than a 4th degree burn where even the nerves were destroyed. He was in and out of surgery and spent 2 months in the Intensive Care Unit and 3 months in the High Dependency Ward. I remember living at the lobby of the ICU with my cousins during those times, keeping vigil, waiting for any signs of news. When he miraculously survived the explosion and started the most painful process of recovery, I remember countless nights, looking at my cousin lying in the ICU full of burns, thinking if I had lived my life out as fully as I wanted it to. I knew what my answer was, and on one of those nights I sent out applications to music colleges in the US. No need to guess who was the biggest supporter of my plans, and who cheered me on while wrapped up in bandages lying on his ICU bed.
My cousin’s road to recovery was excruciatingly painful, but he went for it like a true warrior. Until now, his recovery is still the biggest drive in my life. It’s easy to get demoralized in a music college where you have to be honest with your musicality. During some of these hardest times, deep down I knew that if my cousin could fight his way out of this traumatic incident, that meant that I could face anything that came my way.
I would say, that every win I have made here, I attribute it to my cousin’s bravery. His fighting spirit inspires and emboldens me.
Six years later, I’m graduated from music college and working. I currently am touring with Republic Records’ artiste Conan Gray.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I don’t think any musician will say their journey is struggle-free. As musicians, we have to be honest with our musicality. What are we good at and what do we need to work on? That’s the only way we can improve, and that’s also the only way we can be creative. And being honest with yourself while not letting that become unhealthy is a struggle.
My biggest struggle when I first came to America as a music college student was my crippling self-doubt. I came to college as a singer who wanted to learn jazz piano. I had a classical piano background but I stopped pursuing piano after I was done with the graded exams, and after I started my singing career I got caught up with succeeding in that field. Coming here, I knew I had to catch up on lost time. People back home probably thought I was crazy, leaving behind a singing gig to pursue an instrument I hadn’t played seriously in years. I knew I fell short as a player, and I lacked a lot of fundamentals in jazz and contemporary styles. My insecurities pushed me to better myself as a musician, I worked very very hard in these practice rooms for years to become the player I wanted to be. But my insecurities also made me fearful. So even though I slowly got better as a player and opportunities came knocking on my door, I was always quick to decline them. I was always sure I would mess up.
The thing is, I’ve been very blessed with a community of talented friends and mentors who believed in me. Because of them, I’ve said “yes” to these opportunities that frightened me. Because of them, I’ve gotten thrown into situations where I thought I was going to fall flat on my face. Sometimes I think I did some gigs thinking they were going to find out how wrong they were – and that I was not going to be able to do it. And yet gig after gig, I realize that the biggest obstacle in my way was always me.
In light of that, at some point I resolved to work on being a good musician that could embrace her journey, and love herself. I joined a couple bands that challenged me. I started playing keys for the Brazilian blues guitarist Artur Menezes. With him, we won 3rd place in the annual International Blues Challenge held by the Blues Foundation, got to play in the 2018 Doheny Blues Festival. With my own jazz-fusion band Mr Giant, we put out our EP Face to Face in 2017. I recorded and arranged keys for local artists like Nick Walker, Anthony Cummins, Zoa Seo, and composed a TV show soundtrack for a web series back home.
The struggle to grow confidently into your own, and embracing yourself BECAUSE of my strengths and my flaws is an ongoing dialogue that happens to the best of us. I’d say that my college days were instrumental to my musical growth not only because that’s where I had a safe space to grow and make mistakes, it’s where I grew into my own.
In some way, I think this journey came full circle when I was asked to audition for a pop artiste right after I graduated from college. Pre-music college me would have bolted out the door and shied away from this opportunity. Instead, I took my fear and did it anyway. And today, I’m currently the keyboardist of Republic Records’ artiste Conan Gray because of that opportunity.
Currently, I’m on a newfound struggle – taking myself less seriously lollll.
Renny Goh – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I’m a keyboardist, arranger, and composer.
My heart lies in jazz, neosoul, and RnB, but I take a lot of pride in my training as a musician to be as versatile as I can be. As a keyboardist, I’ve had to play genres that range from blues, jazz, fusion, latin, pop, funk to Neo-soul and RnB.
I also pride myself for my work ethic. My mentors and friends continue to inspire me greatly on that. My drummer friend Tre Chandler calls it #WorkOverHype. It sounds cool and catchy and all but it means more. This always keeps me grounded. A gig’s a gig. Every gig I give my 100%. I don’t really care if it’s a stadium gig or a gig at the local bar, I’m playing it out and I’m doing all my homework for that show. My church MD Brunes Charles, and teachers in school have ingrained this into me, and it has become second nature. It’s a simple philosophy. We need to respect the music that we are entrusted with, and we need to always consider the people that love that music.
I genuinely love people, and I love seeing growth. I think this inspires my work as a musician and as a person as well. I live for moments (both musical and not) that leaves both the audience or the musicians with something a spark, a thought or a memory that could inspire positivity.
Currently I tour with Conan. This year, we did a Seth Meyers TV appearance, opened for Panic at the Disco on their Cali leg, and we just finished his spring US/Canada tour, the Sunset Shows. We have the Sunset Shows Europe tour coming up in May, and we are due to play the 2019 Lollapalooza Chicago festival, and Life is Beautiful 2019 in the summer. With Conan, I’ve had a lot of fun working on creating sounds and working on a two keyboard setup that is part of my Mainstage rig.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
There’s so many moments in my life that have become unforgettable moments in my career… playing at the Forum with Conan was definitely a big one. That’s because I caught Stevie Wonder there when I first came to LA. Stevie is one of my biggest influences. And to play at the very stage he played at was incredibly surreal. In the same way, my senior recital (in which I got full marks for) was also a proud moment because I put out a show I worked incredibly hard on, and I showed myself how much I could achieve if I could set my heart out to do something.
But I think the most special moments in my career that I feel I hold dear to my heart is knowing when someone in the audience, or people around me find strength in my story, or my cousin’s, to do something in their lives. Throughout Conan’s tour, I had girls (and their mothers) come up to me saying that seeing an all-female band onstage killing it is incredibly moving and inspiring. I have Asian kids telling me they loved that they could see an Asian up onstage. I have a thick Singaporean accent, and I’m not embarrassed about it. I take pride that I can represent in my own way – by standing onstage doing what I love and being able to live out a life where I have no regrets.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @rennygoh
Image Credit:
Robert Casey, Jr Gonzalez
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