Send Out Love Today in the Time that Remains, Featuring Mike Ward

Have you had the experience where you have more time in your past than you do in your future? If you have, you are not alone. Join us for a discussion with our resident singer/songwriter Mike Ward in a discussion about time and help us celebrate the release of his 6th album, The Time That Remains. 

In his song "How Are You Today?" Mike wrestles with the things we may ask ourselves as our lives go rushing past. Are we going to make a little mark, then disappear? When we had more life, why didn't we live more? This is one of many songs where he takes an introspective look with respect to humanity and time - let his words encourage you to seize the day!

#singersongwriter #deeplyrics #songsaboutlife #loveoneanother #soulsearching #carpediem #seizetheday #everydayisagift #treasurethemoments #whynot #timeslipsaway #psychosongs

In this Episode:

• 01:44 - North Carolina and Blueberry Sonker Recipe
• 05:37 - Interview with Mike Ward about The Time That Remains
• 43:37 - "What Prayer" - Song by Mike Ward
• 46:47 - Outro

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:44 North Carolina and Blueberry Sonker
• 3:44 "Why Not" - Lyrics by Mike Ward
• 5:37 Interview - Mike Ward about The Time That Remains
• 43:37 "What Prayer" - a Song by Mike Ward
• 46:47 Outro

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Everyone Dies, the podcast where we talk about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement. I'm Marianne Matzo, a nurse practitioner, and I use my experience from working as a nurse for 47 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life. And I'm Charlie Navarette, an actor in New York City, and here to offer an every-person viewpoint to our podcast.

We are both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions in a crisis. Also, this podcast does not provide medical nor legal advice. Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording.

Welcome to this week's show. We're so glad to have you join Charlie and me for the next hour as we talk with Detroit-based singer and songwriter Mike Ward about self-reflection as we grow older. In the first half, Charlie has our recipe of the lyrics of the title song from Mike Ward's soon-to-be-released album, The Time That Remains.

In the second and third half, we have an exclusive interview with Mike Ward. So Charlie, how are you? I'm fine. I'm thinking of what I can complain about, but nothing comes to mind.

Do you have anything that you're happy about? If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. Yes. Yes.

Yes, I do. Okay. Well, you don't have to tell us.

Okay. Thank you. We'll just guess.

All right. Well, I have quite the imagination. Yes, you do.

Yes, you do. In our first half, Everyone Dies heads out to North Carolina this week as part of our summer road trip across the United States. North Carolina is home to the first English colony, the Roanoke Colony, in the New World founded by Sir Walter Raleigh.

The colony was founded in 1585, but when it was visited by a ship in 1590, the colonists had inexplicably disappeared. It has come to be known as the Lost Colony, and the fate of the 112 to 121 colonists remains unknown. Speculation that they had integrated with nearby Native American communities appears in writings as early as 1605.

Investigations by the Jamestown colonists produced reports that the Roanoke settlers had been massacred, but there was also stories of people with European features being seen in Native American villages, but no conclusive evidence was found. The mysterious disappearance of its settlers remains a captivating historical puzzle even today. The North Carolina recipe we have for you this week is Sonker, which is kind of a deep dish cobbler in a crust, and it's served with what's called a dip, a sugar cream sauce poured over when serving.

Fruit filling is commonly used, but sweet potato variations are also made. Don't be surprised if you taste moonshine in that creamy glaze. This recipe will add an interesting twist to your next funeral lunch.

Bon appétit. In honor of today's guest, Mike Ward, we are sharing the lyrics to the title song of his new album, Why Not. Why not do some good today with the time that we've got? Start with something simple, a lesson learned or to be taught.

Plant a seed or lend a hand, a little helps a lot. Why not do some good today with the time that we've got? Why not conquer fear today before it's far too late? Lay to rest the grudges, stamp out the flames of hate, release the burden from your back, rise up as calm awaits. Why not conquer fear today before it's far too late? Why not stop a war today before our time is up? The sides we find each other on, bombs waiting to erupt.

