Supervised by his chihuahua, Sarah, Papa Tim Goad relaxes at home in Wiscasset. Starting from scratch in 2015, Goad has built a music career through luck and hard work. This year he is hoping to plays more shows around New England. (Sherwood Olin photo)
It was a friend who first convinced Tim Goad to take the stage at an open mic in Bath one night in 2015. Until then, he liked music well enough, but he had never thought of himself as performer.
On this occasion, fortified by his friend’s encouragement and some “liquid courage,” Goad got up and belted out an a cappella version of the Robert Johnson standard “Crossroads,” accompanying himself by pounding out the rhythm on his chest.
“I remember the whole bar was just stone silent for a minute when I finished, and then it just erupted,” he said. “I’ll never forget that feeling.”
It was a seminal moment, one that provided some much-needed direction is his life, he said. A week later he attended another open mic in Topsham and the hook was firmly set. At the time, Goad was self-employed, he owned River Bottom Video in Bath, and he had already worked through a series of dead-end jobs.
He grew up the middle of five children, the youngest of triplet brothers and the older brother to a set of twin sisters, all born to Don and Kathleen Goad. Don Goad was a career Navy man who took his family with him all over the word. Tim and his brothers were born in Hawaii while their father was stationed in Japan and they spent their formative years on military bases in Europe.
His father retired to Portsmouth, Va. in time for Tim Goad and his brothers to begin high school. After graduation, Goad just assumed he would keep living around the world but his first wife was a Topsham native, and Goad was sold on the state after their first visit. The young couple moved to Maine in March 2001.
Goad and his first wife welcomed two children before they divorced and he drifted personally and professionally for about 15 years before he discovered his passion for performing, he said.
After his first experience in 2015, Goad began frequenting open mics in the area, taking or making any opportunity he could to get onstage and sing.
“I just started out in open mics without a band,” he said. “I would just come up and do two or three a cappella numbers. … I would do like three quick ones, just to get the effort in there, just be able to do it. I was lucky enough that I have a booming voice and it caught a reputation.”
That reputation led to a small part in a rock opera written for a performance at the Chocolate Church in Bath. That performance led to an invitation to play the venue as part of the “Kill the Chill” concert series in January 2017. Goad didn’t have a band at the time and he had no idea what the performance entailed, but he immediately took the gig.
“I don’t even have a band name,” he said. “I went to the open mics and just started asking, like, ‘Hey guys, so I have a show at the Chocolate Church. Do you want to be in my band?’ And I collected all of these musicians that were in other bands around town, so I formed my own little all-star band.”
That band became the nucleus of Goad’s first working group, Papa Tim and the Desperate Man’s Blue Explosion, a name inspired by a friend’s remark about Goad’s desperation to get a band together to play that first show.
“The original thing with Papa Tim is, it was a way to get over stage fright, like it was a whole costume I put on,” he said. “There’s Tim Goad and then there was Papa Tim.
“Papa Tim started out as just a nickname and then it became a persona,” he said. “Then, over the last 10 years, I’ve kind of learned how to blend in the two together, you know? It used to be a whole spiel. I had to go into the bathroom. I put a suit on, sunglasses, and come out like Elton John, where he’s no longer (Reginald Dwight) or whatever his name is. Now he’s Sir Elton John.”
Much to everyone’s surprise, and thanks in no small part to a popular opening act and a bartender friend of his who aggressively sold tickets on his behalf, Goad said, Goad and company sold out the Chocolate Church. After that first show, another quickly followed. Then another, and then another.
“It’s been that way ever since,” Goad said. “I’ve just been like, this was the career path I was supposed to be on.”
Over the last 10 years the band has gone on to play notable venues in the state like the Bangor Auditorium and the Portland House of Music in Portland.
In the early 2020s Goad took up with a young woman with whom he moved to Keene, N.H. in June 2023. What followed was a strange time when Goad was living in southeastern New Hampshire and keeping the band going in Midcoast Maine. The relationship ended in December that year, amid extenuating circumstances. For Goad, the fallout took him to an extremely dark place.
At the end of his rope, Goad made what he expected to be his last phone call, turning to his longtime musical partner John Genthner. A well-established Brunswick area bass player, Genthner and Goad had met years earlier at an open mic.
