Rockezine.com interview with Sparta on May 28, 2002

with Jim Ward on May 28, 2002

Emo band Sparta hails from El Paso, Texas, USA. Three out of five members used to play in At The Drive-In. With Sparta they’ve taken a different direction. Currently they’re touring to promote their debut mini album Austere. Prior to their gig in Amsterdam I talked to Jim Ward, guitarist and singer. He’s chain smoking Marlboro Lights but seems to be quite at ease. Although it’s not very strong he does have that typical Texan accent that adds a little melody to his speech.
		Sparta’s European tour has only just begun but it’s good to hear that it started well. It’s going well! We’ve had about five, six gigs I think. They were all pretty good. It’s weird man, kind of going on a first date you know. It’s a little awkward sometimes because people really kind of know us because some of us were in At The Drive-In. So they’re sort of seeing what this is about and it’s not the same. It’s mellower. So it’s kinda like just meeting people for the first time with a different band and stuff.
		It seems to work as there’s a real buzz about the band. There are quite a few people showing up at gigs and, for example, there’s already a German language website and a tour in Australia. That [the German website] is super cool. (He pauses) I’m really happy with the way things are. And we don’t mind working, so it’s good to come over and play for whoever comes. There’s been nights where it’s fifty or sixty or seventy people and nights where there’s a hundred fifty. It’s ok. Believe me we’re grateful. It’s the same way in the US too, some shows were five hundred, some were thirty. It doesn’t matter.
		About the Australian tour: We were supposed to go in July but we had to cancel it. Because we’re gonna go with Weezer all over the US for five weeks. So we’re going back to Australia in October. So unfortunately we had to move it. But it’s a big chance. It should be fun. We’re playing all amphitheaters, 15,000/20,000 people. Should be cool. I mean we’ll see. If they hate us it will suck.
		Sparta played the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, USA this year. SXSW is an international festival that gives both well known bands and new talent a chance to play for the industry as well as regular music fans. Austin is sort of close to our home so there’s a lot of our friends there. And we were already signed. We hadn’t finished our full length record. It should be out in late August. But it’s good to go and show the press what we were doing, the other labels and guitar companies. It’s just business really. But every time we play SXSW we always play a show for our fans. We play one for the industry and the next day we play one for free at a club. We rent out a club, play for free and buy a bunch of beers so everyone can have beer for free. [Laughing:] If they don’t love you, buy ‘ em. Buy ‘em off with beer.
		The inevitable subject, At The Drive-In…. Will you ever tour with The Mars Volta? No, I don’t think so. I think if we could still tour together we would be in At The Drive In. I think it’s pretty… well, you know… We’ll leave it at that. Who knows, never say never. I should say that. But I don’t see why I wouldn’t really. What ever happens happens. [Grinning:] It’s not on my number one list of things to do.
		Pretty soon after the split there was Sparta. There was no extra drive to do this quickly. No, I took three months off. I’ve been making records seven years so three months off was pretty boring. To me it doesn’t matter what the name of the band is or who’s playing in it. It’s just that I make records. At The Drive-In was fun, it was great. I did it for a long time, but I was tired of it and I took three months off by reason of the band breaking up. And after three months I was really bored of sitting on the couch.
		Although it seems Jim is the band leader Sparta are a democratic band. We all write. I don’t think I would ever be in a band where I was the main songwriter. I think it would be really crap. You gotta have other people around you to bounce off of. I write a lot but everybody writes a lot. We just funnel it into one thing. It’s a 100% democratic band. Three out of four are from At The Drive-In. Paul played bass in At The Drive-In. He plays guitar in Sparta and Tony plays drums for both. We have a new bass player [Matt]. He’s from our home town and we’ve known him forever. [Smiling:]It’s a small town. And live we have another person on stage that plays keyboard and guitar as well. Cause I play keyboards on the record. He plays them live so I can just concentrate on singing. It’s sort of new to me. [Laughing] I also play guitar and it’s hard.
		The members of Sparta have very different tastes in music. According to their website influences vary from early Metallica to the Cure For me as a writer I can’t help being influenced by what I listen to. So if you listen to a lot of things you have a lot of takes on it. For me as a songwriter it’s the same as for a painter. You sort of put everything together. You see five buildings you like you make into one building on canvas. So the more I listen to and the more I explore musically, the better I’ll be at writing I think. The more records I’ll make the better I’ll get. I just hope I have a long recording life so I can get better at it. Like every artist I think I’m not good enough yet. It’s one of those things when you finish a record and think ‘Wow! Great! What an accomplishment’ and then you listen to it a month later and you’re like: ‘God, this sucks! This is horrible.’ It’s part of growing you know. You want to be better than the last album you did.
