Jim Ward

Mon 1st Aug, 2011 in Features

Jim Ward is a man of many talents, and of many colours. He was a founding member of seminal post-punk At the Drive-In and played with them for ten years, before the band broke up leaving Ward to form Sparta, while former bandmates Omar and Cedric became The Mars Volta. Ward made three acclaimed albums with Sparta, then formed alt-country side project Sleepercar and now Jim’s finally out on his own, showing what may just be his true colours with a new album, Quiet In The Valley, On The Shores The End Begins. The disc is a collection of acoustic EPs recorded over a number of years and you’ll have a chance to hear them live when he tours in August.

Hi, Jim? How you doing man? Where are you and what time is it?
I’m in Portland, Oregon, it’s 6.30 at night.

You seem to have a love affair with Australia, what is it about Australia that keeps you coming back?
I think that it’s different enough from West Texas, obviously it’s fun to go somewhere totally different in the world, but it’s still really comfortable for me. I’ve always felt really comfortable in Australia.

Do you have certain places you visit every time you come down or…?
I think ever since we were in At the Drive-In, we were in this weird spot in our life, which was about to end for a while, and now it’s the one place where everything was great. It’s funny too ‘cos they talk about it in that Radiohead movie Meeting People is Easy, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. they’re in the US then they’re in Japan and everything’s real gloomy and they’re getting super famous and they don’t know if they like it.

But then I read this interview with one of them afterwards, and he was saying “Yeah, if they’d continued filming right after that, we went to Australia and just had a fuckin’ blast, and everything was great.” It just seems like one of those places in the world where it’s just cool when you’re there, everything is good. Nobody takes shit too seriously, it’s not like someone’s trying to stab you in the back to get ahead. People actually help you out ‘cos it’s the right thing to do.. I’ve only had one bad experience there.

What was it?
The problem with being American in the last 10 years is that for a while George Bush was our President, and when you would go places people would try and take that out on you. So I was in a bar in Sydney and somebody was being real fucking rude to me because I was from America, and it used to be okay because you could say you were from Texas and people considered Texas kinda different than America, people would see Texas as being some kind of mythical place. But Bush is from Texas so then when you say you’re from Texas people think you’re, you know, a shit. This guy was saying some shit he shouldn’t have said, but it was cool, there were tons of Americans in the bar ‘cos it was a Big Day Out thing. I was telling him ‘Hey man, you need to chill out, I’m not fucking Bush. You need to calm down, there’s like 50 of us.’ So he calmed the fuck down it was alright. Usually everyone’s cool.

Do you think Obama’s doing enough?
You know what, I don’t think anybody’s doing enough. It doesn’t seem like the world’s getting better, does it? We all have a lot of faith, but our whole system’s so fucked up, I don’t know how much can be done. They’ll do their best I’m sure.

Tell me about your new album.
This one was a five year process, I’d make an EP and do some other shit for a while then I’d make another EP then do some other stuff. I tend to write ten times what I ever record, then I go back and work on it and tweak it. In Sparta and At the Drive-In, Tony [Hajjar] was the real driver, he really stays on you and encourages you and bounces ideas off you and is always ready to keep going, so you tend to do stuff faster. When you’re by yourself, I always tell him it’s like being in a row boat compared to a power boat. He’s my engine, that guy. So when he’s not around it’s like a leisurely stroll, it takes a lot longer to get stuff done.

What stuff did you get up to when you weren’t recording?
Pretty much worrying about the world. I’ve spent so much time on planes and in buses and hotel rooms and back stages, it’s nice to kind of have what I think is a normal sort of life. It needed to be balanced out there, I was stuck in a groove for a long time and it was nice to step out of that. I got to start a business, and learn a bunch of stuff I didn’t know before, and learn about myself. And to just be home and be married, have a house and do the shit that you do.

Do you feel more pressure for it to do well now that the album’s all you essentially, or do you feel like most of the stuff you’ve done has come from you anyway?
No, definitely when it’s a band situation it’s not just you, even if you’re the primary songwriter on a certain song, it’s still everybody’s personalities on there. When you’re doing the solo stuff it’s kind of weird because you feel like maybe it’s not going to have the same scope, then you try ten times harder to make the scope there. I think that’s why I write ten times what I record, because to me it has to be so good in order to get there. I don’t have someone there that can encourage me and say “No, no, it is good, don’t worry”, either I think it’s worth it or it’s not worth it.That’s the ying and yang of that one.

Your sound has come along way from heavy Sparta songs like Taking Back Control, from what I’ve heard of the new album it’s a big departure from that, what’s changed in your life?
I don’t think it’s the necessarily the sound of what my life is doing. Maybe the next record I write will be the heaviest record I’ve ever written. I think it’s just where you’re at and what you’re trying to get to. What I was trying to do was to do the opposite of the big rehearsed rock machine I was in, which isn’t a diss at all, I love my band and I love what we did, but I needed a break from it and I needed to get out on my own. I needed to do a bit of failing, I needed to not be able to write good songs for a while, I needed to be able to push myself and just live a little bit outside of my comfort zone. I think you grow and you mellow, but to be honest I think now I’m at the point where within the next year I’ll make a really heavy record. Now I feel like I miss that. The grass is always greener.

Sparta’s been on hiatus for a while now, what happens when a band goes on hiatus I mean do you still call the guys regularly or…?
We keep up, sometimes it takes one guy saying “I’m burned out” for someone else to say “so am I, I just didn’t want to say it.” In the case of At the Drive-In there were quite a few of us that were ready to not do it any more. In the case of Sparta it was definitely me wanting to take a break, and I don’t think anybody necessarily was upset by it. You sorta feel guilty, you’re telling everybody “here’s what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna change the plan…” I’m sorry I got distracted for a second there, some guy just walked past me with a cat on his shoulder. That’s pretty awesome. I want a cat on my shoulder! That’s awesome. Can I go to Australia with a cat? Is that legal?

I think so, I’ll have to check the legal technicalities of it.
I’m going to bring a cat with me, that’ll be my tour mate.

We’ll change the posters so it’s “Jim Ward… and cat.”
Maybe I’ll put a cat on my rider, that way everywhere I go I’ll have a cat I can hang out with.

I was going to make a pussy joke but I’ll leave it.
(laughs)

But all the guys are cool now right, there’s no resentment?
No, we’ll make a record. People start having kids, opening their businesses, going through their next stage of life. We’re all entering our thirties; we need a chance to catch up with life. We’ve been on the road for 10 years. It’s good to slow down, all our partners and lovers are moving on in life, and we need to catch up. If you don’t do that you’re trying to live as a 21 year old forever and it’s not too much fun after a while.