We're battling within ourselves, let's say enough's enough. Why not stop a war today before our time is up? Why not send out love today with the time that remains? Be brave in the face of all you see, wipe away the tears of pain. Connecting to each other, pure and honest as the rain.

Why not send out love today with the time that remains? Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe for Sankar and additional resources for this program. Everyone Dies is offered at no cost but is not free to produce. Can we count on you to contribute? Your tax-deductible gift will go directly to supporting our non-profit journalism so that we can remain accessible to everyone.

You can also donate at www.everyonedies.org. That's every, the number one, dies.org or at our site on Patreon under Everyone Dies. I am pleased to introduce Detroit singer-songwriter Mike Ward who is known for his lyrically centric, vocally charged folk songs. His sixth album, The Time That Remains, will be released July 1st.

Mike has been honored as a finalist 2025 Michigan Music Award Songwriter of the Year, finalist 2024 Rocky Mountain Songwriting Contest, honorable mention 2023 Telluride Troubadour Songwriting Competition, DJ Showcase 2022 Folk Alliance Region Midwest introduced by Marilyn Rae Bayer, and finalist and honorable mention 2022 Great River Folk Festival Songwriting Contest. Please welcome Mike Ward. Hi, I'm pleased to be here today with Mike Ward whose album, The Time That Remains, is being released on July 1st.

So welcome, Mike. Thanks. It's good to be here.

It's good to be back. I really have enjoyed the show and I enjoy listening to when Angie and I travel. We tend to put on episodes as we travel.

Well, it's nice to know that I'm going on some really great places with the two of you. That's wonderful. So, you know, I listened to the whole album, which is called The Time That Remains, and I read through all the lyrics because I like, I read through lyrics, you know, like they're poems.

And so I read through the whole thing. And it reminded me of this story that I read a long time ago. And it's a story about this older woman, old woman who's living in a nursing home.

And the activity director comes to her and says, you know, we're doing knitting today, do you want to come and learn how to knit? And she's like, no, you know, I just, I just, I don't want to do that. I just want to sit here with myself. So the next day, the activity director goes back and says, you know, we're doing bowling today.

Do you want to come in and do bowling with everybody? And she says, no, you know, I just, I just really am enjoying sitting here, you know, with my own thoughts. This goes on like every single day. And finally, the activity director is feeling a little frustrated because, you know, that's why she's there is to get older people out of their rooms and involved.

And so she sits down with the older woman and she said, every day I come and I talk to you and you always say no, you know, why don't you want to come and do any activities? And this woman looks at her and says, you know, all my life I was so busy, you know, I helped raise my siblings and then I got married and I had six kids of my own and, you know, I volunteered at our church and helped with the schools. And she just goes through this long list of all the things that she's done. And she says, you know, all the time that I was doing that, I never really had time to think about what it was that I was doing and how I felt about it and to really, you know, respond and to process it.

And she said, and now, finally, I have the time to go back and think about it all. And, you know, I just honestly don't want to be interrupted. I just want to have the time to think about it all.

And as I read through your lyrics and listen to your music, I have this feeling like you're taking, you know, this time to look back into process. I could be totally full of it, which many people tell me I often am, but does that resonate with you? Is that what this process was like for you? Well, whether it was subconscious or whether I was doing it consciously, I think that has been sort of a pattern building with me over the last, I think, two years or so. And even since I produced this album, even songs that I've been writing, I think have been in that realm of looking back of, and not necessarily in, you know, oh, why did I do that? Or why did I do this? Or whatever.

But it's sort of like the awareness of, and maybe it's turning 71, that sort of like has hit me of the amount of time remaining is far less than the time that has come before it. And, you know, I've always had songs that have sort of dealt with that in some way or another. But this album, I think they're songs that really have been building for quite some time.

And in some respects, they came out really quickly once I started writing them. And others I've been sort of working on for maybe two or three years, finally was able to realize, oh, this is what it needed, and this is how to finish it. And those, I guess, you know, when those get revealed, you don't really have a timetable and then just sort of say, oh, that happened, you know, I opened this file for a reason, or I was looking through that file for a reason.

