ZZ Ward was brought up on the blues records her parents played in her home in Roseburg.
She developed her own voice as a teenager playing whatever gigs she could get in Eugene and tapping into the the city's hip-hop scene. She is now a renowned musician who weaves those influences together and has collaborated with the likes of Aloe Blacc, Fantastic Negrito and Kendrick Lamar.
Her latest album is called Dirty Shine and she's back in Oregon playing a show at the Hult Center in Eugene on November 13th. I spoke with ZZ Ward about her journey so far.
The following transcription of our conversation had been edited for clarity.
Love Cross: Your family moved to Roseburg when you were a child and you were inspired by your dad's blues albums and you even performed in his blues band. Could you talk about that experience?
ZZ Ward: When my dad and my mom moved us to Oregon from Pennsylvania, I was about eight years old and I'm not sure how he got into it, but he got into the blues. And my parents were always playing Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and Big Mama Thornton and a lot of blues around the house.
Then he got into a blues cover band and I started singing in that band and then he was like, "you should get up and sing a song" when I was like, I don't know, 12 or something like that.
Cross: Then by the time you were 16, you were writing your own songs, and you were branching out and performing around Roseburg and expanding into Eugene, right?
Ward: I wanted to play my singer-songwriter stuff and I was like, too scared to play it in my hometown. So I would go to Eugene and play pizza parlors, and I would busk on the street and play my music. And I would also go to some underage clubs and I saw that there was a hip-hop scene going on in Eugene. And there were some rap artists that were working around up there and performing.
And I was like, “hey, I have to work with you guys. Like I sing” and they were like, “Hey, crazy little girl, whatever.”
Then I just kept annoying them and then they let me sing on their records and we started playing around, we opened for rappers like Mike Jones, Naughty by Nature and Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony.
So that's just some different places that I could play music and I hadn't really bridged the gap; I was doing blues and I was doing hip-hop but then it was separate, you know?
Cross: We got a preview of Dirty Shine last year with the song “Tin Cups” that features Alo Blacc. He seems like the perfect compliment to your voice for that song. Tell me about working with him.
Ward: I love Alo. I just saw him at the Bourbon and Beyond Fest in Kentucky. He was out there watching Bruno Mars and I was also going to catch that concert on the main stage at night after our shows. He's a lovely person and he's really, really talented and I was so happy; he sounds so fantastic on that song. I've known him for like six years, And so, it just had to be the right time for us to come together and work together.
Cross: Your debut album in 2012, Till the Casket Drops included the songs “365 Days” and “Put the Gun Down.” They were both in the top 10 of the adult alternative airplay charts. Then 2017’s The Storm reached number one on the Billboard Blues chart. Your new album Dirty Shine just released in September, this is your first album from your own independent label, Dirty Shine Records. What’s different about making your own album on your independent label compared to making those earlier albums?
Ward: I mean, it's very different. This album is a collection of songs that I had recorded already while I was signed, and my label was cool enough to let me release those. So I had the chance to put out songs that I never had gotten to put out.
But I think the greatest gift that I have now is such creative freedom, which is really nice because I think sometimes if you take too long to finish an album, It's like you could overthink things till the cows come home.
Cross: You've produced a series of videos that are really more like mini films that you work on with your brother, the writer, director and actor Adam William Ward. You seem to be having a lot of fun with themes from the Old West but also with zombies, werewolves and more like in the video for “Forget About Us.”
Ward: I've always had this fascination with sci-fi and, you know, kind of like “thriller” stuff.
I don't really like horror very much, I'm too empathetic to watch horror movies. But I do really like spooky stuff and I love Quentin Tarantino, So I’m definitely inspired by that.
I really kind of dove into that world with “Sex and Stardust,” where I was really like, I'm gonna write this out, and that was actually the first video that I wrote the treatment for.
Cross: It's apparent that family plays a pretty big role in your professional endeavors, with your brother doing the videos for the Dirty Shine album, you're married to Grammy Award winning producer and writer E. Kidd Bogart, you have a two year old son who's on tour with you and you're currently expecting your second child. What's it like to have a toddler on tour?
Ward: I love it, but I also love for him to be experiencing a nontraditional sort of lifestyle. Because I think that we raise kids, we put them in school, they go to college, they get a job, but it doesn't always have to be like that. There are different ways. My life was not like that. I mean, I went to school, I went to college, I got a degree and then I was like, I want to do music. Like what do I, what am I doing? Going to college? There are just different ways, to make your own path.