When Goad needed to form a band for his first show, Genthner was the first musician Goad recruited and he has been Goad’s side for all but a handful of shows ever since. Now, with Goad calling amidst the darkest night of his soul, Genthner convinced his friend to get in the car and drive to Maine and safety.
“I called John, and he was like, not on my watch,” Goad said. “He’s like, ‘Get in the car and come to me.’ And I said, ‘What am I going to do tomorrow?’ And that man said to me something I will never forget. ‘What am I going to do tomorrow?’ He said ‘That is tomorrow’s problem,’ and that has been my motto ever since. That is tomorrow’s problem.”
Genthner and Goad eventually moved in together and currently share a house in Wiscasset.
With Genthner’s support and the lifeline of the band to cling to and provide motivation, Goad crawled out of the mental hole he was in. Looking back on that period, Goad said he uses that experience to help power him now. He credits Genthner for lending a desperately needed hand at the time, but in order to get out of the darkness, a person needs to be willing to do the work to help yourself, he said.
“No one’s going to rescue you,” Goad said. “I mean, you have friends, but you have to rescue yourself. You have to be able to pull yourself up. I don’t want to say pull yourself by your bootstraps, but at some point, you’re going have to basically put on your big boy pants and realize that you are your own worst enemy and you are your own savior as well.”
Today, Goad said he feels lucky to have survived and blessed to have what he has. On those occasions when he shares parts of his story onstage, usually introducing or segueing from one song to another, he connects with people in an intimate way, he said.
“I’ve had big bikers come up and hug me,” he said. “The best compliment was when I played a show and this big biker came up and told me, literally, like ‘I was in the throes of depression. I think you may have actually saved my life tonight,’ and I gave him the biggest hug.”
With a new lease on life, Goad has attacked music with a passion every since. Currently he spends almost every waking moment on band business: writing, planning, or booking.
The result has been as a steady build with the band doubling the number of shows they have scheduled year over year. The band has since been rechristened Papa Tim and the Whiskey Throttle Band and now consists of Goad and Genthner, guitarist Bob Chace, and drummer Michael Sevon.
This year, Goad’s 10th in the local music business, he is hoping to crack the 100-gig threshold, perhaps with a regional tour if possible. Ultimately Goad’s goal is to get on the national circuit and play music festivals across the country.
“We’ve played a number of places in New Hampshire and Massachusetts,” he said. “Over in Rhode Island, we played a show a couple years ago that we have established connections with that we just never followed up on. Part of that was me, like I got lucky enough that I was blessed that shows would just roll in, that I didn’t have to actively book. But when you want to do things like a national tour, you have to get off your butt and do it.”
For the moment, the one dark cloud on the band’s horizon is Genthner’s health. In mid-January, Genthner suffered a stroke, his second medical event inside of a year. Genthner is currently recovering well at home, but he is under doctor’s orders to rest. For the moment the band has turned to good friend and Wiscasset bassist Sean Bowman to fill in until Genthner returns to form.
The band dedicated the proceeds from their first couple shows after the stroke to Genthner’s care, and the band will continue passing the hat on Genthner’s behalf at upcoming gigs. Goad has also set up a GoFundMe page on Genthner’s behalf.
For the moment, as his roommate and best friend, Goad is helping manage Genthner’s recovery. It is the least he can do after all Genthner has done for him, Goad said.
“John’s like the other half of my brain,” Goad said. “Especially since I came back from New Hampshire, for the last two and a half, three years, we’ve become almost symbiotic together. He’s been the adult … I’m always the guy that’s out in space, and he’s the one that’s left down here on Earth. So now I’ve had to readjust that role.”
Goad said he dreams of playing a show at Fenway Park in Boston someday, but at the same time, he doesn’t define success strictly by the number of tickets sold. He just wants to be successful enough to have the platform he needs to spread the joy he feels.
“I’m very, very lucky where a lot of my experience has been very positive,” Goad said. “That’s something I try to keep reciprocating. That’s where I’m at now with my music. I’ve embraced it like, this is my calling. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t need to be selling out Fenway in order to reach the people that I need to reach.”
For more information about Papa Tim and the Whiskey Throttle Band, find the Papa Tim Blues Band on Facebook or find at @papatim_stagram on Instagram. The GoFundMe page for Genthner is located at bit.ly/4kGxEJa.
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