On June 11 Jim Ward (At The Drive In/Sparta/Sleepercar) will release a solo album Daggers, via Dine Alone Records. Today he reveals another peak of the LP by way of new single “Foreign Currency.”   Of the song Jim shares, “I think that when everything stopped in 2020 and there weren’t anymore plans and I couldn’t make any plans and there was no going anywhere, anyhow no matter what. I finally stopped and looked back and started to really unpack some things emotionally and mentally that I had put in a shelf way in the back. A lot of that became blueprints for this records lyrics and themes – Foreign Currency dives right into the realization that the result of living without being totally honest with yourself first is going to hurt the ones you love the most. Sometimes it takes a lockdown, a guitar and some real honest alone time to get to the bottom of things.”

Jim Ward has played in a slew of monumental bands, from the iconic post-hardcore band At The Drive-In to Sparta, as well his alt-country project, Sleepercar. “I’ve always used music as an outlet for anxiety and frustration,” notes Ward, and in fact, it’s this healing power of music, Ward offers, that led him to Daggers. “When my world has upheaval, it becomes about doing the work in front of me.”

While Daggers is officially credited as a solo work, and Ward never entered the room with any of his collaborators due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he’s effusive in his praise for them: notably the twin team of Incubus bassist Ben Kenney and Thursday drummer Tucker Rule, both of whom took Ward’s guitar riffs and helped propel them into fully fleshed-out songs. “My friends did this for the pure love of making music with a friend,” he says of Kenney and Rule. “There’s no higher compliment. I don’t know how I’ll repay them.”

Ward calls Daggers his most hopeful record to date. “Reality is OK,” he says. “You can’t change the past, but you can take those lessons and you can do better.. I’ve always considered songwriting as a journey. It can guide me in the way I’m going forward.”

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Photo Courtesy: Christ Chavez