Matt Ward’s heart belongs to Texas and South Australia
Country singer Matt Ward is inspired by the South Australian desert and its people but some of his heart belongs to Texas where they love him right back.
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When Matt Ward was looking for inspiration for his country songs, he only had to look at his own life.
He’s fallen in love with a West Texas girl who broke his heart.
He met another girl in Austin, one he’d end up making music with, after her guitar broke and he loaned her his so she could play her show.
Perhaps most influentially, he’s spent countless nights under the stars of the South Australian desert.
“Through my career in natural resource management I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the Far West and Far North-West of the state,” the Adelaide muso says.
“I’ve done a lot of long road trips, and up in the APY Lands there are a lot of old Aboriginal men who love their country music.”
All of this inspiration has culminated in Ward’s first album, Heartland, 10 songs packed with traditional country feel and good old fashioned Australian storytelling.
Recorded by respected producer Matt Fell at Love Hz Studios in Sydney, Heartland channels the great storytellers of country music – Steve Earle, Jason Isbell, Ryan Adams and, of course, Adelaide’s own Paul Kelly.
“We listen to American music about American places, and there’s a romanticism to that,” Ward says.
“In Australia, it’s a little difficult to capture that in a non-corny way, but Paul Kelly can do that.”
Listening to Heartland, drenched in pedal steel guitar and the spirit of honky tonk, you’d be forgiven for thinking Ward must’ve grown up listening to the country legends.
You’d be wrong.
“I grew up in the Dire Straits era,” he admits.
“Then I got into Australian rock like Midnight Oil, Hoodoo Gurus, Hunters and Collectors, Rat Cat. The usual stuff.”
It was Neil Young’s 1972 classic Harvest that turned Ward, and millions of others, on to a country sound.
“It’s not a record I listen to much these days, but it definitely expanded my horizons,” he says.
And just like his songwriting heroes, Ward likes to base his tales on real life.
Better Man, for example, is the story of tuning in to the ABC while working “way off the track” in the state’s northwestern desert and hearing a tale that kicked him in the guts.
“I was out north of Penong, actually searching for mallee fowl, and this guy rang up (ABC radio host) Macca,” Ward says.
“He had stayed on the farm for too long, even after everything had gone to s--t. Eventually, his wife and kids moved to Melbourne and they lost the farm, and he was just driving trucks and trying to get by.
“He was crying on the radio, suicidal. It really left a mark, so I wrote that song about him.”
The theme of wanting to stay connected to the land is repeated on the record’s second single Back to the Country, a tale of three mates working office jobs and just yearning to get some dirt under their nails.
And while Ward’s music is undeniably Australian (there’s no forced Southern twang here), he’s also found inspiration in another wide open frontier land – Texas.
It’s the home of the outlaw country he loves so much, and his travels there have been productive in helping him hone his craft.
“The community in Austin has been really supportive,” Wards says.
“And they’re supportive of all their musicians. When I play there, they love my storytelling, and they understand my storytelling.”
And it was on the streets of Adelaide’s sister city Austin, outside the famous Continental Club, that Ward met rising outlaw star and soon-to-be collaborator Bonnie Montgomery.
“Bonnie is from Arkansas, and she’s now based in Austin,” he says. “I met her outside the Continental when her guitar broke and I offered to lend her mine.
“We became friends, then we realised we knew some of the same people in West Texas, then I found out that she had lived in Adelaide and once had a boyfriend here.”
After playing gigs together in the States, Ward asked Montgomery to contribute to Heartland.
The result is Washed Up, a track about the tensions of love, vices and family.
Country to the end.
HEAR: Heartland, out now, mattwardmusic.com
SEE: Matt Ward and Harvey Russell, Guitars in Bars, July 26, Stein’s Taphouse, Nuriootpa and July 27, Grace Emily Hotel
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