Rockin’ in the Free World: The Wallflowers

8.97 By Dan Epstein for Guitar Player Magazine

At first glance, Michael Ward’s resume doesn’t remotely resemble that of a roots rocker. He conjured kaleidoscope colors with psych-poppers School of Fish, added bone-jarring crunch to John Hiatt’s Perfectly Good Guitar and cranks out all manner of noise pop with his present combo, Tiny Buddy. But looks can be deceiving. The GIT-trained guitarist cites Kiss and 70’s "outlaw country" as his initial musical inspiration. "Between Waylon Jenning’s and Ace Frehley," he laughs, "I ended up in the Wallflowers."

Filled with classic rock riffs, atmospheric slide and what Michael calls "sad cowboy songs,’ the Wallflowers’ Bringing Down the Horse [Interscope] was already half-finished when Jakob Dylan and producer T-Bone Burnett first contacted Ward. "My friend Danny Ferrington, who builds guitars out in L.A., recommended me to T-Bone," Ward says. "The band had just parted ways with their guitar player, and they were looking for someone to fill out the rest of the album. So I came in, and everything just worked out."

The Wallflowers sessions were surprisingly relaxed, Ward remembers. "T-Bone was kind of like,’Get him in there and let him do what he wants.’ I just got to do what I thought was cool. There were a few songs where they were really specific about what they wanted, though."

"Joesphine" was one of these: Ward’s mournful, vibrato-heavy lead was played to order, even though he didn’t exactly understand Dylan’s instructions. "Jakob goes, ‘You know how Robbie Robertson would play it"’ And I go, ‘Yeah, yeah!’ But I don’t know the first thing about Robbie Robertson! I thought, ‘Play something absolute polar opposite of what I would normally play.’ I took a stab at it, and he was like, ‘Perfect! That’s exactly it!’ It was really funny."

Like most of Ward’s parts, the "Joesphine" break was played on one of two mid-70s Gibson Les Paul Signature goldtops. He also played a Ferrington baritone guitar tuned down a fourth, from B to B. " I used that on a couple of songs. The rhythm guitar on the background of ‘I Wish I Felt Nothing’ is me trying to do a Waylon Jennings phase-shifter trip. I used that guitar with Hiatt quite a bit; it’s good for slide." Handling all the Wallflowers’ slide duties onstage, Ward says, can make things a little hairy at time. "I mostly play slide in standard tuning. Sometimes when we’re playing a tune, Jakob’ll say, "How about playing some slide on this?’ I wing it a lot."

For stage and studio, Ward relies on a Demeter TGA-3 75-watt tube head run through a 2x12 cabinet. "I’ve had this setup from School of Fish on. Live, I use two, slaving one off the other for more beef. Other than that, I just use standard stompboxes — flangers, whatever."

Ward has no problem reconciling the "big, huge, loud, nasty shit" of Tiny Buddy (whose Ginormous came out in ’95 on Fish of Death, with his more tasteful Wallflowers alter ego. "My styles all bled over a little bit. In one otherwise good review of a Wallflowers show, the last paragraph was like, ‘However, Michael Ward seems to forget the fact that he’s in a roots rock band, and now and again goes off on an Eddie Van Halen tangent!’ [Laughs.] But I’m definitely more into writing and playing tunes than playing solos.

What hits you about a band is their songs and their style, not how badly their guitar player can burn. From Sonic Youth to the Wallflowers to the Jesus Lizard, it’s always about the style and approach and tunes, and that’s what matters to me."