Bill Ward will soon release new solo music – and there’s lots of it

Bill Ward, drummer for Black Sabbath, discussed his plans to release new solo music in the upcoming months on the first episode of his new ongoing show, the LA Radio Sessions, which airs on Sundays at 10 a.m. (Pacific Time) on 99.1 KLBP-FM in Long Beach and online at KLBP.org.

We’ve been in the studio. We’ve been living in the studio, is what we’ve been doing. And we’ve got two albums that are nearly finished. And we will put them out. And we are finishing up. We’ve gotta go back in the studio in about another week. And we’ve got four days left to finish our final overdubs for the newest album that’ll be coming out. And we haven’t got it mixed yet. But we’ll get that done too.

He also spoke about the songwriting process.

I’ve just let everything go. I basically don’t give an ‘F’, and I think it shows up in the record. I don’t have anything to swagger about. I wanted to play something that plays in my heart and then comes out of my soul. I wanted to play some things that keep me awake at night. And I’ve tried to grow more as a pianist and grow more as a drummer and grow more as a bass player. So I’ve basically written a lot of the bass work and all the piano work on the new songs. And that’s been great for me. I’m trying to grow as a musician. But, like I said, I really don’t give an ‘F’ anymore in terms of being accurate about my lineage or things like that. And I’m playing probably a little more jazz than maybe I would’ve done on previous albums. I’m swearing a lot. I’m using a lot of profanity on this new record, on these new records. But the profanity seems to work really well. It’s just, like, yeah, this is what I’m saying about whatever’s in my life. It’s very heartfelt. I’ve done something where I feel like I’ve abandoned my critical self. I feel like I’ve abandoned the person that needs to be possibly afraid not to step out a little bit. So I said to that guy, ‘Listen, sit down and take a chair, ’cause we’re stepping out and we’re gonna take more risks.’ And so I’ve taken a lot more risks on these new records, going further into places. Some examples — I’ll give you one tiny bit of an example. One of the tracks on not the first album coming out, but the next album that’ll come out after that, I’m talking about when I spent time playing in the graveyards at Aston Church. When I was a child, I was a choir boy at Aston Church. Aston Church, by the way, is about 200 yards from Villa Park, which is where we’re gonna be playing in July. And I didn’t know we were gonna be playing in July when I wrote that song. I wanted to write it because I’ve been spending some time thinking about my childhood years in Aston, and I’ve been going back there. And so one of the songs is about being a child and playing in and around the graveyards. And I’ve tried to capsulize that, and I think it’s a pretty good song. And it’s still like a metal thing. My good friend Dave Lombardo is playing on that particular track. There was some drumming that I knew Dave could play a lot better than I could, so I don’t mind backing away sometimes. I play drums on pretty much — I don’t know — 80 percent of all these records I’m making, but I I love working with guest players, guest people, guest drummers, guest players, bass players, guitar players. I love that. I love being interactive with different musicians. So it’s been a blessing for me.

And about under what name the new music will be published.

Just Bill Ward. However, just to be accurate, we still have Bill Ward Band stuff that is still unreleased. And one day we’ll get it released.