Ezra Vancil

A “made it overnight” story can still take decades to understand. We talk with Texas folk rock and Americana artist Ezra Vancil about the twists that shaped his career: early bands with a drummer-driven groove, a development deal that arrived fast and fell apart even faster, and years of chasing the next break without ever getting the album release he thought would change everything.

Ezra doesn’t dodge the hard parts. He walks us through the dark decade of addiction, the legal fallout, and what probation life really looks like when a device is literally beeping for you to prove you’re sober. Then the tone shifts to the moment that finally sticks: a decision on a kitchen floor, a recovery group, and 13 years without a drink. From there, we dig into what changed most, not just his habits, but his reason for making music.

We also get practical for songwriters and home recordists. Ezra breaks down how he writes (chords plus syllables until real words appear), how his iPhone voice memos become an “idea scrapyard,” and how he curates songs when he’s ready to tell a full album story. He describes tracking in a cabin studio, building records from drum and bass feel instead of a rigid click, upgrading from a Universal Audio workflow into donated analog outboard gear and Neve-style channels, and sending mixes and vinyl masters through trusted Nashville collaborators. Along the way, you’ll hear unforgettable road stories from Japan to Germany, plus a simple piece of encouragement from an unsung hero: “keep going.”

If you connect with honest artist interviews, songwriting craft, and real-world music industry lessons, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find it.

Episode Links

• Ezra Vancil: https://ezravancil.com/

Transcript

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Welcome And Meet Ezra Vansel

Jay Franze 0:23

Now, here's your host, Jay Franzi. And we are coming at you live. I am Jay Franzi. And if you are new to the show, this is your source for the latest news, reviews, and interviews. And if you would like to join in, comment, or fire off any questions, please head over to jfranzi.com. All right, my friends, tonight we have a very special guest with us. I said it once, I will say it again. We have a very special guest with us. We have a folk rock recording artist hailing from the great state of Texas. We have Ezra Vansil. Ezra, my friend, thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Jay, thank you so much for having me. And I like folk rock. I like it better than the other genres I get called.

Jay Franze 1:13

Well, I think folk rock is fitting. But I'd like to get into that a little bit. But before we dive into the genre, the feel, I just want to know. I always tell people I started writing songs for a purpose, and it seems like we have the same purpose. So can you tell us what it is like writing songs to pick up girls?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yes. Well, it doesn't always work. So they you might get them, but they don't stick around with you know.

Jay Franze 1:41

Once they get to know you, yeah, it's not quite what I thought.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Right. The song is a lot more, you know, shiny than the actual art living with an artist.

Jay Franze 1:51

Right. I I remember that I was in junior high school, and I just thought it'd be the coolest thing to write songs, and girls would just be impressed. And you know what? They were not, they were not impressed, they did not care.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Wow, I tell you, the first song I actually am in music because of a girl. My my dad was a songwriter, and he was good, and they they toured and played. And I didn't have a big interest. I like thought of being a musician in my whole life, but I never like had an interest in playing a guitar or writing a song until I met this girl that was out of my league. And so I went to my dad and said, You gotta show me how to write a song. I gotta impress this girl. She's not even looking at me. And so he showed me three chords. Said, he said you can write like a hundred songs with that son. I went and wrote this girl a song and she loved it. And we dated for three days, and then on the third day, she said, I just don't think this is gonna work. But she was, I mean, she was like her eyes were glowing

Writing Songs To Impress Girls

SPEAKER_00 2:50

for the first couple of days. See, there you go.

Jay Franze 2:52

Yeah, girls get impressed if you write a song, but then then your personality and everything else has to keep them, and that's where that's where we struggle.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Yeah, then they see you just sit around and write songs all day.

Jay Franze 3:04

Aren't we gonna do something?

unknown 3:06

Right.

Jay Franze 3:07

All right, so let's jump into it. I called it folk rock. What would you like to call it?

SPEAKER_00 3:11

You know, folk rock I really like because that's from my era, that's what my music would be called. I get called Americana a lot nowadays because it's a little mix of the older country style with with the folk style. So Americana or folk, it depends kind of on my eras. You know, I've gone through like heavier things and then I've done a little bit more just straight folk music. And so it's all just acoustic folk rock to me. Yeah, I would say the same thing to me.

Jay Franze 3:41

I like the sound of it. It's it's kind of got a cool groove and cool feel to it. So it's not I wouldn't say it's your traditional folk rock where you think of a 70s folk rock artist to sit there and just play an acoustic and sing, and I wouldn't think of it as Americana a hundred percent either. I think it's a good blend between the two of them. It's kind of folk rock with a little bit of a groove to it.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Yeah, my first uh couple of bands were very uh influenced by a drummer, and I don't think that ever left me. Like my my second band, it was really just a partnership between me and a drummer. I was just a folk guy, but I carried that rhythm with me all through my career because of that.

