M. Ward Quotes

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 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 had the naive, simplistic idea that producers and writers and artists of the time helped in a minuscule way to change the mind-set of America.

It’s no fun for me to cover a song and produce it the exact same way as it already exists. When I hear that happening, I have to say, ‘What’s the point?

I love the sound of Elmore James, the sound early guitarists like him got just by using minimal means.

When I first started making music, it was learning other peoples 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 might be a meaningless moment, but those sparks that ignite the song…. It’s mystical maybe, those magic moments. And to make music for a living, to perform these songs over and over, you have to safeguard those sparks. If you can do that, they’ll last a lot longer.

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.

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.

The South of France is one of my favorite places in the world.

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.

I’m somebody who gets a lot of inspiration from dreams.

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.

I treat the act of making a record very much like working in a laboratory, experimenting with sounds and ideas. Whoever chooses to latch onto it, great; whoever doesn’t, that’s fine, too. The reaction always pales in comparison to the weight of the act of production.

I don’t really watch TV series because I don’t want to get hooked on them and have them suck up all my time.

The songwriting style, to me, is superior. There was a certain amount of joy in it, no matter how sad the song is. You get joy in listening to these Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison sad lyrics. I’m attracted to songs that have balance between the darks and the lights and giving them all equal opportunity.

I’ve worked with just as many talented women as I have talented men, and I feel fortunate enough to have that great balance.

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 get most of my inspiration from older records and older production styles, and that ends up rearing its head in the records that I make.