The Pawnshop Troubadour
M. Ward likes old things. He digs the now-hip eastern Portland, Oregon, neighborhood where he lives with his wife for the Victorian architecture and affordable prices. He loves William Blake, Walt Whitman and the Beats, but he sees no reason to keep up with contemporary authors because, he says, “I don’t want too many modern voices infiltrating my bubble.” And the 35-year-old singer-songwriter -born Matt Ward — plays a $50 pawn-shop guitar he’s had for almost a decade and is philosophically opposed to using digital equipment to make his albums. “I feel like if you’re going to spend your life trying to create something durable, you want the foundation to be sturdy,” he says, carefully measuring words that drizzle out in a laconic velvet croak. “It maybe sounds overly intellectual, but I’ve never looked at music as a vehicle for some great angst that I need the world to hear. I look at music more as ‘Let’s roll the dice and see if you can create one small thing that’s going to outlive you.’ That’s my greatest ally in making records: the passing of time.”
The passing of time is a theme that looms large on his brilliant sixth album, Hold Time, due out this month. On songs such as “For Beginners,” “To Save Me” and his cover of Buddy Holly’s “Rave On,” Ward continues exploring what has always been his most fertile terrain: the strummy sweet spot where haunting, understated folk textures meet classic Brill Building pop melodies. His albums prize atmosphere over fidelity, nuance over bombast, as if Ward appreciates the cobwebs as much as what they’re stuck to. And, slowly but surely over the past decade, through word of mouth and opening slots for the likes of Norah Jones, My Morning Jacket and Bright Eyes, Ward has established himself as a career artist with both indie cred and mainstream appeal — the singer-songwriter’s singer-songwriter. “He does this magic trick where he pretends like he doesn’t know what’s going on, but he does,” says My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James, who is working on an album with Ward and Conor Oberst for their “Monsters of Folk” side project — kind of an indie-rock Traveling Wilburys. He is always in control. lie’s turned out to be a total gangster and one of my favorite friends. I also feel incredibly blessed I get to make music with him.”
Ward’s hero is George Harrison, and his Beatles fixation began early: When he got his first acoustic guitar at 14, Ward set the goal of learning to play every song in The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook, an intimidatingly thick 400-page guitar-tab guide to almost every song the group ever performed. “I wanted to play like George I Harrison,” he says. “Nothing much has changed, really. When stuff hits you at such a young age, it stays with you forever.”
Beyond that, Ward had no formal training on guitar. “Oh, I was studious with my Beatles book,” he says. “I learned every chord that, in my opinion, needs to be learned, from that book.” The first song Ward could play well was the 1963 “I Want to Hold Your Hand” B side “This Boy.” He started writing his own tunes shortly thereafter, doing what came most naturally: rearranging Beatles chords and recording the results on his four-track, listening to “I Will” and “Julia” — the last two songs on Side One of the White Album — over and over in hopes of decrypting their unique magic. “They’re mainly guitars and voice, but they’re strange constructions,” he explains. “Those two songs just hypnotized me. But the most important influences, for me, are not just these songs that I grew up listening to but the sounds and the atmosphere of those old recordings, and to try to update them is an endlessly amazing challenge.”
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