Jay Franze 4:25

So the earlier bands that you're mentioning, what style of music were they?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Well, the first one was oddly enough, an acoustic funk band. It was a crazy band. It was a band, it was like Frankenstein band. We just wanted a band, and we met at college, we met a guy that played like like uh funk bass. I mean like crazy guy, like slapping like crazy stuff, like uh I can't remember the guy's name. Um the big bass player. Uh, anyways, jazz funk bass. And and I played folk music, and he came over and he said, We need a drummer, we got a drummer. Pretty soon we were playing like this funky folk music. It turned into just pure funk with just slapping all the way through it. And it's up on the internet, it's really wild music.

Jay Franze 5:17

Are you referencing Victor Wooten by any chance?

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Yes, Victor Wooten was one that he was really enamored by. Yeah. Wooten brothers are amazing.

Jay Franze 5:26

They're actually gonna come by here and perform at the local venues here in the northern Kentucky area, Cincinnati area. I'm looking forward to checking them out. I haven't seen them since I've been in Nashville. They used to perform every Wednesday night at a place called Third and Lindsey in Nashville. All right, so you mentioned college. So what were you in school to be?

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Well, I wasn't in college, I just I hung out in the hallway. I don't know why, like I had friends that went to college.

Jay Franze 5:56

All right, this is gonna lead us down a whole different path of questions here.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

I hung out in the hallway and played guitar with dudes that hung out in the hallway, and then other guys were going to college there. It was a a serendipitous

Defining Folk Rock And Americana

SPEAKER_00 6:10

thing because we ended up meeting the engineering teacher there that taught, you know, recording technology, I think they called it. And he was like, Y'all are great, come in here. And we started being like the student band that they all got to try their stuff on. And part of our first album was made in that college, but I really wasn't there. I think uh they called it auditing classes. I think I audited a ceramics class one time, uh audited a few other classes, but I wasn't taking anything. What school was it? It's called uh Cedar Valley uh community college, which is in Lancaster, Texas.

Jay Franze 6:47

If you're in Texas and you want to just go roam the halls of a college, apparently you can do that at Cedar Valley. You can do that there, yeah. That's pretty cool. So you meet your these friends in the the college and you put this band together. How long were you guys together?

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Oh, so we we got together, and I think we were together for just a few months before we got signed to a pretty substantial deal. Maybe like three or four months. So it's kind of an odd deal. It's almost like one of these movie things. We got together for three or four months. We started playing shows in Deep Elm in Dallas, and uh a friend of the band decided to put the money up to make an album. And we went to a uh big studio in Dallas called uh it was called Planet Dallas. And uh it just happened that a week earlier there had been a an uh a uh LA management team there that told him, hey, if you see anything interesting, give us a call. And so we were there and he called them after our first session. They flew down, and then we were in contracts for like I don't know how long, like months we were in contracts with these guys with a management team that also had a label. It was weird because back then, and I know in LA or Hollywood, it was illegal to be a label and a management team. They had to like construct some production company that they had that also had a label, and so we got basically what they called back then a development deal. So a bunch of money to develop us into the sell us to the high bidder.

Jay Franze 8:26

And how did that go?

SPEAKER_00 8:28

It didn't well, it didn't go. I'm sitting out here in East Texas right now in a in a cabin.

Jay Franze 8:35

Um which by the way is the best life to live.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Do not actually is, to be honest. Uh, but I didn't end up in LA or New York. It went really good for a while. I tell you, it was kind of crazy because I was a small town poor kid and got thrown into this money like out of the blue. It was like a blank check. I don't know how much we signed for, but to me it was a blank check. They basically said, just call whatever you want, whatever instrument. You know, they bought us a tour van, they rented us a house and a studio. And so it went into these young guys. I think I was 19 years old, and we did not actually make the album that we're supposed to make. We just partied. We would go on tours and come back with people in our van. And I just remember this house would just have people staying there for weeks, and we used they'd send money and we'd go buy more drugs and alcohol with it. It was some really bad choices going on. Eventually, even one of the uh my bass player, that that funky bass player got shot in a drug deal. So, anyways, this thing went majorly sideways. These LA guys would like call and go, what the hell's going on? You know, they just didn't understand why we weren't, you know, making our album. That we we just kept telling them we needed more stuff, we needed more equipment, and we would just party. And it was just really a dumb thing. The band fell apart. What happened was real quickly, the the development team decided to take me on solo, and so I was with the band, and I think we were on a contract with them for a year. They dropped the band, they took me on solo, and I was with them for another year. So I think I was around 21 when they finally dropped me too.

