THE INTERVIEW: Good Old War

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Even though they are an acoustic leaning folk sounding trio—Good Old War isn’t a political message. In fact, it’s how the band views the song writing process. I was able to chat with Keith Goodwin (guitar/vocals) by phone while the band was at home on some down time.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

No problem.

First off, congratulations on the success you guys have had so far—I’d actually like to start with that—how does it feel, what are your thoughts?

It’s all happened so fast…

Yeah, the album came out

Nov. 4 and its been constant touring since.

Let’s backtrack—how’d all this get started?

Myself and Tim (Arnold, drums) had been in a band called Days Away —and it wasn’t really working out how we wanted it to, and were looking for something else. So when it came to a close, I wanted to do something pretty much totally opposite of what Days Away had been. Our manager Cathy wanted me to do something acoustic/solo, which sounded good—I have a pretty soft voice and found it harder to sing over the full band type thing anyway. I knew Dan (Schwartz, guitar/vocals) from home, and I can’t play guitar like he can, and thought making music with him would be pretty sweet, and he also was looking for something new. We really just wanted to make the best music possible and felt this was the best way to do that. So we actually went on tour with Anthony Green, who we’d known from high school, and we were his band, and also opened for him, which was alot of fun.

How was that?

Great—playing the full 2 hours is really great, we love making and playing music, and when you’re on tour, you sort of get bored, as you see the same bands every night, so this kept us busy, and got our chops up. It was fun as we got to play a totally different type of music—I even did some keys.

How about the recording process?

Yeah, we actually demoed the songs 3 different ways and ultimately decided just to do the album live with one mic and our instruments—we were three guys with our instruments, we didn’t want to make a massive sound we couldn’t recreate live. It was the most painless recording process I’ve ever been a part of. We put 13 tracks down in 5 days.

You’re about to hit the road with Gaslight Anthem and Heartless Bastards…

Yeah, we’re looking forward to that.

How’d that come about?

Gaslight approached us and we were all about it. So far, I’m really into Heartless Bastards.

What’s next?

Well we were up in the mountains and put together an EP, which we’re sending off to get mixed.

Summer’s a great time to tour, any summer tour plans?

I was wondering that myself—no one’s told me yet I’m sure there are things in the works.

You say no one’s told you yet—how’s that feel, I mean you reach a point in your career, where someone else organizes all this for you?

It can be a really good thing if you trust the people behind you. We have a really great manager, who we’ve known since our time in Days Away. Before her in Days Away we went through alot of really bad managers and labels, we met her when we were opening for Rx Bandits, and have been working with her ever since.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me, and best of luck.

No problem, thanks.

TJ Olsen

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