The website Sin’s Metal News (SMN) has a new interview with Bill Ward online. It’s a wide ranging interview, and was done when Bill was in Stockolm on the recent European Black Sabbath tour. Check out a few quotes from it:

Q: it’s been a pretty repetitive Sabbath set-list for the past few Ozzfest’s. Back in 2001 you lads spiced it up a bit with ‘The Wizard’ and the likes of ‘Scary Dreams’ – so, what are you envisioning your upcoming set-list to look like?

A: Definitely. I got to get my album out first! Everyone else has something out. Mine’s still back there somewhere gathering dust! If I had some…if I was able to get out there, get backing from a record company, and just tour, I got no problem at all with doing that. I would look forward to that actually. The first thing is to finish 1 more song from the album, and then it’ll all be good to go. Get this album done and out, it’s been about 5-6 years in progress, I feel as though I’m ready to move onto the next album.

Bill talks about a lot of other subjects, including his audio diary series, the status of his long delayed solo album “Beyond Aston”, to Straws, his performance at Live Aid 20 years ago, and of course a new Black Sabbath album.

Make sure and check out the full interview here. It’s a very good read.

Bill phoned in from Sweden with the fifth in his 2005 Audio Diary series. There was a little bit of a bad phone connection on this and it generated some technical issues so the sound quality is a little scratchy, but is still pretty good. This new edition, totaling exactly 30:00 in length has these highlighted points:

* – Difficulty trying to find Vegan food

* – Bill talks about the following gigs: Sofia, Bulgaria, Vienna, Prague, Athens, & Roskilde Denmark

* – Some thoughts on Bulgaria itself.

* – European audiences in general

* – Ticket availability and his thoughts on scalpers

* – The Pink Floyd reunion at Live 8!

There is of course a lot more than that, so make sure and download the entry and check it out!

https://www.billward.com/sounds/diary070405.m4a

(Right click and select “Save As” or “Save Link As” and save the file to your hard drive, don’t just click this)

You need one of any number of free audio players (Winamp, iTunes, or Musicmatch Jukebox) to play this file. Don’t forget about Bill’s Podcast for the diaries, you can get more info on that here.

You can discuss the audio diary in this thread on Bill’s forums here on billward.com. A short note, if you have Windows Media player, you may have to rename the file extension from m4a to mp4 to get the file to play right in that player.

An interview with Bill will air on New Jersey Rock Station THE WRAT,
95.9, this Sunday, July 3 at 10:00 PM EST on “The Electric Ballroom” show. If you’re not in the NJ area, you can listen on the web at http://www.wrat.com.

UPDATE: Bill’s diaries are available in iTunes now, you don’t need these manual instructions anymore. To see the automated instructions, see the bottom of this news story.

A recent trend in online audio publication is that of podcasting. Podcasting is where you subscribe to an rss feed like you would any other rss news feed. The difference with a podcast feed is that it will pull down media – in this case Bill’s audio diaries!

It’s called podcasting, as it originted with the Apple iPod. You don’t need an iPod to make use of this, however. What’s cool about podcasting is that you don’t have to seek out Bill’s site to get the diaries, they’ll be automatically delivered to whatever you’re using as your software. It’s all very cool, and all very automatic.

First off, if you’re already doing podcasting, then this is the link you will want – it’s the feed for Bill’s Diary Podcast:

https://www.billward.com/diarypodcast.xml

iTunes Update!

On Tuesday, Jun 28th Apple Computer released a new version of their music store/player software, iTunes. This new version has built in support for Podcasting. This means that you can now listen to Bill’s audio diaries in iTunes v4.9! As of right now, Bill’s diary isn’t listed in their online database of Podcasts, but that doesn’t have to stop you from checking it out there.

You can add it manually until such a time that Bill’s Diary Podcast shows up in iTunes. Anyway, The steps to add it manually are pretty simple, and we’ve included a couple of screen captures to make it easier for you.

Step 1: First, you need to go to the new podcast icon in iTunes (v4.9+)

Step 2: Once there, you select the “Advanced” menu option at the top of the screen. Then select “Subscribe to podcast”.

Step 3: You’ll then see the screen below where you can manually enter the URL for the rss feed for a podcast. You’ll need to enter Bill’s Podcast info here:

And that’s it! You’re subscribed. You’ll get new editions of the diaries as they’re released, based on the update schedule you choose for yourself in your local copy of iTunes.

If you don’t have iTunes, or need to upgrade to v4.9 with Podcasting support, visit Apple’s iTunes download page now, and grab your free copy of iTunes.

If you want to read more on podcasting, check out this link. this link, and this link These are some good explanations of podcasting, and how to get involved.

Update: You can now get Bill’s podcast in the iTunes Music store without the need of these manual instructions. All you need to do is go to the iTunes store, select the “Podcast” section, and search for Bill Ward. You’ll see something similar below. Click the subscribe button, and you’re all done!

Bill Ward Band drummer Ronnie Ciago will be holding a drum clinic in July. It will be held at Mo’s Fullerton Music Center. The date is July 26th at 6:30PM.

Mo’s is at 121 N. Harbor Blvd in Fullerton, California. If you’d like to see an interactive map which can give you directions on how to get there, please click here.

