She & Him Interview

March 6th, 2010 • By Kelly • Interview, She & Him

BlackBook Magazine recently did an interview with Zooey and M. Ward in New York City. Don’t forget the She & Him‘s Volume Two comes out The photoshoot posted on their site has also been added to the gallery.

Teenage angst often results in bad poetry and confessional journal entries. Did you pour all of your angst into songwriting instead?
Zooey Deschanel: We traveled a lot when I was really young. I had no friends, but I had a tiny keyboard.
M. Ward: Your friend was the keyboard. I learned how to play guitar by going through the Beatles’ anthologies. Once I learned all those chords, I basically had the ammunition to destroy the competition. [Laughs.] Those are the building blocks of every great song. Whether it’s old music or new music, I hear the Beatles. Maybe I’m crazy.
ZD: I don’t think you’re crazy! I couldn’t play more than one note at a time, so that was frustrating. I later learned about chords in school, and when I got home, I started teaching myself how to play piano. Before that, I had no way of writing down the music or recording the ideas.

Does either of you recall a moment when you first felt proud enough of your music to share it?
ZD: I got a karaoke machine in high school. I used it to experiment, in a very primitive way, with multi-track recording. I remember playing those songs for my parents.
MW: You should definitely try to dig those tapes out.
ZD: I used to have so many things that have since disappeared. It was about six years ago that I started feeling comfortable enough to play my songs for a friend. I felt super-shy when I first started, but I got comfortable fast. The music is so organic, and such a true representation of myself, that it didn’t take long for me to feel really at ease.

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