Grant Goodeve is probably most familiar to viewers of Eight Is Enough, the popular late '70's family drama.

As eldest son David, Goodeve experienced a measure of celebrity that he wasn't prepared for--and that sent him on a quest for something with a little more permanence than fleeting fame. After a struggle with alcohol, Goodeve turned his life over to Christ and found the something he was looking for. After Eight ended its run, Goodeve went on to do many guest star spots and also pursued his interest in music.

What follows is a rather non-typical interview. TLeM editor Beth Blinn had a chat with Goodeve nearly two years ago at the Gospel Music Association convention in Nashville. He had just completed his first album to be released into the Christian market. However, he was the unfortunate victim of record company woes as Maranatha! was all but tossed like a hot potato around the music industry--being sold and resold (or so we recall--it was very confusing).

Blinn was scheduled to speak with Goodeve again a few months ago. That day a significant snowstorm hit the Northeast and she couldn't make it to the office to call him. So TLeM publisher, J. Warner Soditus, pinch-hit to talk some about the time he spent waiting for the album to finally see its release.


GRANT GOODEVE
Currently in the CD Player: Sara MacLaughlin, Connie Dover
Last book read: Lee And Grant by Gene Smith
Hometown: Middlebury, Connecticut
Birthdate: July 6
First memory of music: Listening to symphonies that my parents played--at a very young age, I used to stand with a pencil and conduct.
Most influential person: Besides God, I can't narrow it down to just one... Probably my wife.
Favorite way to relax: Read
Favorite scripture verse: John 14:6 "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life."
If you were a piece of equipment in a recording studio, what would it be? A microphone--it's a communicator.

You grew up in New England and moved out to California in 1975?

Yes, I moved to L.A. in '75 and started working fairly shortly after that. I started doing some commercials and guest starring on forgettable shows. It was February of '77 that they asked me to screen-test for Eight Is Enough. I won that role and everything changed right after that.

Had you done a lot of acting in high school?

I'd gone to schools in Connecticut and did some theater. I had some good theater in grammar school. It was one of several interests--obviously, I had sports. It was in college that acting became a focus. I went to Ithaca in New York, which had a very good undergraduate program.

After a year of adventuring, [I rodeoed out west] and then went to Colorado. There I studied acting from different teachers, which is one of the best ways to go. They understand how to get work because they are there [in the west, where the entertainment industry is]. In college, no matter what your major is, it's all theory--you're in a bubble there. Quite frankly, when I saw I could make a living doing it [acting], I decided it must be what I should do.

So you were into music as a side interest?

My brother played guitar with his friends--played music to rest homes and did folk music of the early to mid-60's, like Peter, Paul, and Mary, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez.

So I picked up the guitar myself, and taught myself how to play when I was eleven or twelve. I started writing songs soon after that--none of them made any sense though. I was interested in and more attracted to an ethereal folk theme. I tend to be more abstract in what I want to say. When I had to write some country music, I had to realize that the country medium is very direct and you say things directly and talk concretely.

Creatively, music has been as much of an interest of mine as acting. I spent a lot more time singing and writing songs than I did doing any acting--hanging around the house doing monologues from Shakespeare just wasn't very interesting to me when I could sit around and play music. Music has been an enduring creative outlet for me.

It wasn't until I began to write ministry songs and songs relating to my life with God that I became more public with my music. Although I had a country rock band in L.A. and was encouraged to pursue that seriously, I didn't sense that as a calling--living out of a bus 365 days a year. It has really been neat to see my "flowering" or whatever you'd call it. It [music] turned when I began to give it to God as a talent and just write... I wasn't inspired to write songs that didn't relate to God.

That change in you--was it that you felt less self-conscious or the subject matter changing?

I strongly began to sense a calling from God; and I was inspired to write and sing in this fashion, and eventually go and minister in that fashion. It wasn't my idea, which in my estimation makes it a much better idea.

When did that shift occur for you?

[In the] late '80's. It really became clear that it was time to get out of L.A., so that's when we moved up to Seattle. With that move, God opened some doors for me, so I began to sing in some churches.

