Frequent Scene contributor Chris Parker filed this entry.

Matt or M. Ward has been making music as a solo artist for a decade since the demise of his trio, Rodriguez. During that time his stark haunted folk-blues sound has grown richer and more robust, culminating with arguably his most beautiful and certainly most baroque album, Hold Time. Last year he completed and toured in support of She & Him, a project with actress/singer Zooey Deschanel, and he's awaiting the September self-titled debut of Monsters of Folk, his supergroup with My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and Saddle Creek über-producer Mike Mogis (Cursive, The Faint, Rilo Kiley). We caught up with Ward at his Portland, Ore., home.

Nashville Cream: What were some of your initial influences that got you involved in music?

M. Ward: I think that part of it was playing guitar along with the Beatles songs. That's how I learned to play the guitar, going through Beatles anthologies. That's how I discovered chord progressions, and how to play songs.

NC: I understand that around that time in high school was when you got your first four-track and you also discovered SST records [home of the Minutemen, Husker Du and Black Flag, among others].

MW: I was discovering all of these things at the same time. The first shows I ever saw were fIREHOSE shows in L.A., and that made a big impact. Hearing Sonic Youth prompted me to buy an electric guitar. Before that I just had an acoustic guitar. Between SST, The Beatles and the four-track, you get a pretty good picture of where my head was at the time.

NC: It feels like there's a growing presence across the albums. Where early albums may have been a little more minimal and atmospheric, there seems to have been more details and a more wrought quality about them.

MW: I think it's safe to say I'm slowly coming out of my shell. I started out just playing guitar, and not singing much, and whenever I make a record I'm learning new ways of using the voice. So I think it gives off the appearance that I'm out of my shell, but I'm very comfortable halfway hidden inside those things.

NC: I understand you started the new album in one direction and then pitched it. How did that happen, and how does that relate to how you usually work.

MW: Normally it takes me about a year or two to make a record. This one was no different. It's just for the first time I thought I was finished, and I went through all those phases, even up to mastering, thinking I was finished, but I was not. So normally those little checkpoints in my mind are crossed earlier in the game, but this one, just happened later.

NC: How much of that has to do with what feels like more lavish production and more orchestral detail?

MW: I'm constantly learning about new instruments. If I had to point to two things as to why the records are changing their sound over the years. The first one is that my influences are growing, and second one is that I'm learning more about instruments I've never dreamed of using. Like string instruments are still - I feel like a kid in a candy store. It's just a process of experimenting and learning as you go.

NC: I understand you fooled around with some "cheap" instruments, which I've heard from other musicians can give you some interesting, unusual sounds.

MW: Yeah, and as I've been working with strings and more orchestral instruments, I've missed the instruments I grew up four-tracking with, when I was younger. So I had the idea for this new record of balancing out these new-found instruments with these old sounds that I've grown up with and I feel have a place in music. Cheap keyboards, cheap guitars and cheap microphones.

NC: That's interesting because you grew up to some extent honoring these old folk and blues sounds that came before you.

MW: Yeah, absolutely. Listening to the Carter Family records, I put the sound of Maybelle Carter's guitar on a hugely high pedestal. She did not obtain that sound with a $1000 guitar. So, that's a good example.

NC: A few years ago you wrote the album Transistor Radio. I wondered how you feel about the radio now, and the idea an entire generation kind of grown up without being connected to that.

MW: When I first started touring in 2000, I had a really naïve vision of music, and radio. But I'm learning every day, and when I started going to different radio stations across the country, I realized that radio's still an incredible place to learn about new music. I think that the radio stations that are breaking the most ground are the independent radio stations, but there are great examples of all kinds of radio out there. It just takes a little hunting.

NC: What about this generation that finds their music in other ways?

MW: I'm not against MP3s or Itunes, or any of that, but my only concern is that people continue to buy records, and pay for people to write the songs. I think that whether the next generation likes it or not, they're going to hear a song on the radio. I think it's going to inspire them to learn more about radio.

NC: What's the biggest reward that came out of your experience doing She & Him with Zooey Deschanel?

MW: Well, you know we're still in the middle of it. We're working on the next record. I'm constantly learning from working with Zooey. Her songwriting is like no one else, and her voice is like no one else. We're really excited to finish this next record.

NC: As I understand it it's a lot more collaborative than some of the other things you've worked on in the past.

MW: We landed ever since we started on the perfect collaboration. She writes the songs and I sort of take it from there. It's been a perfect chemistry.

NC: Does that mean she gives you a sketch and you color in the rest of the details?

MW: That's it exactly. She gives me a demo, normally just voice and piano, and then I'll produce it and add the arrangements, and take it from there.

NC: Is there a relief to only be responsible or allowed to focus fully on just the arrangements, as opposed to voice, lyrics, and bringing a song across?

MW: Absolutely, both in the studio and in performance, I've been able to focus on the arrangements. And I've never done live backing vocal harmonies before the She & Him project. So I'm learning to think about that.

NC: What can you tell me about the new Monsters of Folk album and that process. I understand it was a lengthy one.

MW: It's a trick getting us all in the same zip code, but we were able to finish the record. Off and on it took maybe a year and a half. But we just found spaces in our calendar that worked for everybody and met in Omaha for a couple weeks and met in California for a couple weeks. It's coming out in September and we can't wait to hear it.

NC: Each of you has a distinct style , how does the process work as far as writing songs, and how do those styles mesh?

MW: The best way I can describe it is by comparing it to a dialogue where a friend finishes your sentence for you.

NC: So there was a lot of understanding where each other was? There was a good camaraderie creatively?

MW: Yeah absolutely. It's a beautiful thing when you have a collaboration where you trust the other person to finish your sentence for you. Between the four of us we performed everything in the record. I think we were all sort of dying of curiosity what we'd do if we were left to our own devices. And we're really happy with the results. We're going to do a little tour in the fall.

NC: How do the songs come to the group? Do each of you bring something in a raw state and work them up together?

MW: We bring in these raw sort of skeletons, and we all flesh them out together.

(Playing Tuesday, 28th at Mercy Lounge w/The Moaners.)