Part 1

Name: Matthew Stephen Ward aka M. Ward
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Nationality: American
Current release: The new M. Ward album supernatural thing is out via Anti.

If you enjoyed this M. Ward interview and would like to find out more about his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.   



I read an interesting quote where you said that you "couldn't imagine just treating the writing side of things as a job. But you know, some people do, and more power to them." Why more power to those who can treat making music as a job?

The process of writing is so closely related to performing for me, and to recording and to production. It's all one big ball.

So if I was somebody who was just writing songs, and gave them to other people to sing, I mean … that's an old fashioned tradition. Leiber and Stoller wrote so many songs for Elvis Presley and all these other guys. But they never had to sing them.

It's not something you see very much anymore. Unless it's big pop stars, right?

Yes, maybe someone like Katy Perry writes some of her own songs. But many of the huge stars in the pop music world rely on these people who are just writing songs. And yes, more power to them, I can respect that.

But for me, it's hard to consider narrowing writing and producing and performing down that to just one thing.

I think you once said that you had a couple of 1000s of songs finished. Did you mean that literally?

I did, actually there's well over 1000 songs in my notes. Quite often when something is done or appears to be done, I will live with it for a while until I realise its value or lack thereof. Normally, if it has a value, I'll take it for myself.

But there have been times where I've written for other people. I produced a record for Mavis Staples a few years ago and that's an example of me giving her a few a couple of songs of that effort.



Where does the impulse to create come from?

I think if you digest enough - anything, paintings, books, music - and if you wait long enough, it will come out of you in some way. Whether or not you want it to.

I think since I was a baby, I've been digesting music in a very deep way. In fact, I've been digesting it since before I even knew what music was. And when I started to play guitar, I suddenly found a way to expel some of these things that I've been taking in.

The guitar is still a mystery to me, but it was demystified a bit when I was in high school and I realised writing songs is actually not as hard as it seems. Decoding these Beatles songs that I learned when I was in high school is actually not that hard. And so that gave me the confidence to start writing on my own.

That's intriguing, that you find that writing songs is not that hard, but the guitar is still a mystery. I think most people, even most artists, would probably see that the other way around.

Quite possibly, yeah, I think the minute I know all there is to know about guitars would probably be the moment I'm gonna start not being interested in them anymore. As long as the mystery of what you're doing is still alive, then I think the passion is still there to continue to explore and deconstruct what you've done in the past. It's a never ending journey.

You've said about the new album, supernatural thing, that some of it is based on dream images. Dreaming is also a form of digesting.

True. I use the images from my dreams all the time in songwriting. I think that they are gifts from the gods when your subconscious is trying to communicate something to you that your brain doesn't fully understand and wanst to come to know. I'm fascinated by that mystery of interpreting dreams.

I think there's a place for music to overlap with understanding your dreams, and exploring them. There's a lot of therapy that I get from music. If I had a therapist, I think we would be talking about my dreams a lot. And just by using music, I can do it myself.

Is the music already in the dreams, too?

There's images and sometimes there's lyrics. In one dream, there were vocals in my head about Elvis. He said to me, "Go anywhere you please." It was around the time of the first vaccine being rolled out. And I took about 30 minutes and wrote the song "supernatural thing" very quickly. It turned into the first thing on this record.



What's your relationship with Elvis as a songwriter?

Of course, most of his songs were written by other people. And yet, my relationship to his music is huge. I've loved his music ever since I was a baby.

Elvis's music is indebted to African-American music. I love exploring his catalogue just as much as I love exploring the people that influenced him. Chuck Berry is actually an even bigger influence for me because Berry is one of my favourite guitar players. There is a whole world of great musical accomplishments.  

Dring the Black Lives Matter movement in America, I was becoming aware of how so many people in America are ignorant to that fact, and who aren't realising that most of the music they listen to is indebted to the accomplishments of African Americans. And that's where another song on the record, "Mr. Dixon" is coming from.
 


So let's say you have a dream image. Does the image sort of guide you into the song?

If I'm drawn to it, then I'll know without even thinking. Obviously, I dream some things that have absolutely no real artistic interest. Just silly, bizarre things. But then every once in a while you wake up in the morning thinking about what you just dreamt, and it stays with you. And so for some reason, that seems to have a deeper impact.

I'll write these images down, keep a dream journal. And quite often, those turn into songs

What makes lyrics good?

I think if they make you feel something. If they make you feel absolutely nothing, then they're probably not very good, or they're cliche. That's the short answer.

I was thinking about this question because you said David Bowie is such a huge part of your your life. But his way of writing lyrics is very different from yours. Take the lyrics from the Bowie song you're covering on supernatural thing, "I can't give everything away": "Seeing more and feeling less / Saying no but meaning yes / This is all I ever meant / That's the message that I sent.“ There are no images or stories there, but it's so incredibly powerful as well.

Yes. What a beautiful way of finishing your career, right. And as I understand it, that's the last song he ever made for us on his last record. It's an amazing swan song.



Why did you leave the lyrics out and turn it into an instrumental?

The thing I love the most is the melody of that song. So I wanted to strip the vocals away and just expose the melody. It was an experiment to strip away the big production elements that he has on his version. When I hear his music, I hear a lot of depth and different ways of readdressing the song, deconstructing it.

It's the same way with Daniel Johnston. There are so many songs of his that the world has never heard. I love the process of shining some light on these songs that I have a passion for.



My layman's theory of why you took away the vocals was that because the lyrics are so deeply moving that they might be too close to your heart maybe.

Yeah, yeah. I did try a lot of different ways to present that song. But this one seems to be to be the most profound to me. I love the saxophone that's on this as well, which my friend played.

Which is another reference to Bowie.

I mean, it's inspired by Blackstar, the musicianship on that record. And it just seemed like a melody that some of my favourite saxophone players would play, John Coltrane even. That's what the experiment was based around.

Not all of your pieces have lyrics. Would you say that instrumentals and traditional songs come from different places?

I see the instrumentals as a breath or a rest in the big picture. If you have a song on your record without vocals, then the listener is even more ready for the song with vocals that follows it. I've always loved films with intermissions that have just music to set the tone.

I listened to a lot of Neil Marconi and a lot of John Coltrane. So that inspires me a lot.

Just like some of the great guitar players. John Fahey never sang a word. I listened to a lot of instrumental music.