Jay Franze 10:19

All right. When

Hallway College Bands And First Break

Jay Franze 10:20

you were solo, did you actually get an album out there?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

I uh I didn't. This is the the sad thing about the whole thing. This was two years. We did a lot of recording, a lot of demos. I did shop, I saw sat in the offices of Sony, I had Tony Ferguson. I would sit in offices, we talked to a lot of labels, we made demos, but we never got an album actually put out. Their whole thing was they wanted to sell us to a major label, and so we kept just recording. If that didn't do well, then I would record again. I had a lot of fun. I was in LA a lot during that those years and recording and uh got to go big studios, but nope, never got an album out with them.

Jay Franze 11:02

All right, well, before we get any further, let's just your bass player. Did he survive the shooting?

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Oh, yeah. We should go back here. Well, I should get a whiteboard.

Jay Franze 11:13

Just make sure that we just don't gloss over the fact, oh yeah, and he got shot. He did, he got shot. He did survive.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

He survived, and and he actually has been on was on a few of my albums in later years, so he was still playing. He just had a hole in his back. Yeah, of course. But healed up, you know.

Jay Franze 11:31

Well, I think it was a good point for us to remember too. We are traveling back in time to like far before where we are now. Yeah where you are now, you get you know plenty of new albums out, you get songs out, you get videos out. You're actually doing very well now.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Yes, now these are the dark years.

Jay Franze 11:49

These are the dark years that led up to this point. So I mean it's kind of cool to hear the the dark stories of how we get places. So after being let go from the first label, how did you get to where you you are now? What was that transition point?

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Uh, you know, it was a hard drop because I I was just going to be a rock star. I dropped out of school. So when they dropped me, I didn't know what to do. I was married, I'd married the photographer from the band, had a baby on the way, and all I could think about was just getting back into music. So I spent my 20s going through several bands until I found a music partner that really got what this was about. And so by my late 20s, uh showcasing it South by Southwest, I got an exclusive Japanese deal, got some publishing deals. So I was back in the game by my late 20s, but it took me almost a decade of just failed band after failed band until we got an album out that actually got some attention.

Jay Franze 12:50

Now you mentioned that too. You had an exclusive Japanese deal. I don't think a lot of people here understand how big American music is in Japan. And especially in the 80s when hair metal was a thing that people, I mean, Japan, they were just eating it up. So did you find that with your music as well, that they were just eating it up?

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Yeah, I still have like if I go look at my map of who listens, there's a lot of Japanese listeners. I don't know that we did as well as they wanted because they also didn't pick up our second album. But what you said is very true is that the music at that time in that era, which was 2006-07, they said that uh that uh uh folk rock and folk music was doing really big there. And that's why we got signed on to that. Yeah, and that lasted for about a year, they didn't pick up our next album, unfortunately.

Jay Franze 13:48

Now, I know also Germany has a fondness for our folk and country style music. Do you ever have any success over in Germany?

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Yeah, yeah. I've got some good stories from Germany. I played over there in uh Dresden. This was like early, I don't know when the wall came down, I don't know the exact year. This was a little bit after that. So it was kind of new, you know, real fresh to go into Dresden. One of the things I remember is I played a cowboy bar, and I heard it was like a Western bar, and I was like, oh, okay. I just figured it's like, you know, the bars here in Texas, or some cows, you know, cow head on the wall. But I go in there and it was like 10-gallon hats and these belt buckles. I mean, the biggest belt buckles you could get. It was like whatever the the most indicative of a of a cowboy was, these guys had it down Pat. You know, they wanted me, I didn't really play country music, so I sang everything with a real country accent. I did a lot of Bob Dylan covers, but I did them with a real like Garth Brooks kind of voice, and they seemed to love that.

Jay Franze 15:00

That's funny. That was 1989, by the way. When the wall came down, November 9th, 1989. Okay. Thanks for watching.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

So this was 94, 94, 95 when I went over there. Very cool. It was a beautiful place. They loved music there.

Jay Franze 15:17

I was in Orlando around that time. I was in the music scene in Orlando. It was big, it was mid-90s, and bands like Von Ray and Matchbox 20 and Sister Hazel and all those bands were out. Still some of my good friends to this day. I really enjoyed the music from that time. If there was a time I could go back to for, you know, maybe a weekend or something, I would choose to go back there. That would be a fun time.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Yeah, that was there's a lot of interesting music happening during that that era. It's like it was re-girt you know, rebubbling up a bunch of new stuff during that era.