		One of the reasons At The Drive-In split up is because of the stress during touring. Jim’s not sure whether that problem can be prevented. I don’t know. That’s a hard question. Each of us is different of course. There’s guys in the band who can do it every day, for ever. They have their own way of dealing with it and I don’t understand it. Cause I fall apart. I have a hard time. I think it’s just your personality. I have a hard time dealing with stress. I do my best to just have fun and not take it very seriously. I take the music seriously but all the other stuff… I try not to take it too seriously. But I’m gonna have to build up a wall of tolerance where I can say I have to take care of myself. Now I have a family, I got married since At The Drive-In, and that’s to me the new priority. It’s not music, music, music. But it adds some stress because now I have a wife and we have to pay the bills and I’m 10,000 miles away.
		There are ways to cope with tour life. Having learned from the past comfort has become an important factor. What other people think has become less important. One thing is no matter what, even if it’s expensive, even if I don’t make money, we travel well. We travel on a bus, we travel in a comfortable vehicle. Like in the US we tour in a Winnebago. And if the label puts pressure on me I tell them to fuck off. I’m not gonna worry about it. Because I don’t care how many fucking records we sell. It’s not important to me. That doesn’t redeem me as an artist. And I can’t care what other bands or people think of me. Because the more you worry about that the more fucked up you get.
		For years I worried what everyone thought. But it’s a big thing getting over that. I don’t care if people like my band and I don’t care if reviewers think we suck. But we came from this band that was touted as the next like…whatever. And now I’m in a band that’s not the next whatever. So I can either worry about it and be bothered because I’m not in a band that’s the savior of fucking rock ‘n roll or whatever. It’s actually way more fucking fun because I don’t care anymore. I have a way more distance from that sort of thing.
		Still Jim worries about this new approach to playing in a band. There’s the nights when I just totally freak out. I’m like, ‘Fuck nobody’s gonna like our band, nobody’s come to the shows and I’m such a failure’ and sort of get in to this self facing bullshit.
		Sparta’s not a political band but they do have their causes. There’s a really good cause where I’m from called Casa Amiga. It’s a women’s house basically. A rape crisis center in Mexico. We’re taking off a day from the Weezer tour to fly to El Paso and play for a benefit. You know I have more power in my home town than I’ve ever had in my life. I can get onto talk shows. Next month I have three weeks off from Sparta and the whole time I’m just doing press for the benefit.
		During touring there’s not much time to go out and really see Europe. I do occasionally. But for my own mental health I tend to spend much time just alone. Like backstage or… I have a lot of friends over here from touring so many years, maybe hang out with them. I love going out to a bar or walking around. But definitely sightseeing and stuff I’d rather save for when I can come with my lady. I like hanging out. I’m a total people person. That’s why I don’t mind doing interviews.
		Sparta’s label Dreamworks is part of Universal, a major. Jim is not afraid of Universal trying to influence the band. Oh, they do it all the time. The only way to answer that really is… I made a conscious choice to be on a major label. For certain reasons, like health insurance. Because where I live I can’t get health insurance unless I pay a shit load of money or become part of the artist union, which you have to be on a major for. Which is stupid but that’s how it is. One reason was that. Two is distribution. Three is they have massive amounts of money. And the more money they have the more money I can use to do what I wanna do. But it [being on a major label] is definitely a give and take thing, sometimes you have to do stuff that you’re not so down with.
		I think in the long run it’s for the better because the more people that I can get to playing music, the happier I am. Plus the other thing is you can either avoid it and hate it or you can go inside of it and try and make it better for the next generation of bands. I’m not scared of them. I have no problem saying no. We already had one massive fight at our label and we won. That’s how it is. The worst thing that’s gonna happen is that they drop you. That’s the worst thing, the very worst, which isn’t that bad. You just go somewhere else and you put out the record yourself.
		Jim is happy with the way things are going. Traveling around the world, recording and releasing records. I’ve written songs since I was twelve years old and I’ve been traveling all over the world. I thank whatever power that made my life possible every day. Him or her or it or whatever. I’m fantastically grateful for the life I lead. I’ve gotten to see thirty something countries and I’m 25. I’m totally content.
		The last song of the mini album Austere, Echodyne Harmonic, is completely electronic. Sparta’s planning more experiments for the future. There’s no remixes on the album. I think we’re gonna save that for the in between albums stuff. We’re doing an entire album of remixes. We have every song of this recording session on a computer so that we can go back and fuck it up. Or give it to other people to make remixes. Of course we have people in mind but realistically? I don’t know. We’ll see how the record does. I always wanted to work with Goldie myself. DJ Shadow would be like… Pfff! Fucking amazing. Unrealistically I’d like to see what somebody like Bjork would do. But that will never happen. We’re still a rock band. I don’t think we’ll ever be in the really cool school of hip bands.
		Sparta’s got plenty of plans for the future. The record comes out in August in the US. The single and the video come out in the US in July. We’ll be on tour with Weezer for five weeks. We’ll be here [in Holland] right after that for Lowlands and Reading and Leeds in England. And right after that go back to the US and tour again. So, tour, tour, tour.
		(Walter de Korver)