Mo’s can also be reached by telephone at 714-871-1805.

Bill phoned in from England with the fourth in his 2005 Audio Diary series. This new edition, totaling 17:41 in length has these highlighted points:

* – Touring in Germany, and the hospitality there
* – Thoughts on his own drumming – and some problems he had playing the song “Black Sabbath” in one gig.
* – Zakk Wylde being on stage at one gig.
* – Hotel accomodations

There is of course a lot more than that, so make sure and download the entry and check it out!

https://www.billward.com/sounds/diary061905.m4a

(Right click and select “Save As” or “Save Link As” and save the file to your hard drive, don’t just click this)

You need one of any number of free audio players (Winamp, iTunes, or Musicmatch Jukebox) to play this file.

You can discuss the audio diary in this thread on Bill’s forums here on billward.com. A short note, if you have Windows Media player, you may have to rename the file extension from m4a to mp4 to get the file to play right in that player.

Bill Ward’s 1997 solo track “Children Killing Children” (from his When the Bough Breaks album) has been tapped to be part of a new digital compilation album entitled “The New Road Ahead Volume 1”. Put together by classicrock.com & Cowtown Digital, this compliation has artists such as Rik Emmett, Joe Lynn Turner, Shooting Star, Living Loud, Walter Rossi, Foghat, King Kobra featuring Carmine Appice, Manny Charlton, Bouchard, Dunaway & Smith and Fourth Estate. These artists either founded or are current or former members of Black Sabbath, Triumph, Rainbow, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Wilson Pickett, Ted Nugent, Beck, Bogart, Appice, Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osbourne, Cactus, Kansas, The Dixie Dregs, Blue Oyster Cult, The Original Alice Cooper Band and Nazareth.

It is available solely through Apple’s iTunes. If you have iTunes installed (or even if you don’t), click here to be taken directly to the album via iTunes. If you don’t have it, you’ll be prompted to download the program.

In addition to the album being released, there’s plenty of cool giveaways to be had. The one that will probably be of most interest to visitors of this site is a pair of autographed drumsticks from the Black Sabbath gig on June 11th, 2005 – the download festival at Donington!

Head on over to the Classic Rock site for more details on the giveaway and a full list of contest prizes. The classicrock page also has a few short comments about each song from the artist who provided them. Also make sure to head over to iTunes to check out the album, where you can check out song samples for all the songs on the album.

Bill phoned in from England with the third in his 2005 Audio Diary series. This new edition, totaling 20:30 in length covers several topics, some of which are:

* – A big report on the Download Festival at Donington including a blow by blow of the gig. This takes up most of the report.
* – Meeting the band ‘In Flames’, and a “review” of their gig.
* – Some more “downtime” activities, including old friends backstage.

https://www.billward.com/sounds/diary061205.m4a

(Right click and select “Save As” or “Save Link As” and save the file to your hard drive, don’t just click this)

You need one of any number of free audio players (Winamp, iTunes, or Musicmatch Jukebox) to play this file. You can reach the older entries via the following links: Diary #1 | Diary #2.

You can discuss the audio diary in this thread on Bill’s forums here on billward.com. A short note, if you have Windows Media player, you may have to rename the file extension from m4a to mp4 to get the file to play right in that player.

Bill has phoned in from England with the second of his audio diaries! Recorded today the 10th of June, this new diary touches on several topics, including..

* – Tour rehearsals, the start of tour, and Bill’s recalls of the gigs that have happened to this point.
* – Meeting Slash backstage at the warmup gig on Monday.
* – The age of concert audiences seeing Sabbath nowadays and how it seems to be getting younger and younger.
* – Plenty more backstage news items about life on tour including a walking tour of Europe Bill is doing with Tony Iommi while on tour.

The entire audio diary entry is 13 minutes and 25 seconds long. You can download the file here. It’s an m4a (aka mp4) audio file. If you were familiar with the first audio diary, the audio quality of this one is a bit lower, because of the fact that it was Bill talking into a phone in the UK to a speakerphone in Los Angeles and into the recorder. Not the best fidelity, but definitely listenable.

And you won’t want to miss this, as Bill has some great insight into life on tour with Black Sabbath.

https://www.billward.com/sounds/diary061005.m4a

(Right click and select “Save As” or “Save Link As” and save the file to your hard drive, don’t just click this)

You need one of any number of free audio players (Winamp, iTunes, or Musicmatch Jukebox) to play this file.

You can discuss the audio diary in this thread on Bill’s forums here on billward.com. A short note, if you have Windows Media player, you may have to rename the file extension from m4a to mp4 to get the file to play right in that player.

Effective immediately, Bill has implemented special Summer pricing for Straws. The previous regular minimum of $35 has been lowered to $12.99 from June 1st through September 30th. If you can afford more than that, it would be appreciated, as the charities would benefit more, but if the $12.99 pricing can get you to donate when you couldn’t before, then by all means, do so.

Bill is doing this to commemorate the Summer Black Sabbath tour, so make sure and jump on this if you haven’t already got your copy of the Straws CD.

Click on the cover art to be taken to the Straws page, where you can get further details on how to donate, and information on the various charities that are benefiting by the Straws program.