Jay Franze 15:53

Yeah, Orlando at that time, like I I'm from Boston. I grew up in Boston and I had a recording studio in New York for a long time, and then I spent the majority of my career working in Nashville. So I've been around a lot of music mechas, but Orlando at that time, it was like Seattle during grunge. I mean, it just had a spotlight on it and had a lot of these big modern rock bands popping up, and it was just very cool. It was good, it was a good scene at that time. So um you you had that experience i in Germany. Did you have more success than that in Germany, or was that the end of it?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

No, it was really just I got a chance to go over there and play. And what was neat is I was going to play one

The Development Deal That Imploded

SPEAKER_00 16:40

show, and I ended up there playing for like a month. And it would one would lead to another. So, you know, I played the Western Bar. This is actually kind of weird. I can't believe I actually did this. Two of the cowboys there, and man, they were rough cowboys. They had, you know, I would be afraid of them in Texas. They asked me to come out and play at their ranch, and it was real broken English. I had my little book out. I'd learned a little bit of you know German, but not enough. And and I thought they were asking me to come play a show at their ranch, that they owned a ranch. And so me and my wife, my wife was with me. We got in a taxi and we went towards these directions, and it went so far. And he goes, This is as far as I go, and I don't go any further than this. And I said, Well, what do we do? He goes, You're gonna have to call this other service and somebody will get you out there. And we we we couldn't get to the ranch. We ended up having to call them, and they came and picked us up because I guess it was so far out there, it's like half a day trying to get there. And we got there, and when they took us into a tack barn, and I'm like looking for the crowd, whenever they're showing up, and it was three guys, and they wanted me to just play guitar in the tack barn for them, and they wanted me to play John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads. We sang that song. Now we they got the beer, the beer out, and we sang that song probably about 20 times, and they just sang it with me. And when I finished, they'd go, that again, that again. And then I would play some of mine, and then they would want to play that song again and just sing it, and they'd sing at the top of their lungs, and then we went and rode horses, and I didn't hardly understand anything, and then they took us back to town, and that was my show at these guys' ranch. That was it.

Jay Franze 18:25

Then they broke out a chainsaw, and I didn't know what they were gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

We were waiting on something really bad to go down.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

That is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

But there was more than that, there's little shows from each little show that I did. Somebody would ask me to come play somewhere else, and some of the most beautiful places I played in a wine cellar for a special dinner, and it just would go from you know, little bars to little art displays, and I and it was just like I could have just kept going there. I eventually had to go home, but uh for a month I just kept getting asked to play other little places.

Jay Franze 18:59

And what brought you there in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 19:02

They were redoing an old church there, and so I went with actually a church group, and I was doing the music, they were doing like a fundraiser night, and I was gonna play music, and so that's how I got there, and then from there came the Western Bar. One of the guys asked me about the Western Bar, and then, anyways, it goes on.

Jay Franze 19:23

That's crazy. All right, so you get back from Germany, and then what happens from there? Let's take the next step.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Well, I get back from Germany, and this is where we we probably won't go down this road too much, but I I basically had a lot of substance abuse problems that I had developed at all these bars starting to sing at 16 years old, going into bars. So I kind of like took a side road for the next decade of just being drunk. So this is your 30s. This is my 30s. Yeah, I don't remember much of my 30s. I played in some bands, played a lot of shows. Some of them I fell off the stage. Eventually, guys just didn't want to play with me more. I tried to put bands together, like, no way, dude. You're like embarrassing to play with. And so I was I was that guy, I just could not keep it together. And I just went down a real dark path. You know, we were joking about prison before, but I got a felony. It was getting so bad that, you know, by the time I was 40, music was like the last thought I had. Although I was still trying to be a rock star, even though it was, you know, fighting a felon and everything. I thought maybe they'll let me have a guitar in prison. I don't know, do a Johnny Cash thing. And uh actually got to play a show out of prison, which was cool. But, anyways, that's the you know, I can go down that road if you want, but it's just a dark decade. So how long I did not make it to prison. I just got two felonies and got sentenced to prison. And I got out of it. I got out of my the time I had to do.

Jay Franze 21:00

Okay. So were there any restrictions when you got out?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Oh, yeah. I was on seven years of probation. Any ankle bracelet or any of that type of stuff? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I carried around a uh what they call a interlock, which is a blower that had to blow every eight hours. Oh, really? Yeah, they have them on cars to start cars, but they gave me one to carry with me, and it was terrible. I'd be at like the doctor's office and he'd be talking to me. I'd say, hold on, hold on. And this thing would be beeping and I'd have to start blowing in it. Be at school talking to my kids, you know, principal and say, Hold on, I gotta blow in this thing. And so life was pretty dark.

Jay Franze 21:43

So that was seven years, so that brought you into your mid forties.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Well, so I actually got sober. I had a whole life change at 40.

unknown 21:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

And now yeah, I was still on probation. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was sober on probation. It's a lot easier when you're sober to be on probation. That's a tip.

Jay Franze 22:05

So that's when things changed for you as your 40s, and that's what brings us to your career today. So let's talk about the change first and then we'll get in the career. What led to the change?

