UP CLOSE WITH AUDIX ARTIST ZZ WARD

September 2015

UP CLOSE WITH AUDIX ARTIST ZZ WARD

ZZ Ward has come a long way from writing songs in her room in a rural part of Oregon-thousands of miles, in fact. The rising star has spent the past three years on a nearly non-stop tour of the U.S., with an authenticity and passion that has come to define her as a person and as an artist. She is currently touring in support of her new EP Love and War.

Her unique mix of blues and hip hop comes from the albums she grew up listening to, flavored with addictively hooky elements of pop and soul. “My parents would play a lot of blues records around the house,” she says. “Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton, Howlin’ Wolf. My brother would listen to a lot of hip-hop like Nas and Jay-Z, and I would steal his CDs too,” she adds with a laugh.

As she discusses the philosophy behind her songwriting, it’s clear that ZZ Ward is an artist who truly pours everything she is into her craft and bares her soul to her fans. “The songs I’ve written are just me talking about what’s going on in my life,” she explains. “That’s what I grew up being inspired by blues artists for-their authenticity, that they were just expressing whatever trials and tribulations they were going through. That’s what I do best, I think-writing because it’s real stuff that I’m going through in my life.”

ZZ started singing at a very young age and was known early on for her big, expressive voice. Her first lessons were from her father, also a musician and singer. “He taught me things I still use today,” she says, “like how to breathe right and how to protect my voice, to always sing with sincerity.” By age 16 she was writing her own songs, and soon after was playing guitar, an indispensable tool for her songwriting.

As her passion for making music grew, she decided the time was right to move to LA, with the support of her family. “I remember having a conversation with my mom, and she asked me what I wanted to do. I was scared to go to the city, I was in a relationship in Oregon, and I was scared to leave my hometown. And my mom was like-you just gotta go for it.” So ZZ moved down to LA, sleeping on an air mattress in her brother’s apartment for two years, living off $200 a month, and working hard to book gigs wherever she possibly could. “I paid a lot of dues. I started from the bottom and worked my way up.”

Three months after moving to LA, she got a surprise email from Evan Bogart, the GRAMMY® Award-winning songwriter, and producer who would eventually become her manager. “He heard my music on MySpace and wanted to meet with me. I played him all my songs. He loved the way I was mixing blues and hip hop together, and he thought that was something unique. It wasn’t long after that things started happening for my music.”

ZZ’s career is marked with boldness and a willingness to try new things-even to begin again when necessary. Her acclaimed debut release, 2012’s Til the Casket Drops, actually came after discarding an album project she had started in Nashville. “I scrapped the whole record. I decided to start at ground zero and just sit in my apartment and write a bunch of songs I was feeling. I wrote those 12 songs which were Til the Casket Drops, and around that time a lot of labels were starting to come out to my shows and get interested.” She signed with Hollywood Records and was soon ready to blaze her own trail in the music industry. “As an artist, you have to know what you want before anybody else will.”

Today, ZZ Ward relies implicitly on the Audix OM5 dynamic vocal microphone to handle her soul-filled, powerful vocals. “Before Audix, I struggled a lot trying to maintain my voice. It was really hard because other mics pick up everything — they pick up the cymbals, they pick up the high end, they pick up every sound in the room — so I was always frustrated.” She decided to research the mic of choice for one of her favorite singers-Bonnie Raitt. Once she found Bonnie’s sound engineer, she reached out to him online, and he led her to the OM5 vocal microphone.

“It changed my life-it’s changed everything for me. When I became a touring artist I realized I was going to have to learn how to preserve my voice if I wanted to have a long career. Finding the right microphone was half the battle. Once I found Audix, I didn’t have to compete with the other instruments on stage anymore and found the clarity I was searching for. Now I won’t play a show without it.”

ZZ Ward is currently on an extensive U.S. tour, filling venues with fans who know every word of her songs, and above all staying true to herself. “People will judge everything — what you wear, what you say,” she says. “And that’s ok. I’m not going to let that scare me out of being who I am.”

For more info on ZZ Ward, her new Love and War EP, and her upcoming full-length album This Means War, visit her online at zzward.com.

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