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Singer Mike Golden finds his own lane in Chicago on ‘Just Be A Better Person’

Had singer Mike Golden not checked his phone last year, he might have missed his biggest opportunity yet.

“After SXSW, I went to California to work on my album. My buddy and I were on the way to go to the beach for a break day when I got a text from Nico [Segal, aka Donnie Trumpet] asking for my email,” the 28-year-old Indiana-raised and now Pilsen-based songwriter excitedly says over lunch at Wicker Park’s Dove’s Luncheonette. “I was like, why did he ask me for my email? Is he going to send me ‘Surf’? My mind was going crazy.”

It wasn’t just “Surf” Segal sent over: It was an almost-finished song, which already had a hook and a Joey Purp verse but needed a first verse. Golden continues, “He told me, ‘I want you to write that verse, but the thing is, I need it by tomorrow night because we need to finish the album.’ ” So, of course, Golden hightailed it back to the studio. “I came back to the studio, sat in the room with my team and played the track, then kicked everyone out and wrote it.”

“I knew it was the biggest chance I had so far in my life so I knew I had to kill it,” Golden explains. Segal ended up loving it, telling him, “Bro, you killed it—you sound like a rapper here with an amazing voice. We wanted to get people out of their comfort zone, and that’s the idea of the project.” That track became “Go,” a highlight on the full-length project that was downloaded 618,000 times in its first week. “The funny thing is,” Golden says, laughing, “was that Chance the Rapper had wanted another person for that verse, but he ended up changing his mind as soon as he heard me.”

Golden has another opportunity to seize the day, and this time it’s with his upcoming album, “Just Be A Better Person,” which is due out Thursday, Aug. 25, and is being released under just his last name. It’s a party of a pop album that features a parade of genre touchstones like dance, hip-hop and jazz, along with guests Donnie Trumpet, Kweku Collins, Kelechi and more. It’s the latest endeavor in a career of handwork, grinding through shitty day jobs and taking every chance he could. Now, with his album and record release show Friday at Double Door, Golden’s ready to take the next leap.

Golden’s career (and yes, his last name is actually Golden) hasn’t always been one of ebullient pop music, though. Born in Hammond, Ind., a steel mill and casino town between Gary and Chicago, Golden’s first love was bands like Blink-182 and Red Hot Chili Peppers, which made him pick up a pawn-shop-bought guitar. After finding a post on purevolume.com (think Bandcamp but for pop-punk-loving music fans in the aughts), he successfully tried out for a band called Comeback Kurtis, becoming their lead singer and guitarist and changing their name to Cardboard Cutout. “It lasted around three years, but we never played Chicago. But we did open up for Hit the Lights and All Time Low,” Golden remembers.

College obligations and the band members’ getting serious jobs led to Cardboard Cutout’s dissolution, so Golden took the hiatus to attend Purdue. He only lasted a year and a half studying public relations, but his real education was getting back into music. Following multiple trips to Von’s Records in West Lafeyette, Ind., his taste expanded to bands like Fleet Foxes and Animal Collective and rap artists like Jay Z, and so did his passion for songwriting, creating material that would become 2010’s “Trees Pt. 1,” his first EP release as Mike Golden and Friends. He explains, “I called it Mike Golden and Friends because I didn’t have a band, but I wanted it to be more than just me playing acoustic guitar.” The project included a rotating cast of musicians, including his current and longtime producer Scot Stewart and his old Cardboard Cutout bandmates Jason Riordan and James Roth.

While he was incubating his music, road trips from Hammond to the former River North establishment JBar Lounge kickstarted his career in Chicago. “At that bar, I feel like that was where it all started for me in Chicago,” Golden says. It was there that he booked acoustic shows, made connections with filmmaker Davy Greenberg and entrepreneur Joe Freshgoods and began to network with the local scene. Through Greenberg, they collaborated on a video for Golden’s single “Stay Here,” which led him to more local attention as well as the ears of another band Greenberg was directing videos for: Kids These Days. “We started booking shows together, and I knew something amazing musically was happening in Chicago when I met those seven kids,” Golden says. “How they made me feel when I saw them live is how I wanted to make people feel when they see me live.”

From there, Golden continued to hone his craft. There was “Trees Pt. 2,” another acoustic-heavy release that found him going into more soulful territory, and on 2011’s “Groceries,” he channeled the rock-loving part of his palate with hard-hitting cuts like “No Number.” 2014’s “Utopia” was another leap, taking on the compelling genre-stew of acts like Kids These Days and translating it into his biggest song, “Hey Jane,” which featured Vic Mensa and Donnie Trumpet. While all these efforts were released under Mike Golden and Friends, he wanted his next project to be a clearer encapsulation of himself: “I knew I wanted to be on my own, control my sound and release something under my name—just not as Mike Golden and Friends.”

Hence the moniker he now performs under: Golden. “I wrote ‘Mornin’ Momma’ about a year and a half ago when I moved to my parents’ basement so I could write, travel more and save money to just focus on music,” Golden explains. “They still charged me rent, but I needed to work on music and myself—being a better person was all part of making the project to be the best it could be. I needed growth, both personal and musical, to get it right.” There was also “Workin’ On Myself,” an anthemic, horn-led number that set the triumphant tone for what “Just Be A Better Person” would hold. “Once I wrote ‘Workin’ On Myself,’ I realized that this would be the theme of the project,” he says. Getting the call to be on Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment’s “Go” also formed what would follow.

But what precipitated that growth was the end of a four-and-a-half-year relationship documented on album cut “4 Year Interlude.” He says of the relationship’s demise, “I was stuck and complacent and didn’t focus on my music enough. You need to give time to yourself before you can dedicate it to another person.” The growth he experienced over the past year and a half, constantly writing, regrouping and re-centering himself, proves wonders once you listen to the project, his most fully realized artistic statement yet. But that personal growth wasn’t what inspired the title: It was a fan who DM’d him on Twitter, saying his music “drives me to just be a better person.” That message served as Golden’s inspiration to keep going.

Now months out from moving to Pilsen, he’s ready to see if this project will have the same impact on his fans that this city had on him: “I want people to take away from it the positive vibes, like what Chance did on ‘Coloring Book,’ and that I could bring it to life in my own way and find my own lane.”

@joshhterry | jterry@redeyechicago.com