And look, this song is unfinished, but here's a way to finish it. Things like that. And then there's new songs that just, you know, that just happened because I'm in a songwriting group, and I write a song every month and part of other groups.

So I'm always sort of looking for new paths. Do you feel, you know, sometimes in mental health, when we're doing therapy with patients, there's this, people will describe feeling like this pressure that, you know, something needs to come out. Do you ever experience that when you're writing your songs or when you get an idea for a song? Yeah, definitely.

And probably one of the, you know, I don't get like a writer's block very often because I'm usually bouncing from, I'm usually working on anywhere from two to five songs at once. Like I might, you know, look at a verse here of this one and then look at something else on another one or say, and that, so I don't have that necessarily always that, like overwhelming urge, but there are times when there's a song, the opening song on this record was written in an afternoon. And it was part of a, you know, like four hour workshop that I was part of and was, you know, actually feeling incredibly frustrated at about noon that day.

And we had been there for a few hours and we had been listening to a moderator kind of help us through the process of asking ourselves questions. And then after you answered this question, now ask this question of yourself and then ask this one. And I remember writing down in my book, it's like, what is this for? What are we doing? You know, this feels like I'm banging my head against the wall.

And then I got up and walked around and went outside. And this song, just the first verse just came out of me and like, in one single, you know, thread on my phone. I was writing it on my iPhone.

And it was initially written to have no accompaniment at all. It was thought to be an a cappella piece. And there are parts of it that are on the record, but we decided it should have some level of build in the middle of it.

And so we added the instruments, but it really can live on its own as an a cappella piece too. It sounds like what that moderator was trying to do was, I don't know if he was trying to do therapy, but some of the same techniques that we use when we do therapy with people. And do you think maybe that was part of what you were resisting against? Completely.

Completely, yeah. Yes, definitely. You know, growing up in a, you know, with Irish Catholic parents that, you know, had that sort of like, you don't talk about your problems, or your problems, you know, you figure it out yourself, you solve them yourself, nobody goes to therapy.

You offer it up to the poor souls in purgatory. And so, you know, I mean, I'll never forget when my older sister, you know, told me about one of her therapy sessions, you know, this is after she'd been out of living away, you know, I mean, I think I was in my 30s. And she said, Oh, I had a breakthrough in therapy today.

And it was like, in what? Some award person in therapy, and then come to find out, you know, it's a wonderful, it's a wonderful tool to use. It is. But you have to, like, you as the moderator, you have to be willing to sit with being uncomfortable about it, and all the things that we learned about it.

And, you know, those walls that are put up in terms of, you know, suck it up, offer it up to the poor souls in purgatory, don't, you know, it's just like, it's not all about you. And true, you know, it's not all about us. But there are still things that need to be processed and need to be bubbled up.

Yeah. One of the things that you said was something about being 71, and that there's more time behind us than there is in front of us. And I've been noticing the later albums of like Willie Nelson and Elton John's most recent album.

And they are loaded with these songs of looking at what have I learned? And where am I going? And why was I here? Of those, you know, existential kinds of questions. Do you, is there a song on the album that speaks to any of that for you? I think, you know, one of the early songs on this album was a song called How Are You Today? And it was really three people close to me that were all in some level of cancer treatment. You know, two in bone marrow transplant states and the other in just a horrendous stage of pain.

And so it was simply kind of a call out to each of those people. But then the notion in the chorus was when we had more life, why didn't we live more? You know, what are we doing? What are we, when, you know, we ask these questions as our life just disappears, you know, we make a little mark and we disappear. You know, it's, it was that question that, you know, that was one of the early songs that I actually had thought I would put on the previous album, but it didn't seem to fit at the time, but it fits really well here.

