Northeast Ohio's Terry Lee Goffee has honored Johnny Cash in concert for decades

Jul. 21—Terry Lee Goffee sounds convincingly enough like Johnny Cash merely speaking over the phone.

We're not suggesting Lorain County resident Goffee — who recently moved with his wife, Kay, from the Wellington area to LaGrange — is doing an impersonation of the late, great country-music icon during this conversation.

However, for 22 years as of this month — beginning with a concert in the park in Madison in Lake County — Goffee has performed Cash tribute concerts, helping to keep alive the spirit of the man who gave the world, "Walk the Line," "Ring of Fire," "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" and myriad other classics.

He'll add to his tally with a handful of Northeast Ohio shows, beginning with a performance July 25 at the Mentor Civic Amphitheater as part of the city's Mentor Rocks concert series and continuing with shows July 28 at Medina honky-tonk the Thirsty Cowboy, July 29 at Harpersfield Vineyard in Ashtabula County and Aug. 24 at the Lorain County Fair in Wellington.

"Well, I don't know that I was the world's biggest Johnny Cash fan," Goffee says when asked that question, "but certainly in the top 10 percent, I would guess. Been a Johnny Cash fan since I was about 6 or 7 years old, (when) my dad started bringing those records home."

Born in Cambridge, Ohio, Goffee for a while chased a country-music career in Florida. It was later, he says, when working at Oberlin radio station WOBL, that he noticed an uptick in tribute acts but none focused on the "Man in Black."

"That afternoon, I told my wife, 'I think I'm going to start a Johnny Cash tribute band and see if there's any interest in it,'" he says. "And here we are 22 years later, so obviously there was not only interest in it but a market for it."

Although he performs solo a handful of times per year, as he'll do at the aforementioned show at theGeneva-area winery, he typically plays with a full backing band.

"I don't know exactly how many songs we know as a band but enough to satisfy the hardcore fans — some of the album cuts and deeper cuts," he says. "But also we fit in just about every number-one record and most of the top-40s."

And, yes, he has his own top track.

"For some reason, my favorite Johnny Cash song has always been a song called 'Give My Love to Rose,' which was not a huge hit for him back in the day. But there was just something about the storyline there that just kind of, you know, hit something inside me," Goffee says. "Anytime when I'd be picking at my guitar when my kids were small, (I) always ended up singing 'Give My Love to Rose,' so they could probably recite that song in their sleep."

Like many, Goffee also loves the music Cash made with producer Rick Rubin in the years leading up to his death in 2003, albums headlined by memorable covers of contemporary rock songs such as Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" and Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus."

"It was just phenomenal to listen to him interpret a lot of that modern material and make it sound like he wrote most of (the songs) himself," Goffee says. "There's just so much honesty and emotion in his voice and in his delivery — I mean, not only in those songs, but I mean through his entire career."

Goffee and his band regularly venture beyond Ohio's borders. At this moment, he's just back from a swing that took them through Wisconsin, Michigan and Kentucky, and he was set to head back to Michigan for a show two days before the Mentor gig.

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Although he typically plays in the Midwest and eastern part of the country, there have been jaunts to Arizona, California and points an ocean away.

"We've actually done six tours of Ireland," he says. "Back in 2019, before the pandemic, we did 17 shows in Ireland and then went immediately to Germany for 12 shows."

He still enjoys traveling, he says, but allows that, as he's getting older, it's becoming a bit more of a grind.

"It's a necessary evil," he says. "The nice thing is we do have a pretty nice tour bus, so it's not like six of us are jammed into a '59 Pontiac."

In the time since he noticed the increase in tribute acts on the music scene more than two decades ago, countless others have emerged, including others celebrating Cash.

"I remember telling my wife early on, 'You know, when Johnny Cash passes, you're gonna have Johnny Cash tribute bands crawling out of the woodwork," Goffee says. "And that kind of happened."

Tribute musicians are like those in any profession, he says.

"The cream's gonna rise to the top, so you've got some excellent tributes out there, and you've got some, you know, middle-of-the-road (acts) and you've got some (that) I wonder how they ever get rebooked. So it just runs the gamut, the whole spectrum."

He understands picking it up as a hobby as a way to make a few dollars but says those acts aren't likely to endure.

"I don't think the passion comes through to the audience," he says. "I think that passion has to be there, and the audience has to feel that."

As you'd expect, Goffee has earned his share of compliments over the decades, two recurring ones meaning the most to him.

The first is the person who tells him something along the lines of that he got engaged to his wife the year Cash's "Walk the Line" came out and that "You brought a lot of really good memories tonight."

He adds, "And then on the other side of the coin, I will get 18-, 20-, 25-year-olds (who will) come up to me and say, 'I never got to see Johnny Cash in person, but I feel like I was at a Johnny Cash concert tonight.'"

Learn more about Terry Lee Goffee at terryleegoffee.com.