ZZ Ward happily straddles musical worlds

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      As a kid growing up in Roseburg, Oregon, Zsuzsanna Eva Ward found herself pulled in two musical directions. Around the house, her dad played plenty of the old-school blues legends who eventually would inspire the likes of the White Stripes and the Black Keys. Her older brothers, meanwhile, had a serious thing for old-school rap, which led the woman now known as ZZ Ward to make frequent pilgrimages to Portland, where she performed at open-mike hip-hop nights.

      So which genre ultimately won the now L.A.–based artist’s heart? For the answer, check out her debut album, Til the Casket Drops. Or, if you prefer, simply ask her about her dog.

      “She’s a border terrier,” Ward says proudly, on the line from her apartment in the City of Angels. “Her name is Muddy Waters—Miss Muddy Waters. Muddy Waters’s real name was McKinley Morganfield, and, no offence to the real Muddy, but that’s a little feminine. So sometimes when she gets really crazy, because she’s a puppy, I call her McKinley Morganfield.”

      That her dog isn’t called Ice Cube, Lil John, or Ghostface Killah is a pretty good tip-off as to which main road ZZ Ward headed down when she decided to embark on a career in music. Til the Casket Drops plants its flag closer to the Crossroads than Compton. That isn’t to say, however, that she delivers her blues straight up. Suggesting you can take the girl out of the hip-hop clubs but you can’t take the hip-hop clubs out of the girl, Ward proves to be anything but a purist.

      While she’s got the kind of pipes that make her a natural mix-tape bridge between Janis Joplin and Melissa Etheridge (check out “Home”), Ward offers more than the sound of gin mills and tin-shack speakeasies. There’s a decidedly urban electro-beat undertow to “Blue Eyes Blind” and “Til the Casket Drops”, while “Cryin Wolf” has Kendrick Lamar parachuting in mid-song for a street-savvy rap interlude.

      “I love hip-hop and I love beats—it all makes me feel a certain way,” Ward says. “When you are making music, you have to make music that you would want to listen to. I don’t know if everyone has that opportunity. I’m sure there are some country artists who love hip-hop, but now that they’re in country, that might not be their sound. But for me, I got to make the album that I really wanted to make, and some people don’t get that chance. Here I am, a white girl doing blues with hip-hop. That’s what I love—I grew up listening to Nas and Jay Z, OutKast, and Biggie Smalls.”

      Straddling two worlds has presented some challenges, she admits, partly because crowds at traditional blues festivals generally don’t know Eazy-E from an Easy-Bake Oven and don’t always take kindly to those who do.

      “I mostly just do my show, but if it’s a family-type place or concert, I don’t say certain words,” she says with a laugh.

      Still, most audiences aren’t doing a lot of complaining. When not making the late-night rounds on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Ward has been touring hard, to the point where she feels like she’s living a dream. Like most musicians, she did her fair share of playing in places where the barstaff outnumbered the paying customers on many nights, but those days finally seem to be behind her.

      “What’s really cool now is actually having fans,” she says. “That’s such an amazing experience—having people that know your record. I grew up having to win over people whenever I could, singing in bars. We still have to do that sometimes now, but not nearly as much.”

      The only downside of this, she admits, is that she’s never home these days, the travel demands of the job having caught her a bit by surprise. Helping ease the burden when she gets the blues, though, is a faithful companion, known, depending on how things are going, as either Muddy Waters or McKinley Morganfield.

      “I used to constantly feel, when I was on the road, that I was just trying to get through it to get home,” Ward says. “Now that I have my dog and she’s on the road with me, I really don’t feel like that so much anymore.”

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