ZZ Ward / Zach Heckendorf September 22, 2012

Bluesy southern rock and dirty beats collide: Meet ZZ Ward, a singer/songwriter whose artistry spins on a luminous axis of voice and soul. Raised in Roseburg, Oregon where her father wrote songs and played harmonica in blues bands, it was old school masters like Big Mama Thornton and Muddy Waters from her parent’s vinyl collection that first intrigued Z. “It was the authenticity,” she recalls, “the soulfulness.” 

Offstage, up-and-coming singer, songwriter, and guitarist Zach Heckendorf appears to be an ordinary teenager: a hip-hop-loving, T-shirt and jeans-wearing, shaggy-haired kid with a shy smile and modest demeanor. But when Heckendorf grabs a guitar and jumps on a stage, the 18-year-old Denver native is transformed. Gone is the shyness. Gone is the reluctance to draw attention to himself. In their place is a natural-born entertainer deploying rapid-fire lyrics and jittery acoustic grooves with all the confidence, charisma, and innate musicality of performers twice his age.