Words matter. These are the best M. Ward Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
One of the great things about music is that it has the capability of time travel – you smell a certain smell in the room and it takes you back to your childhood. I feel like music is able to do that, and it happens to me all the time.
My grandparents are from Mexico, so I grew up with great Mexican food.
I don’t like the way recording to digital sounds. Most of the time, when I’m recording to two-inch tape, I still have a romantic vision of how songs sounded coming out of the radio when I was younger, and how they sounded coming out of my little four-track cassette player.
When you work on a record for three years, it’s a great sense of relief when it is finally out in the world. It just feels good.
I have a very strong belief in God.
I love the sound of Elmore James, the sound early guitarists like him got just by using minimal means.
I always prefer other people’s interpretations over my own, so I’m not very quick to make explicit what exactly a song or record is about.
I wouldn’t want to cover a Hank Williams song in a country-western way. It doesn’t occur to me instinctually to re-create productions. I’m interested in re-creating songs. Putting different clothes on them.
I’m somebody who doesn’t feel the need to be in the driver’s seat all the time. I appreciate the perspective of being in the passenger’s seat sometimes, and I feel fortunate for that because I’ve learned a lot from that perspective.
I definitely don’t see myself as much of a singer, because my upbringing is really based around the guitar, learning chord progressions and that sort of thing. So the singing aspect of what I do has been a secondary adventure.
I got this Christmas gift with the entire Beatles catalog. I had fun trying to duplicate what I was hearing on these records, only using the instruments I had at hand – an acoustic guitar, and that’s all. It was endlessly amusing to me to try to imitate John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s harmonies using the guitar.
Certain things you have to stumble on to. They can’t be preprogrammed.
I love the idea that I planned my career. I did not. It started out by getting invitations from artists that I really love and respect, to share a stage… I’ve been very lucky in that I haven’t had to create a five-year plan. It’s evolved.
When I first started making music, it was learning other people’s songs and putting them onto four-track. Like Beatles songs and stuff. When I started writing, I used the singing side of the production as a vehicle for melody and lyrical ideas.
It’s a luxury to not have to just be performing with other people to have my music heard.