SPEAKER_00 22:17

The change, you know, like a lot of people that deal with substance abuse, it has the change has to come from here. Like it didn't matter how bad the circumstances got. It didn't matter what I, you know, it just put my family through hell. It eventually, I just got so tired of being that. And I just woke up, you know, one night I just woke up on the floor in the kitchen and said, I can't do this anymore. I did one of these foxhole prayers. I was not a very religious person at the time. In fact, I called myself an atheist, but I was just like, whoever, whatever's out there, I'll do anything. And uh I woke up the next morning, and of course it was a slow change, but everything changed that next day because I decided I'm not gonna do this anymore. And I I like went to a recovery group and haven't had a drink since then. That was over 13 years ago. Oh wow.

Jay Franze 23:09

All right, and did the marriage survive?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Well, funny enough, about a year after I got sober, I started getting a lot better, and she decided to divorce me then because she just didn't know who the heck this guy was anymore. She knew the drunk, and she had her own issues, but it turns into a beautiful story because about a year later she came back and she's also sober, and so yeah, it survived after a divorce, and we came back together, and she's just a wonderful woman. You know, I don't know how she made it through all that, but she came back and I got my family back and my kids, and you know, it was all kind of a cabin in the woods. In a cabin in the woods, yeah. Yeah, I almost I'll be honest, it it doesn't make a lot of logical sense. I've actually got a few cabins. This is my studio. Uh how you can waste a decade of your life and then everything turn around. But you know, I think yeah,

Japan Deal And Germany Road Stories

SPEAKER_00 24:10

and and so what's cool about music, I would say like my early life. I mean, of course, there's beautiful, wonderful shows, everything. I love some of the bands and the guys I was with, but my whole life was just trying to make it back then, you know, trying to claw my way back on top and make a living. And I did every once in a while, and then I'd fall back. What's beautiful about this new era is I just make music because I love music. And it just I make it with my daughter now. We've been in a band together since she's 12, she's 19 now, and we write and we record together. And I and I've had more touring, more wonderful shows, and not really trying to make anything out of it. It's just happening because I just love doing it. And so there's like a neat shift that happened in the way, the reason that I make music after this time.

Jay Franze 25:02

I can understand that too. There's something about it. I mean, like I said, I worked in Nashville for years, the majority of my career. And when I left Nashville, that's when music became fun again, and that's when I started doing things because I liked it. And not that the time there wasn't necessarily fun or I didn't like it, but it was work and it was a lot of effort went into you know landing the gigs and doing the next job. It was a lot, a lot that went into it. Now it's just the fun parts. So I can definitely understand that. But earlier you mentioned your wife was a photographer, so does she still shoot photos?

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Oh, so that was my first wife. I did that marriage did fall apart at 30. Yeah. So she didn't now, she's a wonderful woman too, and she's happily married to a great man, but she did not make it through the storm. All right. That was we're talking about now my second wife, who was a bartender I met when I was 30.

Jay Franze 26:00

All right. Well, I'd ask if she's still making drinks then, but though that wouldn't make sense. But the first the first wife was a photographer. Um, yes, but now she's off, so let's not worry about the first wife.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

So let's not talk about it.

Jay Franze 26:15

Let's I I'm I'm well aware of how marriage works.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Yeah. Um my second wife is an artist, though. She's a wonderful jeweler. She's she's a metalsmith. Oh, really? She does this thing called chase and reposé. You'd have to look it up, and it's basically hot metal. I say hot metal, she uses a torch and little hammers. And she just, which is a terrible thing to do next to somebody that makes music. I have it all over my recordings, her little so finally we have different studios, but uh it's called Chase and Representation, and she's a wonderful uh metalsmith.

Jay Franze 26:54

I'm looking at photos of it, it's pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Yeah, it's incredible what what she does, and it's a real meditative work because it's just one little you know line. You might spend all day just on this one little line just tapping it out, right? And so it's I love watching her work.

Jay Franze 27:12

How long does it take her to put one piece together?

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Oh, if you look at her pieces, the the bigger ones, I remember she would probably work a month or or longer on some of these pieces. Wow. So they're very delicate, long work gold, you know, gold and silver. Like she does custom work, so they'll request a certain piece and she'll make it very impressive.

Jay Franze 27:40

So when the when life took a turn, how long did it take you to get back into music?

