I was chatting with a coworker earlier this week about DIY as a music genre. In my eyes, it’s music that uses unconventional objects to replace instruments (pots and pans, sand in a jar, empty glass bottles). But it's perhaps more broadly understood to be when an artist does everything within the musical creation process, from writing and recording to creating merch and distributing CDs. The latter perspective is how I came across Samuel Locke Ward, an avant-pop maker in Iowa City.
Locke Ward has been producing music for 30 years. He’s always been focused on creativity in multiple ways: cartoon drawing, home recording, cassette making — you get the idea. But songwriting and performing has a special place in his heart.
“I’ve always been more of a songwriter than a drawer,” Locke Ward said. “I started making music when I was in my teens and putting out cassettes. I like putting out records.”
Locke Ward has come out with two different records this year: Acidic Banjo Delight, a solo album, and Guillotine Girls, a collaboration with Minneapolis band Boy Dirt Car.
Acidic Banjo Delight is a collection of banjo-protest songs, a project that came into fruition as Locke Ward watched the world grow more and more dreary.
“I’m always just coughing up whatever is in my head at the moment. The first idea I had was [when] I was listening to Dead Kennedys,” Locke Ward said. “Political music ages like milk; I was going back through the Dead Kennedys’ albums and I was like, ‘all of these albums are relevant still.’”
Earlier this month, he performed on Garden Songs, a Tiny Desk-esque series created by Aaron Longoria of Early Girl. It’s the perfect Iowa City DIY collaboration, as Longoria is well-known in the IC creative scenes as well.
“I feel like there’s some real bad voices in Iowa right now, which is a big inspiration for me to just be loud and say things that I feel are common sense,” Locke Ward said. “Values I’ve always had: that everyone should be treated equally and fairly and kindly. I just say whatever I’m thinking. And if all I’m thinking is being outraged, then I’m writing about being outraged.”
As for Boy Dirt Car, he’s known the band for decades and was working on Guillotine Girls with them for over 15 years.
“We started recording it in my basement here in Iowa City,” Locke Ward said. “Every few years I’d go and do more stuff on it, add more words. And [when I finished] I sent it to Minneapolis and each member of the band all went through and recorded their parts … one at a time.”
The Postal Service (Jimmy Tamorello, Jenny Lewis, and Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard) used this same approach: one person makes a piece of a song, they literally ship it off (as a CD or otherwise) to their collaborator(s) to add their parts, and in that way, the final product is a partnership that spans across space and time.
“I call it Pen Pal bands,” Locke Ward said. “I do this with Jad Fair — lives down in Austin. We started doing those over the pandemic and he’d have me send him one a week. I would send him a song, just music, and then he would put his vocals on it, and then I do my vocals in response to his vocals.”
It’s become increasingly accessible to work with artists like this, especially in the digital age. It’s a very DIY mindset, something Ward is automatically drawn to.
“Doing it yourself is really doing it myself,” Locke Ward said. “Everyone who’s in the DIY scene [is] just people who are makers. If you’re around people who are making things, it inspires you to see the joy of creation, to want to make things yourself.”
His other project, called Devotional Mind Worm, has also been in the works the past couple of years. Starting in 2021, whenever he puts out a new album, he employs record pressing companies to make limited physical copies of the media.
“Acidic Banjo Delight is actually the seventh one of those,” Locke Ward said. “My favorite [record pressing plant] is Audio Geography [in Providence, RI]. This guy, Tyler [Bisson], he’s my go-to guy because his stuff always sounds good and he tolerates my weird stuff.”
That’s just how Locke Ward rolls. At any given moment, he’s either making, connecting or performing.
“That’s what’s really exciting to me, is always writing, always moving forward, always changing and growing and doing things that are exciting to me at the moment,” Locke Ward said. “And if I’m playing old things, I’m hoping I’m doing it in an exciting new way.”
Locke Ward held an album release show at The Greenhouse in Iowa City, with acoustic performances from Early Girl and Dr. Princess (Rachel Feldmann of Lipstick Homicide). He doesn’t have any more shows in Iowa for August, but he's always out and about in his community!
