Journeyman James

The Good Fight

Jan 13, 2026

The Good Fight is a song that I began a while ago and put away for a bit. It's a bit of a melancholy song, and maybe not what I really wanted to follow up Homecoming with, but it's a song that really has been on my mind recently and one that I wanted to finally finish.

This song somehow seems even more relevant today than when I began it, which I guess is good for the song but not such a great commentary on the state of the world. It's not a protest song, but it's a song about protest. When the song was first written, the battle imagery was metaphorical, but we live in strange times.

Instrumentation is electric and acoustic guitar, piano, and shaker.

A day after posting to SoundCloud, I received this message from a lister. Now, for all I know she's a bot, but I'm going to choose to believe that I made an actual connection to an actual person. It makes creating music a lot more rewarding that way!

Many thanks to Coleen Colon for her vocal contributions to the song, which really elevates it. Please enjoy...

Listen to "The Good Fight"

Lyrics:

You're crawling in from today's battlefield,
You've got the tears and rage from wounds that never seem to heal
And I wonder every time you do, how long can this go on before you're through?

And though I say the war's not yours to fight
I know you'll not be done as long as there are wrongs to right
so the one atop the barricade and the one down in the trench is always you

"I have fought the good fight
I have finished the race
I have fought the good fight
I have kept the faith."

So once again, you'll die on a hill
leading the battle charge to change the world through force of will
'cause no price is too high to pay when you fight for what is right and what is true

So I'll be here to dry the tears that come at night
Pick you up, dust you off, see you go and charge again into the fight
to struggle in the wars that you can't win but you can't ever bear to lose

"I have fought the good fight (keep your head down now)
I have finished the race (but there's always one more)
I have fought the good fight (keep your head down now)
I have kept the faith."

Compared to some other gear-repair posts I’ve done, this one is really pretty basic, but as someone who is often trying to repair something for the very first time, I always appreciate if I can find out ahead of time what’s involved and how difficult it is. So in that spirit, here’s a very short how-to.

The good news is that this is a very simple fix: it will take you less than fifteen minutes. All you need is a small-ish Phillips-head screwdriver and some WD-40.

Step 1 (of 3) is to open the case. You do this by unfastening all of the screws on the bottom side of the keyboard. Actually, you probably only need to remove the screws along the perimeter. there are a half-dozen or so screws more in the center of the keyboard, but it doesn’t seem that they connect to the upper housing. I did remove all of the screws and didn’t have a problem, but I’d try just starting with the perimeter screws because I think that’s all you need.

All of the screws are of the same size and length, so you do not need to keep track of which came out of which hole.

Once the screws are removed, lift the housing from the front. Pay attention to the two ribbon cables that connect the lower housing to the upper housing. You do not need to disconnect the cables; they are long enough that you can lift the upper housing with the cables in place.

The squeaking sound you hear when you press your problem key is caused by friction between the key and the spring that provides resistance to your playing (and, of course, returning the key to its starting position). A tiny bit of WD-40 sprayed on the spring should quickly resolve the issue.

Play each key repeatedly and check to make sure it’s not squeaking. If it is, give it a shot of WD-40. Do not overuse the spray.

When all the keys are quiet, lower the upper housing and replace all of the screws you removed in step 1. That’s it. I did have a squeak return after about a year, but this process is so easy I did not really mind repeating it. I suppose you could consider other lubricants if this fix doesn’t last long enough for you, but I have no specific recommendation.

Best of luck!