Zach Goldbaum is about to get a taste of fame. The New York man who grew up in North Potomac and Rockville now travels the world interviewing the likes of rapper Kendrick Lamar and D.J. Khaled on a new music-focused television show premiering Tuesday night.
Noisey, a series that explores the music scene in cities from Chicago to Sao Paulo, Brazil, airs on the newly established Viceland channel Tuesdays at 10 p.m. and features Goldbaum as the host.
Though he’s been involved in documentary production with Vice, Goldbaum said his newest role is still a surprise to him.
“I don’t think I ever imagined myself hosting a television show, but I’ve wanted to be in this world,” said Goldbaum, 27, who attended Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville for two years before transferring to Interlochen Arts Academy, a Michigan boarding school. He now lives in Brooklyn.
Vice executives plucked Goldbaum from doing what he calls “grunt work” in the New York City-based company to assume the prominent role in one of its six new shows, all of which are being rolled out this week on the new network that launched Monday.
Goldbaum says he was working in Vice’s gear room, where he fixed cameras and other equipment, when he got a call from Vice executive producer Andy Capper asking about his interest in hosting the show.
“Andy Capper thought I had the right sensibility and wanted to give me a shot, which was surreal,” he said.
Goldbaum ascribed this sudden success to the connections he was able to make working in the gear room—which allowed him to meet “everybody in the company” —and to his background in acting and producing.
Goldbaum had previously worked as a production assistant for Vice, helped edit a recent documentary and made videos for Motherboard, a Vice technology website, and the sketch comedy group Upright Citizens Brigade. He also performs improv and sketch comedy and said he moved to New York City for the comedy scene there.
In addition to comedy, Goldbaum said he has always been a “music nerd” and jumped at the opportunity to pursue his interest with Noisey.
In the first episode, “Bompton,” Goldbaum travels to Compton, California, to interview Lamar and his childhood friends, neighbors and other locals. Goldbaum said what separates Noisey from other music shows is its focus on how larger, community issues affect musicians and others interviewed for the show.
Goldbaum interviews Kendrick Lamar in the first episode of Noisey. Credit: Vice
“We’re using music as an entry point for these different communities and highlighting the social issues each one is facing,” he said.
The New York Times, in its review of the new channel Sunday, wrote that Noisey is “fluidly edited and consistently interesting.”
“The most engaging sequence,” the paper wrote, “is when Mr. Goldbaum visits the grandmother of one of Mr. Lamar’s protégés, who recalls the chaos of the Rodney King riots and rejoices in the knowledge that none of her children have prison records, although most of her grandchildren do. For comic relief, there’s Mr. Goldbaum climbing a fence and looking like Bambi in the crowd at a Lamar concert.”
To produce this season’s eight episodes, Goldbaum traveled with producers and video crews to cities such as Las Vegas and London for a few weeks at a time over the course of a year. Each episode has a different feel to it because of what they discovered while visiting the locations, he said. Goldbaum said the production of each episode is a collaborative effort.
In the year of filming, Goldbaum said certain moments stand out in his memory, like talking to the rapper Rick Ross, whom he describes as “very personable,” in his Florida restaurant, or discussing Jamaica’s troubled past and smoking with local artists on a Caribbean beach.
Goldbaum said he’s never felt out of place while visiting remote locales, in part because his upbringing in Montgomery County was in a diverse community. He said he grew up in a family of New York Jews living between Puerto Rican, Korean and Bolivian neighbors.
“When we go to these places, I don’t feel like it’s necessarily culture shock, it feels like a real connection,” he said.
Goldbaum said he hopes people watch Noisey as a companion to listening to music and to discover additional information that can expand their appreciation.
“We’re super fans,” he said, “and we hope people can have that same experience watching the show.”