And so, you know, I think that one definitely has that, that question. And I think you can, you can sort of look through songs like Why Not, which talks about the time that remains, or, you know, what are we doing with the time that we have? Those are probably the two most, I would say pointed at it, while others have a little more, it's a little more disguised, you know, a little more nuanced. So in, in writing these songs, do you ever find yourself coming to a conclusion or having that aha moment? Like, Oh, this is what I was trying to understand.

Here it is. I think, yeah, I mean, definitely, because when you're writing these songs, you know, at some point, whether you're in the verse or you're in the chorus, but there's, there's usually a moment where you have to figure out what's the outline here? What's the, what's the ending? And sometimes you have the end before you have anything else. And so you end up writing to that.

And those are actually, those are usually songs that are easiest to write, because you can kind of work backwards. It's the ones where you, where you have a start, and you like the idea, but then you don't really, you don't really have a construct, or you don't really have the sort of the, the heart of the matter. And that usually happens in the chorus of a song, because it's what you want to leave the listener with, you know.

And, you know, it can be funny, it can be sad, it can be sort of, you know, uplifting. You know, I have a song that was written right around the time that my son was getting married last year, and I hadn't really thought about writing he and his new bride a song, per se. But I had this, I had a song that I was working on, and I had this idea of let the new renew you, you know, to let everything new renew you.

And then when I got to the third verse, I realized this was really about them, about what I'm hoping for them, their future, their life, and, you know, sort of that notion of look for the new every day, and let it renew you. So that you, you know, you can find a way through whatever difficulties are going to come your way. Is that on this album? Yeah, yeah, it is.

It is on the album. It's called Let the New Renew You. Oh, I see it here.

Yeah. And did you sing it at their wedding, by chance? I did not sing it at the wedding, but I brought it to New York. And a couple days before the family dinner at their apartment, and we had her family and our family, and that was all that was there.

And I played it for them there. And that was enough. I had really just finished it, so I was not like kind of in a place where I was necessarily comfortable to play it publicly.

And just really quickly that when we recorded this record, this song, I had two really, one really, two really talented background singers, Annie Bacon and Emily Samovitz. And they came into the studio, and Annie, in particular, has done work with me before, and is really great at building not just harmony, but sort of a background feel to the song. And when she came in, she said, well, I have this idea at the end that we do a call and repeat, and that you do let the new renew you, and we do let the new renew you.

And it's just kind of this repeated thing that they do as a soft background call to my voice. And it ended up being something that now when we play it, when I play it live, is a great sing-along piece to end a show or to have. And that was not initially part of the song.

We found that in the recording studio, and now it's, I think it's one of my favorite tracks, the way it came out on the record. It's really uplifting. Yeah.

I don't know if our listeners remember, but you had a whole life and career before retirement in advertising. And so you've been writing and doing your music for what, like five years now, like full-time? Full-time since 2018 or 17 or 18. Yeah, probably 2000, I would say 18.

So that was the first official album. So yeah, it's like seven years now. And you have gotten a lot of acclaim in that period of time.

Does that surprise you? It does. I mean, in some respects, I have tried to learn from really good songwriters and work with really good songwriters. So I mean, that part of it, you just never know who's listening and how they're going to feel about it.

But in one of my very first conferences with the folk music community called Folk Alliance, a DJ from Chicago, Marilyn Rae Bayer, she heard one of my songs. And this was in 2019. She heard it and stayed in touch.

And when I released in 2021, I finally released The Darkness and the Light and it had that song on it. She remembered it and to the point where a couple of years later, she introduced me as a showcase artist at the Folk Alliance in 2022. So you just never know what's going to hit people.

So David Bowie, I was just looking at an interview with him and he said, don't ever do your music or play to the forces outside you. Play what you think is right and be honest about it and put your heart into it and try not to veer from that. And he's a great, has had a great path in terms of he never let a previous album success determine what he did next.

When he was ready to ditch the Glitter Rock and the Spiders from Mars, he merged over to Diamond Dogs and then merged again and merged again and merged again for his whole career. Started working with people like Brian Eno on Mo and things like that. So I always think about that.