Interestingly enough, it was also about the late '80's I did a prayer breakfast in L.A., and a girl named Jenny Johnson gave me a guitar. After the breakfast she told me that she had been praying for two months about who to give this guitar to. She said it wasn't her guitar anyway, that it belonged to Jesus. I knew God was clearly saying, "Here, you take this now, try it for however long and do some music ministry."

How did you come to a personal relationship with Christ?

I was brought up in what I would call a nominally Christian household, like many of the households that I knew of in Connecticut. All of us would have said we were Christians. However, the reality of faith--as a real God, who was involved and continues to be involved in creation--was more philosophical than it was real life. A lot of our faith had been intellectualized in our hearts and brought up into our heads.

There were a lot of great academic ministers, people of great intelligence, that I knew. But they didn't have a real sense of truth, what the Bible reveals as who Jesus is. Everything else in life was more important. God was a part of the whole thing, but He wasn't the absolute ground of everything.

It wasn't until 1980 that I came to the full awareness of Jesus Christ.

You had gotten some kind of introduction along the way?

It almost doesn't connect. It was such a confusing time. I was interested in spiritual things and things in a Christian direction, but I had no idea how profoundly real God was at that time.

In some ways it might sound harsh, but I might as well have been brought up in something totally non-Christian or taught not to believe at all, because there was actually a deadness to our faith.

How would you say you fit into the whole L.A. kind of crowd--or the cast of Eight Is Enough? Do you think you stood out at all during that time?

In what respect?

Personality. Lifestyle.

I felt like a fish out of water in the late '80's. Early on I felt at home.

Most people have a conception of Hollywood just being some wild, crazy place. It can be; but sometimes most of that is periphery. Most of the time, they are trying to get work, or they are working and have families--they do many of the same things people are doing anywhere else. They are just doing it in this "glamorous" atmosphere. That atmosphere becomes much less glamorous at times. It used to be special to do films. There was a camaraderie.

Now, like everything else in business, it has become so "bottom line." A lot of that sense of "specialness" is gone. People really just show up, go to work, and get it done. There is also a sense that what you're doing isn't adding much to your culture. As young kids, Debbie and I were getting a first agent and going to auditions, which were never fun. But being around with other actors, something could change in a week or a day--all of a sudden, your career could take off and you'd get a job you weren't expecting. All of that stuff, I would have to say, was really quite enjoyable.

There's also plenty of outside sports to do there. Lifestyle-wise, I found it very agreeable. But as I got a little older and wanted to raise some children, I found it very disagreeable. When I was young, I didn't have certain responsibilities. Even today, it could still be a pretty fun ride; that of course wouldn't amount to a hill of beans if it wasn't doing God's will.

You're doing some acting there in Seattle, right? I think you were recently in some kind of Christmas production?

The few things that I have been able to do in church now with acting have been very rewarding for me because I've been able to use my skills. It rings with purpose, rather than being a job.

This last one, thirty to thirty-five thousand people saw over a two-week period; and we had over a thousand people make first-time decisions to follow Christ. A lot more people became reaffirmed. I played an old British man in the 1800's, a bit like Scrooge, but not exactly the same. The music was written by Steve Anderson.

But what I seem to be moving into is the hosting of shows, this seems to be the new avenue for me. I've been hooking up with some agents in L.A.

I remember getting a press photo of you and Amy Grant after one of the awards shows.

That was pretty funny. It was one of the first times I'd ever done that kind of interviewing and I'd have to say that I wouldn't want to watch it. Since then I've been able to do more of those and I've developed some skills--not only talking to the camera, which I like to do best, but also with interviewing people and being in that kind of situation.

I'm hoping that a pilot will be sold for a Christian broadcast that I did called, "How On Earth," which is about miracles. They have hundreds of stories, true stories, of divine intervention. Yet, it's geared to a secular audience. It could be a strong antidote to the hopeless stories you hear all the time--that's what I'd like to be a part of.

Newton Minnow, the head of the FCC some years ago, called TV a vast wasteland. I think that was prophetic, especially because he said it many, many years ago. I find my soul is much happier when I haven't watched a lot of it or even read the paper.

Weren't you involved with Sparrow's Bible Man series?

Actually, Willie Ames from my show [Eight Is Enough] is the "Bible Man." He also is producing and directing that series.

