Jim Ward didn’t plan on making another Sparta record. He just wanted to track some drums.
“I told myself we were just going to record bass and drums at Sonic Ranch,” he says now, laughing. “And by Monday I told the manager, ‘I’ve got two vocals left. The record’s done.’ I’ve never made a record that fast in my life.”
Trust the River arrived after a 14-year gap, a pandemic, a personal rebirth, and a complete redefinition of what “Sparta” even means. The last proper LP (Threes) came out in 2006 — back when social media was still optional, indie labels had lunch budgets, and Ward was still pretending he didn’t hate being in a democracy.
“I left Sparta because I kept losing votes,” he says bluntly. “Every time we had a decision, I was on the losing end. I just got tired of it.”
So he bailed. Started other projects. Got into solo work. Opened a restaurant. Lived. Grew up.
“I’m 43 now,” he says. “I think at 23, I’d have been losing my mind during all this pandemic stuff. Now I can just breathe through it. At least some days.”
That balance — between old scars and new wisdom — permeates the new album. Trust the River sounds nothing like Wiretap Scars, and that’s by design. It’s not about being heavy. It’s about being whole.
“People have complained it’s not ‘Sparta’ enough,” Ward shrugs. “But what does that even mean? The songs are good. That’s the only criteria now. There’s no band. It’s just me and whoever’s down to create something meaningful. That’s Sparta.”
There’s a song called “Believe” that was written ten years ago — originally intended for his Americana project Sleepercar. There’s another called “Miracle” that was barely saved from the trash heap. (Jim Atkins of Jimmy Eat World told him the original demo was “pretty bad.”)
“I trust Jim. If he says it’s bad, it’s probably bad,” Ward says. “So we scrapped it. Then later he said, ‘If you find a melody in this song, it’s a miracle.’ So that became the title.”
He laughs again. “That’s how things work now. No label pushing for singles. No one breathing down my neck. Just me, a couple friends, and someone like David Garza making magic out of chaos.”
Ah, David Garza. The producer and low-key shaman who helped shape Trust the River into something cohesive — and possibly even hopeful.
“He didn’t charge me a dime,” Ward says. “His only fee was that he gets to eat at my restaurant forever. Which he would’ve done anyway. That’s the kind of human he is.”
Garza also served as a quiet curator, helping Ward filter out the darker, heavier material that might have weighed the record down — quite literally editing out the bellyaching rock star.
“I didn’t even realize he was doing it,” Ward says. “But when I heard the finished sequence, I was like, oh, this is optimistic. This is forward-facing.”
It’s a startling shift for an artist who’s often written from the darker end of the emotional pool. But Ward isn’t hiding the bruises — just framing them differently.
“There’s always an arc in my work,” he says. “From fear to hope. Even on the artwork, there are no coincidences.”
He’s not being metaphorical. Ward points out the visual echoes between Sparta’s four album covers — curves, shadows, arcs — and marvels that even the new artwork (done by an Instagram artist in Mexico who once wrote to say his music helped her through her mother’s death) fits the pattern, unintentionally. “It just does,” he says. “There’s no coincidences.”
The same rule applies to the live show, if and when there is one. His plan, should touring resume, is to ditch the big rooms and hit tiny clubs for multiple nights — Bottom of the Hill, Mercury Lounge, the places that still smell like beer and busted monitors. “No end date,” he says. “Just play five to ten shows a month. Forever, if we want.”
And while he jokes about The Postman as a touring model, he’s deadly serious about the mission: stay small, stay connected, stay human. Fame and fortune? Never wanted them.
“They’ve only ever been shitty to me,” he says. “All I ever cared about was writing songs and recording sounds and making lyrics that meant something.”
And mental health? Don’t even get him started.
“There was a time when labels were shoving drugs and booze into our hands just to keep us compliant,” he says. “We weren’t talking about therapy. We weren’t asking about finances. You’d ask how much money the tour made and people would act like you kicked their dog.”
Now, he runs businesses. He studies numbers. He knows who’s getting paid and why. And he tells fans: get therapy. Music helps, but professionals are trained to actually help you through the mess.
“Artists are waking up to that now,” he says. “It only took 60 years.”
And for Ward, that clarity — the distance from chaos, the control over what Sparta means — has turned into his most personal record yet.
“Trust the River isn’t perfect,” he says. “It was made fast, it was made cheap, and it was made with people I love. But it’s real. And right now, that’s the only thing I give a shit about.”
No label. No band votes. No more pretending.
Just the river — and trusting where it takes you.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the tracks below.