I don't think I take nearly the chances that most songwriters do. I mean, I'm incremental in my changes. Well, and I think what you're saying is really a good lesson about life is that, you know, you can start out when you're young doing one thing and then as you grow and you change, you say, oh, well, I want to go down this path or I want to go down another path.

And being open to looking at what you're learning from life and making changes that reflect not sounding cheesy, the new you, that new person that develops every 10 years or so as we grow older and as we learn things and as we figure things out. Right. Yeah, that's an interesting observation of sort of reinvention or, you know, kind of taking different paths every 10 years or so.

You know, I had the same path for almost 40 years in the creative side of advertising, but I guess I never saw it as like sort of one path, because by definition in a creative department, you have to be thinking of new ideas and let yourself be influenced by culture and a lot of things to create that work. And so, you know, it always felt like I was veering or I was, you know, developing a new style to what I was, how I was working in that business. And I think that that ability to sort of say, I'm going to try a different direction here or, you know, or, you know, I'm going to, you know, go in a completely different path.

You know, it happened to so many people I knew who, you know, they started in advertising and ended up in film direction or ended up in music or ended up in different paths. So, when it came time, my retirement time, I guess I felt like I still had a lot of energy and I still had that desire to explore this and give it the time it it needed to sort of let it happen. A friend of mine here in Detroit, a singer, a performer of a fairly good note, somebody has opened for people like Bob Seger and artists on that level, said to me when I first started that, you know, it really takes 10 years to really develop a foothold where other people begin to, all of a sudden, you are a top of mind person that is, you know, getting bookings or getting, you know, getting recognition or things like that.

And I look at my path and I'm, you know, at seven year point and I think I'm right about it on the trajectory that I was, I sort of set out to do. Did you, when you were working, think, well, when I retire, I'm going to do my music full time? No. I thought, I actually thought I would, I don't know what I thought.

I think, you know, at one point Angie and I talked about, you know what, let's have a, some freedom in where we live. When we moved to downtown Detroit, I was still working and we decided to rent because we said, well, maybe once I retire, maybe we'll go spend two years in Ireland or two years in somewhere else or a year here or a year there. And, you know, we kind of wanted that freedom.

And at that point, you know, I definitely thought I wanted to explore music, but I didn't really, I didn't really understand what, to what extent I was going to get involved in it. I guess, you know, I mean, recording, I've recorded six albums now. And I think if I, if my 2016 self had said, okay, by 2025, you're going to record six albums and you're going to, you know, play shows here and here and here, you'd go, okay, well, let's try that.

You know, I still have some bucket list places that I'd like to play. But over the last few years, I've had some really amazing bucket list experiences with music and having Angie now has taken up full-time management. I mean, to the point where, you know, she's doing social media posts, she's doing bookings and she's, you know, she's involved in every level, you know, whether it's in the recording studio or while we're shooting videos or in every level.

You know, it's, she's a great listener and a great listener can be a huge asset to an artist. And it's great that this is something that you guys are sharing and traveling all over the place to, you know, sing your music and then to have your wife, you know, supporting and going with you. Yeah.

And, you know, it is great because sometimes she'll point out like sort of the hard questions of like, okay, we did this, this and this, but is this really what, you know, is this where you want to spend time? Is this what you, you know, where you want to, you know, versus over here, you know, doing, and so we've sort of, we've looked at places that I've been playing and gigs that I want to play and how do we get there? And, you know, we seek out a lot of advice on this. But, you know, sometimes it's like you have to learn to say, no, I'm not going to do that one because I feel like I want to do this over here instead. And I want to be in a situation where it is, where the music is first and foremost, instead of being sort of the background element.

And to be seven years into it and to be able to make those choices is, I think, an incredible sense of what you contribute in terms of your music and your lyrics and what you have to say and how you're touching people. And Marianne, that is the most gratifying thing to me is when I do a show and people can, people walk up and they talk to me about the songs, about the lyrics, and that's what they take away. You know, I am by no means a gifted guitarist.