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Oh, about a year. Within the year, I had previous to that that night, that big change, I had not written in quite a while. And about a year in, I just got an idea for a song. I recorded it, and this is kind of a cool story because I recorded it. I called a friend with a camera and and went downtown Dallas and made a video of it, like all in within like 24 hours. And this song kind of brought my career back. It first of all, I bought my wife back. She tells me that she was on her Facebook or something, and this video came up and she said she started watching it, and she thought, that's the kind of guy I'm gonna be with. And then she goes, That's wait, that's my husband. And that's that's one of the things she said. But uh, somebody in New York, a manager in New York, saw this video and he flew down. And within a year, I was back with a full band and gigging. I had an album out, and uh just all from that song, uh, it just all just started working together. As soon as I had the song, I I think I caught the bug again. I was back at it, called the guys, hey, we're getting the band back together, and and uh made quite a few albums.

Jay Franze 29:02

We're getting the band back together.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

No, it certainly was.

Jay Franze 29:06

Do you even recognize the fact that you've had all of these opportunities, like big opportunities, signings, management, just fall into your lap? These things, these are things people fight decades for, and people are just recognizing your music and coming to you. So that's gonna make you feel good. I mean, how how does it make you feel?

SPEAKER_00 29:29

You know, it's really strange. There's there's ones I've left out, like of mostly New York and LA, of me getting within the industry in and out. I'm I'm one of those guys that probably has sabotaged a lot of deals. Because I actually, this New York guy sabotaged him, and then the LA guy came with a publishing company, and I kind of sabotaged that. But in the early days, it might have been sabotage with alcohol and craziness. I I kind of sabotage these on purpose. It felt really good because it's something I even I'll um put my songs into contest every once in a while, not to try to, you know, I don't care if I win the big prize, I just want to know that I'm in the game. So I always want to see if I place or where I place, and I always place, you know, somewhere up at the top. And that just tells me, okay, it's okay, keep doing this. Because you're you're in the game, you know, you're with the big, big boys. And so when I get calls or if one of these deals comes up, it just reminds me, okay, it's okay. You're in the game, you're not totally delusional. Because I have sat in the garage with dudes that have given up their whole life for this new record, and I hear it and I'm like, man, that's bad. And their wife, and everybody believes, and so I gotta wonder sometimes am I delusional? I'm in my 50s and I'm still, you know, making these albums and touring. And I think it's good to have so confirmation matters to me. I gotta I go play festivals or contests, and that confirmation just helps me get going, keep going, you know. And so anytime I get any kind of body interested, especially in the industry, I might I don't really want to be a part of the industry, to be honest. But it makes me feel good, like hey, I could be a player in that. Sure.

Jay Franze 31:18

Now we say that you don't want to be part of an industry. You have several projects out right now, you've written you know countless songs, and you perform. So you're you're still part of an

Addiction, Felonies, And Getting Sober

Jay Franze 31:30

industry, you're just part of it on your terms. But let's talk about that song that brought you back into the game after your your time off, we'll call it. So that first song, what was it about?

SPEAKER_00 31:49

It's the perfect song to bring me back because it was a it was a wrap-up. It's like the song you would have at the end of the movie of a as of a musician's biography that looked at my whole life and the messes and the losses and the beautiful things and the children and the loves, and just says it's okay. It's called uh Song Before I Go. The video's really crazy. It was a it was like uh walking around with a camera downtown Dallas. Anyways, that's the song, and it was just really a song about contentment, you know, that life can go astray. Here I am 40 years old, it did not turn out the way I thought, and that's okay. I could still look around me and see so much, so much that I have at the time I had my wife back, had children, have parents that love me, and just being content with that little bit, and in music, of course, and just being content with what I have, and that's what that song was about.

Jay Franze 32:47

Now, let's take a step into the songwriting process for a second. Just when you write a song, are you a lyrics first person, a music first person, or do you just start with both right out of the gate?

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Both right out of the gate. Most of the time. I've gone through like little eras where I've tried different ways, but pretty much I'm the guy that that just starts making syllables and sounds over chords until a word comes out, and then then I start trying to feel what the song's about.

Jay Franze 33:21

Yeah, no, um, we talk about that a lot. That that's what a lot of people you know do, a lot of singers, but they don't necessarily start off and with both music and lyrics. So when you when you do start off with both, what instrument is the one you choose to write with? Acoustic guitar. Acoustic guitar.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Probably like 95% of the time.

Jay Franze 33:43

Okay. So do you play any other instrument as strong as acoustic?

SPEAKER_00 33:48

Uh, not as strong. No, I play a little mandolin, uh, mountain dulcimer, I play a little piano, but not even close to as strong as I am on acoustic.

Jay Franze 33:59

All right. So you pick up an acoustic and you start writing a song, and you come up with your chord progressions and your melodies and then gibberish until words come out and you put the song together. So then how do you how do you capture that moment? Are you capturing it into a recorder of some sort?

