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It’s crazy. It’s like a small arena show,” says local musical artist EZRA, whose debut single “Slip Away” has amassed over 15,000 plays between streaming services since it was released last November. The multi-instrumentalist and vocalist’s Spotify biography simply states “Indie folk from a new perspective”—an aptly spare and straightforward reflection of EZRA’s introspective and stripped-back acoustic releases. EZRA grew up learning to play instruments, but says that he was always more interested in his athletic pursuits until he revisited his guitar during the COVID-19 related lockdowns. “I started teaching myself guitar, and then it just kind of fell into place,” he says. “And then I started to realize that I really liked recording and making songs.”
Despite easily finding enjoyment in making music, EZRA says that gathering the courage to share his work was much more daunting. “I made ‘Slip Away,’ and I sat with it for a whole year and didn’t want to release it because I didn’t want people to hear me sing,” he says. “No one had ever heard me sing before [...] so I was really nervous. And then I released it, and it went just way, way better than I thought.” In the last year, EZRA has reached listeners from Brazil to Germany with his debut. “It just started hitting different playlists and kind of got a little bigger than I thought it would.”
Since then, EZRA has released another single, “all the things we’ve never started,” and continues to perform around town—initially by himself, and eventually with a band he put together for his live shows consisting of Tommy Doran on guitar, Emily Boban on bass, and Jaydon Bilyk on drums. EZRA says they enjoyed a busy summer of performing, which consisted of achieving his personal goal of playing Live on the Waterfront—his biggest stage yet. “It was a huge jump,” he says. “It was scary because [before that] we were playing Black Pirates and I would play at Lakehead [Beer Company] just doing open mics.”
According to EZRA, taking these leaps of faith to put himself out there has not only paid off, but become his greatest source of fulfillment. “My favourite is doing the shows, because that’s when you really see the impact, more so than numbers on a phone,” he says. “Being on stage and seeing that those same people come back every single show, when they decide to wear the merch every single time, and they start to know every single song that we sing, cover or not—that’s the most rewarding part.”
Currently, EZRA is preparing for an upcoming show at the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium and also has an EP in the works, Calico Blue, which will be released later this year or early the next. “It’s similar to what I’ve been putting out,” he says. “I think right now it’s not about experimenting because I’m not that far into the releasing game. So I just want to put out a solid EP.”
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242 Red River Road, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada
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