Musician. Songwriter.
Singer.
Performer.
Hi, I’m Tim Ward Jr. I’m a soul-searching artist who writes, performs, and records songs for fellow seekers. Stylistically, I incorporate my love of diverse rock and popular music sounds into a blend that one well-regarded Philadelphia producer has called “humanist folk rock”.
.
Over the years, I’ve performed hundreds of times in varied settings... neighborhood bars, rooftops, churches, living rooms, community gardens, city festivals, parades, and a number of Philadelphia’s mainstay music rooms including World Cafe Live, City Winery, and Ortliebs.
​
Since self-releasing my first original EP in 2021, I've had the pleasure of opening shows for artists including Loudon Wainwright III, Deana Carter, and the Arcadian Wild. I have also had the opportunity to teach guitar, piano, voice and songcraft to dozens of developing music makers, from young ones through elder adults.
Though I’ve been developing as an artist and musician since a young age, my sonic obsession really caught flames when a family friend gifted me a cheap catalog electric guitar picked out of the debris from a house fire. Really.
Fixated on the instrument, I played obsessively in my bedroom and started lessons at a local music shop with a metalhead who challenged me early on to think and play beyond self-imposed limitations. Building from those lessons, I further honed my skills through jamming with high school friends and more experienced musicians, playing at cafe open mics in college, and eventually joining up with rock bands in Pennsylvania for several years...
​After those years of learning and performing songs from the catalogs of beloved bands and artists, I noticed a persistent yearning to set my own stories down in song. While traveling around the US in an RV in 2017, I began to listen to this longing, and got to work on writing and arranging my first compositions.
Around 2018 - 2019, I began focusing energy on forging connections and getting more active in Philadelphia’s original music scene, playing my own songs out at every opportunity while building material for a first release. Some of those early seeds made their way onto my debut EP “Ways Forward”, which I recorded in 2020 - 2021 with the help of a batch of great friends, musicians and engineers.
Beyond the intrinsic satisfaction that songwriting brings me, I burn with desire to share my work and to see how it can kindle emotional connection with listeners through performances and recordings. For me, songs are a means to explore and embody the connective threads that join us in the shared human journey. I hope that as my music finds its way in the world, the songs might inspire listeners to follow the journey of their own souls with courage and compassion.
I am currently living in the Catskills of New York, where I am working on pre-production for my next album.