“Grinnin' in Your Face”

ZZ Ward grew up in Roseburg, Oregon, and got to the blues through her parents. They loved it, she told Interview in April 2013, and they used to play Son House’s “Grinnin’ in Your Face” at home. House recorded it for Columbia in 1965 with nothing but his voice and his clapping hands. By 2013 Ward was in Los Angeles, signed to Hollywood Records, with a debut album, Til the Casket Drops, out since October 2012, and the old song had worked its way into her live set. For the sixth Record Store Day, on 20 April 2013, Hollywood put her version on a limited 7-inch.

The A-side was recorded live at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, with Ward on vocals and harmonica, Erick Walls on guitar and Royce Shorter Jr. on drums. Ward said she picked it because it felt gritty, which suited Record Store Day, and because covering an old Son House song was the kind of thing that brings people in. Interview noted the sharp guitar riffs added to the old tune. Cover Me heard the take open on the crowd, the harmonica and electric guitar, with the audience clapping on the beat near the end. The performance video premiered at Interview on 17 April and went up on her Vevo channel two days later.

The B-side was new. Ward wrote “Everybody Wants to Be Famous” and played guitar on it. Theron Feemster, the producer known as Neff-U, who had also worked on Til the Casket Drops, produced it, programmed it and played the other instruments, and Neal Pogue mixed it. Under the Gun Review, streaming it in the days before the release, called it a “dance floor ready jam” and singled out its foot-stomp percussion.

The song stayed with her. In 2021 she went independent with her own label, Dirty Shine Records, and in 2024 she signed with Sun Records. When her album Liberation came out on 14 March 2025, it had a new studio recording of “Grinnin’ in Your Face”, produced by Ryan Spraker. Twelve years after a 7-inch made for record shops, the song her parents played in Oregon was on a Sun record.