I did another series, called The Singing Place. It's a really cute show. It's geared to the "Barney" age group. I play a musicologist named "Reggie," who befriends this kid (puppet) who lives next-door, named "Spinky." Then we go to this wonderful land, called "Singing Place," and pursue themes on thankfulness, kindness, or maybe a problem Spinky is trying to resolve that God has an answer for. I seemed to move well in that genre.

Sort of a modern-day Mr. Rogers?

Mr. Rogers was inspired to do those things and be a purveyor in that. My role is more of an acting role than being a Mr. Rogers. He's the guru of children's programming, that's his whole reason for being. This is just one of several things I'm doing.

Willie's Bible Man show is taking off like crazy. Parents come up to him at book signings, and that's how he knows he's doing something good for the kids.

Returning to your album--that work was done some time ago, but got lost in legal "jumbo-land."

It was an extremely bizarre situation--one where I was in prayer about it and I just started laughing. I'm not talking "Toronto Blessing," but God just said, "Don't worry about this anymore." It was a sort of "letting go" laughter.

So, it's been a funny project from the beginning. I've never written songs with other people. It's not something I do comfortably, even still.

It came out to be an album that in some ways I didn't recognize and in some ways I still don't. I think there are some good songs, and I'm hoping it will be a step to other stuff. To say, "This is the music I do," or what I would want to do in my heart of hearts--it's probably not. But I hope that some good will come of it.

It's very ironic to even think of this as your "new" album.

It's been haunting me. It's like having an 18-year-old-kid, and saying, "This is my new baby."

How old are your kids?

One daughter is 16, the other daughter is 14, and my son is 11.

So they're past the "Barney" stage.

They're definitely past the "Barney" stage. I'm grateful they're past the "Morphin" stage. They can carry their own suitcases now when we travel. They don't whine as much as they used to. They're fun.

How did you meet your wife?

In the early '70's in Vermont, where we were skiing. She thought I was a jerk. I was interested in one of her sisters, at that time, but God had a different plan.

How did the original concept of the album come about?

Elisa Elder was overseeing a label for Maranatha!, called Broken Records, and she signed me. She always had it in her head to see if she could do a project with me, and over a long period of time I finally put it together and found some people in Nashville to do it with.

We were going two ways, it was either going to be more of an L.A. album or a Nashville album. Through a process of prayer and timing, I got together with Joe Beck and Brian White, who I think were still at Benson. They are great guys, and some of the songs still really surprise me.

The hardest part was when I first went out, I would sing, and it was tough to sense if I was ministering to people, because it wasn't as personal as my first album.

The first album--was that an independent project?

Yeah, a friend of mine produced it. It has some country tunes, soft rock, and kind of pop.

It's not something that we could find anywhere?

Well, actually, it is going to be distributed independently through my booking agency, Adoration, in Kansas City. I'm making a CD of the first album, called In The Storm. It's definitely got some strong ministry songs, which I'm proud to say happened, too. I don't know how He works in that capacity--sometimes, you think you've done a great thing and it sort of feels like it has no effect because you don't even realize what you're doing, then God goes and takes it and makes it great.

I hope I get to do other albums, because I'd choose the music that I've re-awakened to over the last few years, the music from the British Isles. I'm basically a folk singer and balladeer, and my desire would be to do a very acoustic, Celtic album--not too many jigs or reels but more ballads and obviously some up-tempo music. That's really what I do best, even writing songs like those, getting back to the poetic nature, rather than a mainstream commercial lyric nature. It would afford me some freedom to paint what I'd like to on the canvas of a song.

But, I think I had to go through this other thing, with this album, so I would learn that I have to move out of my comfort zone. So I would see that essentially, God wants us to do more work in our community and not necessarily as an isolated individual.

Thanks for the time. Hopefully it won't be so long to get your next album out, and that we will talk to you soon!

--Beth Blinn and J. Warner Soditus

Taken from http://tlem.netcentral.net/features/9604/goodeve_grant_lite.html

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Thanks to Jabbak for the tip!

back to Tv and Movies Grant Goodeve is probably most familiar to viewers of Eight Is Enough, the popular late '70's family drama.

As eldest son David, Goodeve experienced a measure of celebrity that he wasn't prepared for--and that sent him on a quest for something with a little more permanence than fleeting fame. After a struggle with alcohol, Goodeve turned his life over to Christ and found...