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"FacebookPinterest\n\nIn 2004, Portland-based troubadour Matt Ward (aka M. Ward) brought his act on the road with Conor Oberst (the artist formerly known as Bright Eyes), producer and pedal steel juggernaut Mike Mogis, and My Morning Jacket front man, Jim James. In September, the super group, operating under the moniker Monsters of Folk put out their first album, a superb fifteen track effort that has earned them comparisons to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. During a recent thirty song, three-hour performance at New York's Beacon Theater the band lived up to their name. Two days later, we got M. Ward on the phone to give us the low down about life on the road, the band's sartorial choices, and what he plans on doing after the tour is over.\n\n GQ: How the hell did you guys all get together? \n\n M. Ward: It first started when Bright Eyes invited myself and Jim James to try an experimental tour where all three acts would be collaborating together on stage instead of having a defined headliner, support act and everything sort of was born out of that experiment.\n\nGQ: Where did the name Monsters of Folk come from? \n\n M. Ward: It's shrouded in mystery. We don't know who came up with it exactly, It was just short hand for our four names. It gets old trying to say all four names.\n\nGQ: I had just imagined that it was a play on the old Monsters of Rock tour.\n\n M. Ward: Yeah. That might have something to do with it.\n\nGQ: How did the song writing occur? What was the creative process?\n\n M. Ward: Part of the idea was for Jim, Conner, and myself to come in with five unfinished songs and we would all collaborate on them and finish them together. We'd play all the instruments ourselves\u2014we wouldn't hire any session dudes.\n\nGQ: Of the five that you brought in, what was the favorite of the five? What was the strongest?\n\n M. Ward: I can't say one that I thought was the strongest. I can say one that I thought needed the most help from my friends. It's called \"Good Way,\" and it was a very, very bare bones idea. It was like a sketch that my pen was running out of ink on. If it had spent one extra day in the sun it would've completely disappeared. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I think it brings a little bit of levity to record.\n\nGQ: This tour is a month and a half long. So what are you doing when you're not on stage?\n\n M. Ward: One of my favorite ways to mentally take a break from music and touring is reading and going to museums and sleeping.\n\nGQ: Have you seen any stand out exhibits on this tour?\n\n M. Ward: The first thing that comes is this museum in Atlanta called the High Museum of Art\u2014I'd never been there before\u2014and they had a special room dedicated to Howard Finster. I think the man is a genius. They also dedicated an exhibit to Gerhard Richter, a German artist. And last week I saw the Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim.\n\nGQ: What are you going to do after the tour is over?\n\n M. Ward: Right now I'm finishing up an album with Zooey [Deschanel]. There will be a She &amp;amp; Him album sometime in 2010.\n\nGQ: When I went to see the show at the Beacon Theater in New York, I noticed that everybody on stage was dressed in a suit. Who's idea was that?\n\n M. Ward: I'm going to take a guess and say it was Conor's idea. But I could be wrong. It could have been Jim's idea.\n\nGQ: But definitely not your idea?\n\n M. Ward: [Laughs] That's right. Definitely not my idea. But I love how it looks.\n\nGQ: It brought an element to the show that clothing choices usually don't. I felt like I was watching The Last Waltz. I felt like it brought out a kind of confidence that you don't get from jeans and t-shirts or jeans and flannels. \n\n M. Ward: I absolutely agree with you. It makes you feel a little different when you and your friends are dressed up. We knew going into it that this was going to be a special tour. It's not something that happens every year or even every couple of years, so we wanted to kick it up a notch.\n\nGQ: One of the songs that I thought was really striking during the live show was \"Slow Down Jo.\" It seems to be about somebody who's lost their way, is maybe living a little too fast. What's the story behind that song?\n\n M. Ward: I'd like to think it's about somebody else. It probably is. Sometimes I think it's about myself. I don't know. The lyrics are very old. [Long pause.] I'm pretty sure it's about somebody else, now that I think about it. And I'm almost certain I know who it is. I'm attracted to the idea that fiction is more non-fiction than we know. And non-fiction is more fictional than we understand."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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