Checking In With… Keith Goodwin of Good Old War

In times of crisis, it’s more important than ever to check in on your friends and loved ones. Here at XPN, we’re Checking In With our extended musical family to see how they’re holding up during the Coronavirus quarantine…and what music has kept them grounded. Today, John Vettese chats with Keith Goodwin of Good Old War.

The Coronavirus quarantine gave Good Old War singer-guitarist Keith Goodwin bit of a creative spurt. He’d been working on music all year, with his band taking some time off in the wake of its 2018 dual EP release Part of Me / Part Of You, and this strange shared situation we’re all in prompted him to revisit one of his recent ideas, a song called “Where Do We Go From Here.”

“It seemed kind of fitting,” Goodwin said. “I wasn’t planning on releasing anything, but I’d been working on music [with my] kids for music class, and anytime I do that during the day, I forget everything is so crazy.” It took him out of the stressful headspace of checking and refreshing Twitter all the time; it made him momentarily forget that we’re in a pandemic. “It’s good for me, it’s good for my anxiety levels, and I got this feeling ‘why not release the song, and release all the stems for it?’ So people can spend time remixing it, doing whatever they want with the pieces and get their mind off what’s going on.”

Hear more in Keith’s full Checking In conversation with me below, and peruse his picks for songs getting him through self-isolation.

Favorite Song Of All Time: “Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space” by Spiritualized

“I first heard this in a movie, I can’t remember what movie it was, and it’s always stuck with me. Any time I hear it, it gives me chills. I’m kind of an emo kid at heart, and it hits me in that spot.”

Song That Raises Your Spirits: “Bam Bam” by Sister Nancy

“I made an all-reggae playlist called Bam Bam, it’s on my Spotify. It’s got all the Rockers stuff, early Marley, and you can just throw that on in the background. I can’t tell you how many times we listened to it on tour in the van. How can you feel bad when you’re listing to good reggae?”

Song You’re Most Proud of Working On: “Where Do We Go From Here” by Keith Goodwin

“People send me their remixes, people who say they never mess with music and it’s fun to try to do that. Family members have sent me remixes, good friends sent me guitar parts to put in there, which is cool because I can take any element that people send me and use that in a new version to put out. My cousin just sent me [a remix] last night that’s like this sexy R&B [version] with lots of trap hi-hat. It’s a really cool beat, a really cool rhythm behind it that I never would have thought of, and I was like hmm, I can get behind this.”