She & Him's Zooey Deschanel Goes From the Movie Trailer to the Tour Bus

Posted on Jul 22nd 2008 2:00PM by Jolie Lash
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On Wednesday, actress turned chanteuse Zooey Deschanel and musician/producer Matt Ward, known collectively as She & Him, set off on their first proper tour. "Yeah, we're going to get on the bus -- first time for this band," Ward tells Spinner during a coffee break.

Though Ward is a well-traveled man, thanks to his days promoting his five studio releases under the name M. Ward, the trek will be something new for Deschanel, who after spending the early part of the summer promoting her co-starring role in M. Night Shyamalan's 'The Happening,' will wrap up the season on a bus.

"It's definitely a different sort of thing to get used to living sort of on the bus, but I guess, by and large we're going to [spend a lot of time] living in hotels, which is something she's very accustomed to," Ward said. Their trek kicks off in Toronto and will make a total of 14 stops, wrapping up at the Virgin Mobile Festival in Baltimore next month.

As for the studio genesis of the songs they will play on tour, Ward spent hours helping Deschanel turn tapes and tapes of her home recordings into a fresh-sounding release, which drifts between classic pop, stylized country, even adding a cover song or two.And though Ward is an artist in his own right, he helped Deschanel find her own voice on 'Volume One,' giving himself a producer credit instead of a co-writer's mark, despite the band's She & Him moniker.

"There was never really that dynamic, because I know how it feels when you have a bunch of demos and when you believe in the songs and the ideas," he explained. "As a producer, I treated her demos the same way that I treat my own, which is trying to find out where the song wants to go instead of trying to attach some sort of new fancy production idea, and I feel really confident that we were able to carry that across the spirit of the demos."

Things went so well, that after touring, a 'Volume Two' may be on the horizon. "Hopefully, we're going to start doing some more stuff in the fall. So that's exciting," he added.