SPEAKER_00 34:17

I had a big change with this because when I was young, up until probably 30, I refused to record anything because I thought if it was worth it, I'm gonna remember it. And if it's not, it'll just go away. Like the Beatles. And then I started forgetting really good songs I was writing around 30. So I started taping it on cassette. So I have almost a decade on cassettes, and then I went to uh the phone recorder, like I don't know, like 2000 maybe, uh, whenever I don't know when the iPhone came out in the early 2000s. Oh, was it okay? So I was still on cassettes up until 2007.

Jay Franze 34:56

Wow. All right, so yeah, so like a modern songwriter now that you're recording into an iPhone, you jot that down, and then at what point do you feel it's it's good to take it into the studio?

SPEAKER_00 35:11

That's a long process for me. I actually use uh probably a lot, a lot of my friends do this too, but my iPhone is a scrapyard, like I'm not just putting full songs, but there's any little scrap I think of now goes in there, and so it's a little bit beyond just the song to record because I still think in albums just because I enjoy thinking in albums.

Jay Franze 35:34

Yeah, so it goes myself.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Yeah, because I want to tell a whole story. So what I do is I decide to make my next album and I go look at those scraps. Some of them are completely finished songs, some of them are close to it, and I pull the ones that I think that are going to become that album, and that's when I kind of shine them up and edit them and get them just right.

Jay Franze 35:54

Okay, so you mentioned before that you have multiple cabins and you're sitting in your studio cabin. So can you describe the studio to us before we get into how you utilize it to finish your song?

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Uh yes, it is it has a big room, it's like a church, it's got a big high ceiling, probably 20 something feet in the big room, and then it has an upstairs uh bedroom, which is just open. I forget what that's called. Uh loft. Loft has a loft, and then it has some little room, it has one little room, and that's where I am now, and two albums. I've tried to make full live albums here. So uh I like to have amps in this room, drums over there, and then there's a little area to put vocals in that in the kitchen, and so that's how I like to record, and then but I also do just kind of solo recording here too.

Jay Franze 36:50

Sure. What kind of gear are you using?

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Well, it was real simple. So I was uh just a DAW universal audio, universal audio, yeah. So I was like a universal audio studio for years, uh, and it was just very small, it's just laptop. I bought all their their plugins. You had to have the unit to use their plugins, and it's very expensive. And then recently, we're gonna get into names. I as if you haven't noticed now, my my memory's not great. It's all that drinking, I think. But so recently, so I was just that, so I had a uh Universal Audio 16 input, and every once in a while, my friend had one. I'd borrow another one if we had a bunch of tracks and we're doing like a live recording, and just my laptop bought a lot of plugins, thousands of dollars worth of their plugins, and so that's how I worked. But recently I got donated an entire studio of analog gear from

Song Before I Go And New Purpose

SPEAKER_00 37:50

a guy that worked with ZZ Top from Oklahoma that passed away, and his studio is in there now. There's so much equipment there. I mean, half of it I don't even know what it is, but now I'm using 1186s, I'm running through uh outboard gear. I got real into start start using outboard gear once I got off this equipment. So my last two albums have been made still on the laptop, but I'm running things through a lot of outboard gear now. Sure.

Jay Franze 38:19

Now I just have to mention it again. This is just another one of those moments where something just falls into your lap. The rest of us are not this lucky, sir. I just want to point out nobody's ever donated me a studio.

SPEAKER_00 38:32

Yeah. And I didn't even know the guy either. His his son knew me. Of course. And he got he thought, I want to give this to somebody that's gonna use it, and I know Ezra will use it. And so I spent probably two weeks trying to get all this stuff down here, and my back went out and everything, getting all this this. I mean, we're talking, I'm talking, this is a I don't know how you know, million dollar studio, maybe. This is just tons of gear. I'm only using a quarter of it right now.

Jay Franze 39:04

Is there any any board or is it just outboard gear?

SPEAKER_00 39:08

There's not, but I do have Neave. Um, so you know, a Neve board and they have the channels. So I have a Neve channel from one I I think we were trying to figure out where it came from, one of his old boards. Right. And I also have some other channels from boards. So for preamps, I am using like you know, board circuitry, right?

Jay Franze 39:30

Neve prees. Nice. All right, well, yeah, you're making me jealous, sir. You're making me jealous. All right, so you go ahead and you write your songs, you put them into the scrapyard of the iPhone, and then once it's time to make the album, you're selecting your songs, you're gonna take them into the studio. That studio is where you're sitting now in the cabin. So go ahead and describe the process from there.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Um, so I'm gonna use like some of my favorite albums because I I do some just solo, like everybody, put my headphones on and say that sure, you know. But the way I like to work is we we isolate as much as we can from the drums. Uh, and I like to get the basics down of the drums and the bass with the band playing because I played to a click for years. We I have albums that were straight up to a click, and I love a click, I still use meter time, but when I do it that way, and instead of us the whole band playing to the click, we're playing to what happened with that bass player and that drummer. That's how I like to build an album. And uh, I've got several albums

