Accoustic based, with slide guitar, organ and accordian flavours to enhance the intelligent, thoughtful lyrics of a writer born of a cowboy father and bowling champ mother.

12 MP3 Songs in this album (45:18) !
Related styles: BLUES: Acoustic Blues, COUNTRY: Country Blues

People who are interested in Tom Waits Leonard Cohen James McMurtry should consider this download.


Details:
Ken Ward, a Nova Scotian resident for the past 32 years, grew up on a wheat farm in Manitoba. His father was a cowboy and his mother was a bowling champion. He first left home at the age of eight, travelling by train to live in Ottawa with his mother's family, a colourful clan of misfits and petty criminals. Over the next 10 years, Ken struggled through school and family misfortunes, including his father's suicide when Ken, the oldest if four kids, was just 16. Two years later, he left home for good, working first as a valuation clerk in an insurance company, then as a clothing salesman, a rough carpenter, a cook, a fork-lift operator, eventually leaving Ottawa for Victoria and Toronto before moving to Halifax in 1976. For the past 25 years, he has worked as a letter-carrier.

In his early 20's, Ken began to write nonsense verse and to draw, eventually having two books of poetry for kids published by Annick Press (Canadian publisher-of-the-year a few months before a contract was signed). Book tours followed, along with workshops and teaching writing classes. Even though he had no background in the visual arts, Ken was accepted into the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (the pre-eminent art school in North America at the time) in 1977, studying painting, sculpture, video, drawing and art history, graduating in 1981 with a BFA. He returned 10 years later to complete a Masters degree in Art Education: his thesis focused on a three-stage theory of the creative process. Thirty years of art-making has included the painting series 'Hearts of Gold' and an ongoing conceptual art project entitled 'the Dead Nows', began in 1977 and continued to present.

Ken took up playing accoustic guitar on his fiftieth birthday, ready for a new creative challenge. Years of creative activiy had instilled in him discipline and focus, which, combined with his passion for music and love of new directions, gave him the impetus to begin working hard at music-making. Within a few years, he was playing music with friends, finding his voice and beginning to write songs. In giving up visual art and poetry for songwriting and playing, the immediate results, 'Love Happens', would appear to indicate that Ken has made a good creative choice in persuing his musical ambitions.