The songwriting process can be a very isolating and mysterious one with listeners sometimes just guessing at the actual meaning behind lyrics and finding meanings and references unique to their own lives.
Songwriter M. Ward welcomes this experience for his fans and despite his almost whole lifetime dedicated to songwriting, he is open to others creating their own stories within his.
“Other people’s interpretations are always more interesting than my own so I will adopt them quite often. It keeps the songs from being put into a box of, ‘this song can only be about my experience’ which doesn’t really sound that interesting to me,” he says cooly.
M. Ward will return to Houston to perform at The Heights Theater on Saturday, September 28 with support from Melbourne-based band, Folk Bitch Trio. His backing band is also made up of Australians and Ward is looking forward to exploring and showing the Aussies around Houston.
“This will be our forth tour together, Australia twice and Europe once, and this will be their first tour in America so I’m looking forward to seeing their energy being in a brand new place.”
Ward has put out 13 albums with his first being Duet For Guitars # 2 in 1999 and has been writing songs since high school. His longtime label Merge Records encouraged him to put out a collection of his songs and the result is his recent release, For Beginners: The Best of M. Ward, available now.
The 14-track collection includes songs from a range of four releases that have been remixed as well as a brand new song featuring Folk Bitch Trio on his take of “Cry”, a song written by Churchill Kohlman and made popular by Johnnie Ray in 1951.
“I think the idea was to have some sort of a summation of my first decade of making records and I liked the idea and the challenge of it,” says Ward. “To try to summarize in some way ten years through music, it’s a great challenge.”
“To try to summarize in some way ten years through music, it’s a great challenge.”
“It was not easy,” says Ward of the process. “There was a lot of brainstorming, a lot of discussions about what’s going to make it and what’s going to make the record too long. There was a lot of back and forth but no screaming matches, we all got along very peacefully and were really happy with the result.”
For Beginners: The Best of M. Ward starts with the eternally wise and sweetly sad “Chinese Translation” and moves smoothly through the sonic map of his career ending with the new track.
“We had designed all these songs in a completely different environment,” describes Ward. “It was great to be able to see what would happen if this was one actual record instead of a compilation of a dozen records so we treated it as its own record.”
Ward and his team built up the track list that reflects his lifelong love of radio programming. He recalls growing up in a large family in Los Angeles where the family radio could dial into a variety of genres of music, having something for everyone.
“I first discovered music through the radio and it was before I knew what music was or radio technology was and there was a mystery to it that I still believe in and I feel like it’s still a human connection,” he says.
“I still use the radio program or the idea of a radio program as an ideal for how a record can feel,” says Ward who says he hopes the artform remains alive in the modern world.
Ward doesn’t only focus on his own records and has proved time and time again to be a great collaborator. He has produced a number of albums for others including the legendary Mavis Staples on her 2016 album Dedicated.
Ward is also well known for his work with Hollywood darling Zooey Deschanel on their delightful project She & Him as well as his supergroup Monsters Of Folk with Connor Oberst and Mike Mogis from Bright Eyes, Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Will Johnson from Centro-matic.
He teases about an upcoming project where he will take on a new creative identity in another collaboration type project but keeps tight-lipped on the details only exposing that fans can expect the project to roll out in the next few months.
“I’ve been very fortunate to have very talented friends and one of my favorite things is collaborating with talented people,” says Ward. “The songwriting process is normally very isolating, I do it all on my own and that’s just how I’ve always done it and I still love that side of the craft.”
Ward starts all of his projects with analog recordings but is open to and constantly exploring how technology and his classic sound can live in harmony and build upon each other. Like his approach to song interpretation and as evidenced by his large song catalog, he seems to always be open to the input of others.
“When it comes time to recording and producing records, I love bouncing ideas off of other people and bringing their x factors into whatever song I’m working on and that’s another thing that I hope never ends.”
M. Ward will perform with Folk Bitch Trio on Saturday, September 28 at The Heights Theater, 339 W 19th. Doors at 7 p.m. $28-52.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