Songwriting Habits And Recording Demos

SPEAKER_00 40:40

that were built that way, and it just seems to give the songs a life that we used to have in the earlier years, in the analog years, because that's how we did things, you know, the band would all play. And a lot of times we'll capture the a part of the guitar player or vocalist or something that makes it onto the album. But most of the time it's just that bottom layer of the rhythm track. Yeah, and it's cool because it's there's a little fluctuation, fluctuation there, and when we're playing to that, every track seems to have a little bit more life to it to in that way. So that's basically how I'll do it. Once I get them, I let the guys go, they leave, and I might spend, I mean, I'm I'm neurotic. I could spend a year just layering stuff on top, redoing things, questioning it, mixing it, throwing it away. And I kind of keep all their layers there, but it's all the stuff that is added. I'm at rewrite some of the song. I go through, I'm a real perfectionist, and I've tried to fight that lately because it's just I don't have two years to make an album, you know.

Jay Franze 41:45

Well, no, I'll I'll tell you, your music sounds like you put time into it, sounds like you you're a perfectionist when it comes to your music. It doesn't sound like you overdo it, but it does sound really layered, sounds really cool. I like the the feel of the music. So I would normally want to know how long you put into it, but let's get past the the production of it. How long does it take you to mix a song?

SPEAKER_00 42:11

I don't always mix mine, I've only mixed a few of my albums, and so I go with Cats in Nashville, to be honest with you. Who do you use? Uh Mark Frigo is a guy that I've made two albums with, and I still use him for little singles. He's an amazing guy. I I got interested in him because he worked with a few people, or let's just say he was in the same room with people that I like, like Daniel Lenoir. Oh, yeah, uh the Indiego Girls, he's worked with them, and um, so that was kind of in my realm. I love Daniel Lenoir. Uh, and so I got worked with him. I'm working with somebody now named JP Rugereri from Nashville, and he mixes for me as well. Him, I just liked his music and his personal music, and I found out he mixed it, and I was like, wow, that's really good. And so we just started working together, and he's working on an album with me right now.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

Very nice.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

And those, and those really just don't, you know, those might take an album, might take a month or two back and forth with a mixer.

Jay Franze 43:16

Right. So you don't go sit in the room while they do it. You look anymore, you can mix it, and then they send you something, you listen to it, make a few notes, and send it back. All right, and then how do you get the mastering done?

Cabin Studio Gear And Album Workflow

SPEAKER_00 43:30

I'm about to drop a double album actually in the next month. I've been putting it out slowly in singles. That was analog mastered, and that was a mastering house in Nashville. We mastered it for vinyl. I wanted to do it on vinyl. So this guy came through another mixer that I worked with, and he just said he's just great for vinyl. So he he made my my vinyl masters.

Jay Franze 43:53

All right. Well, we do this thing here we call Unsung Heroes, where we take a moment to shine the light on somebody who works behind the scenes or somebody who may have supported you along the way. So, do you have anybody you'd like to shine a little light on?

SPEAKER_00 44:05

I would. Yeah, and nobody's gonna know who he is. He's not famous, but uh his name was Peter Silico, and he he uh passed away some years ago, but he was an incredible guitar player that uh was in my father's band. And so this man followed me through life. He was younger than my father, so he's kind of that age where I thought he was really cool, cooler than my dad. And uh he followed me through my life, and there's so many times in this dark, these dark years, and even when I got sober though, it's just like, man, this is crazy. I'm gonna go get a job at McDonald's or something. I don't know, something I can't keep doing this. And then somebody would give you a McDonald's.

Jay Franze 44:48

I don't need this franchise anymore. Do you want it?

SPEAKER_00 44:51

There you go, buddy. Oh, he would call me just out of the blue and just say, Hey, I'm listening and I just want to tell you, keep going. And that's all I say. And sometimes he just texts me, keep going. And I have emails from him, and he wouldn't say anything else, just keep going. And we didn't talk a lot, but just through my life, and he passed away a while back. Always like to remember him because he's he's a special man in my life. Because I think a lot of times I did keep going because I got one of those texts that said, keep going. That's awesome.

Jay Franze 45:23

All right. Well, we have done it, we have reached the top of the hour, which does mean we have reached the end of the show. And if you've enjoyed the show, well, please tell a friend. And as we say, if you have not, well, tell too. You can reach out to both of us tonight over at jfrenzy.com. We will keep this or any other conversation going. Ezra, my friend, I cannot thank you enough for being here tonight. I truly do appreciate it, and I would like to leave the final words to you.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

All right. Thank you, everybody, and thank you for having me on. And if y'all want to check out my music, go to EzraVansel.com.

Jay Franze 45:55

All right, folks. On that note, have a good night.