I play well enough to accompany myself and to write these songs and get them, you know, across. I think my strengths are in my lyric writing and my voice. And so I try and let that be the thing that carries me when it comes to live performances.

The records are, I've come to realize that the records are different. It's a different place and time and it's a singular recording that I want to have. I want to have it done with whatever it's mandolin or whether it's a violin or whether it's, you know, I want to do those things for these last couple albums.

And with the understanding that when I go, you know, to some shows, it's just me and a guitar and understanding that that's okay. I think two years ago or three years ago, I sort of was struggling with that. You know, like, well, geez, people are going to hear the record and they're going to hear this and then they're, you know, then they're just going to hear me.

And, you know, realizing that that's okay, because in the end, what they are going to walk away with is the song, the song itself, not the production, not the, you know, all those little pieces. It's the song. And it's like a, I mean, I'm not a musician and I don't play one on TV, but to me, it's like a poetry reading, you know, like you can have, you know, a fancy kind of thing, or you can have someone who is just in the plainest, simplest way telling that story to you.

And you don't need, you know, the mandolin's great. And, you know, the other instruments that you have on the album are beautiful. But what you really, what I really focused on is what you're telling me, is the story you're telling me.

Yeah. And that's, you know, I think one of the things that I'm pleased with about this record is sort of the variance between songs that have a little bit of story to them and others that try to not necessarily impart wisdom, but sort of ask questions that are the type of questions that many people are asking in today's world. And one of the songs that I thought that we would end your interview with is on the song, What Prayer? And I think that that speaks to what you're talking about.

Yeah. Can you tell the listeners about that before they hear it? Yeah. So, you know, this was actually initially written during lockdown, during the pandemic.

And then it was a song that every now and then we would post the, you know, during lockdown, I was doing these 30 songs in 30 days for that month of April 2020. And the start of this song was in that. And every now and then we would grab that video and post it.

And it was amazing how the response we would get, you know, to sort of this simple idea of, you know, the first two lines kind of, you know, I don't know what prayers are for, while hate is hiding outside the door. You know, and that notion, that contrast of what's happening in our world. And it's not just here in the US.

It's across borders. You know, it's everywhere you look. And, you know, how do we give this human race a fighting chance? How do we do that? And in the end, you know, it's super trite.

But, you know, love is, you have to love yourself first, and then let love follow. And this is a bit of a prayer for that, for the human race. And I think that I opened the album with kind of a prayer, and I close it with that.

At least my type of prayer. I'm not a terribly religious person in my adult life. I guess I, you know, I'm a recovering Catholic from my youth.

But I held on to, I guess I felt like I held on to the things that bind human beings together, or, you know, to try and help each other. And that's really what I'm trying to impart here, trying to sing about. And with that, we're gonna play your song, What Prayer, and let your words heal our listeners, or, you know, give them that kind of nurturing that they need with the difficult things that they all might be going through.

I don't know what prayers are for while hate is hiding outside the door. Who do we forgive? Will we turn the other cheek? Will we go on fighting so we don't look weak? Do we really listen? Do we understand? What makes us human is what gives us a fighting chance. So where do we go from here? Though it's not exactly clear.

Could this be the time that we're torn apart? Opposite sides break in our hearts. Or will we find a way to unite us all, binding together so this world doesn't fall too far? Love of one another is the only truth. Love yourself first, then love will follow.

You. Mike, I really want to thank you for coming and sharing your work and congratulate you on the release of your album, The Time That Remains. We'll have links in the show notes where people can get and hear your music, and I appreciate you coming on and talking with us.

Well, thanks for having me, and I hope that you continue this series for a long time. It's an amazing both podcast and broadcasting message holder. Thank you.

I appreciate that. So thanks once again to Mike Lord, and this album is The Time That Remains. Thanks for the interview, Mike and Marianne.

Please stay tuned for the continuing saga of Everyone Dies, and thank you for listening. This is Charlie Navarette, and from Elvis Presley, supposedly what he said right before he died, I'm going to the bathroom to read. And I'm Marianne Manso, and we'll see you next week.

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