Joanie Goff

Under Appreciated

JOANIE GOFF
 

Nick Freund began working with four of his students to form a band that took the name the Search Party:  Peter Apps (lead guitar and vocals), Joanie Goff (vocals and guitar), Jim Carvalho (bass, guitar and vocals), and Tim King (drums).  Freund himself was evidently on organ and composed most of the music; he also produced the album.  The music was recorded in 1968 at the Montgomery Chapel at San Francisco Theological Seminary, so Montgomery Chapel became the name of the album.  Just 600 copies were pressed on the tiny Century Records label, and the band performed together live only once, at a sort of “thank you” party.  Nick Freund left California and joined the faculty at Mount Saint Paul College in Waukesha, Wisconsin later that year. 
 
The Search Party songs where Joanie Goff has the lead are particularly notable, such as the opening track “Speak to Me”:  “I feel you in the mountains, I feel you in the sea / I feel you all around me Lord / Oh Lord, speak to me!”  
Goff sings harmony vocals on “When He Calls”:  “When He calls, He’ll ask you to die; burn your boats and walk at His side / When He calls, He seldom tells why; it’s up to you to face and decide.” 
 
The religious messages in the remaining songs by the Search Party are more subtle.  Nick Freund recalls:  “I wrote [“You and I”] after returning from counseling a divorced woman.  I tried to incorporate into the song the tenseness I felt when talking to her.  It’s an expression of today’s station-wagon housewife, tense and keyed up, frustrated with life.”  Joanie Goff expresses these feelings wonderfully in her lead vocals on this song. 
 
The Search Party had its origins in the Rejects, a garage rock band that originally formed in about 1963.  Later Tim King was recruited as the new drummer, and Jacques Fourie was added as a rhythm guitarist.  The musicians were also in various other bands as well as the school band and glee club.  Nick Freund discovered Joanie Goff (now Joan Goff Nelson) when he put together a high school choir in Sacramento.  He asked her to be the female lead in their production of Oliver!
 
After Joanie Goff joined the Rejects, they changed their name to Mother Cabrini Jug Band and Punt Return Team (ah, youth!) and had some local gigs and a performance at the Agnew State Hospital.   
 
(September 2014)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021