STAYING AWAKE

'Love, Recovery, Family & The Music That Holds It All'
Exclusive Interview with Ezra Vancil
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

​Ezra Vancil has been writing, recording, and performing music since he was a teenager, chasing songs, dreams, love, and the promise of something just out of reach. Along the way, he found attention, record deals, heartbreak, collapse, and a decade lost to alcohol before waking up to a different kind of life. Now, with his latest project, Morning & Midnight, Ezra returns not with music as a means to an end, but as an act of love, presence, and gratitude for being awake.

ALLIÉ: Ezra, you’ve said that your occupation now is “staying awake to life.” So, let’s start there. What does that mean to you, and what did it take for you to wake up?

EZRA: In my former life, I was chasing so many things to find out who I was through my career, creativity and relationships. Now, I see that I was looking in the wrong place. I was looking out there.

What I’ve found is that it needs to start right here. I need to be awake to my life and not just let life fly by me, but be aware of what is going on and awake to what is happening. I consider that my vocation now, simply staying awake to my life and accepting it as it comes. I find that it all works out much better that way when I’m focused in the right place.

ALLIÉ: I love that because it’s true. We have to be present in the moment. Instead of forcing things, we have to allow things into our lives.

Music has been with you since you were a teenager, but your relationship with it has changed over time. What did music mean to you then, and what does it mean to you now?

EZRA: Looking back, music was certainly an expression of myself, but it also had the goal of getting recognition. I was always looking to the world to tell me that I was okay, that I had a place here and that I belonged.

It has completely switched over to another way of thinking. Music is now something I’ve been given, and I want to give it. It is something within me that I’ve been given to share instead of something I use to get something in return.

I find that there is so much more enjoyment when I can make that switch. I still get caught up in the likes and everything, as we all do, and wonder how much recognition I’m getting. But I like to stop. I have something I do in the morning to reset myself and remember what I’m doing and who I am.

My purpose is to give this thing that I’ve been given and to give it fully, with all that I have. There is true satisfaction in that because I don’t need an outcome to satisfy me anymore. The outcome is simply doing it, making music and allowing myself to be expressive in the greatest way possible.

ALLIÉ: It sounds like you’re in a beautiful space and place right now.

Let’s go back in time. You’ve described sinking to the bottom of a bottle for nearly a decade. When you look back at that time now, what do you understand about yourself that you couldn’t see then?

EZRA: That’s a good place to go because the realizations I’ve had in my life are almost like what happens when you meet somebody who has had a near-death experience. I’ve seen the bottom. I’ve seen how bad it can get inside of me and in my life.

What I see when I look back is a need for control. We come into this world and are just kind of plopped here. We’re told, “Do this. Do that. This is good. This is not good.” We’re trying to figure it out as we go.

My way of doing that was to try to control everything. I tried to control my relationship and make it what I thought it needed to be. I tried to control my career and make it what I thought it needed to be. I didn’t realize that I was in a relationship with life and that I had to release control to allow my life to happen.

​Alcohol was that control mechanism for me because I could control my mood and how I felt. If I wanted to escape at any time, with the snap of a finger, I could put some kind of chemical into my body, usually alcohol, and change the way I felt.

I didn’t like how I felt. I didn’t like how I dealt with people or who I was. Alcohol put this mask over me that allowed me to perform for people in a way that certainly wasn’t myself.

When I get down to it, though, it was that need for control in a reality that doesn’t play by my rules. Life comes at me in all different kinds of ways.

Putting down that control allowed me to finally find sobriety and deal with life as it comes to me each day, with my own sober self. It’s just me, with no chemicals in my body, trying to figure out this life.

I find a lot of peace there because it’s okay. I’m in this boat with everybody else. We’re all doing this. I was trying to skip the line and cheat by doing it in an inebriated state where I didn’t have to feel all the pain and feelings of life.

ALLIÉ: I love how you said that you realized you’re in a relationship with life.

Let’s talk specifics. Morning and Midnight is two albums, a book and artwork created during the recording sessions. What made this project need to become something bigger than music alone?

EZRA: It started as an album that I began when I first got sober. My wife filed for divorce because she didn’t know who I was anymore. She was like, “I’m out of here.”

She came back, but I had started an album during that time. While we were trying to repair our marriage, it was simply too painful to look at, so I put it away.

A decade later, I pulled it out of the drawer. I thought, “There are some real human feelings in this album that I want to put out into the world.”

As I started doing that, songs and poems began coming out of me. It was almost like my subconscious was saying, “You’re playing these sad songs, but look at what it has turned into. Look at the other side of the coin. Look at what this pain and struggle have brought into your life.”

I ended up writing and finishing two albums. I was also in a place where I had turned 50 when I started this album. I’m no longer in the game to become a big pop star. I’ve found a comfortable place for myself in music, but the ambition isn’t the same anymore. It’s simply to make the music and let people enjoy it, if they will.

During this time, the project became a book, poetry and drawings because I simply allowed myself to be.

​I live in a forest in East Texas. It is literally just tall pine trees. I started waking up really early to watch the sunrise. I would usually take a journal with me, sit there and allow myself to create without any outcome or needing to think about what the algorithm was going to like.

I expressed myself in ways that I never had before. That is what this album became. I started drawing again, which I hadn’t done since I was a kid. I started drawing for no reason. When I think about where my mind was when I was younger, it was always, “I’m going to draw this piece for a product I’m going to sell,” or, “I’m going to write this poetry, and it’s going to become a book.”

This time, I didn’t even have the idea of a book. There were no outcomes. It was purely a year of me creating and enjoying my existence as a creator.

ALLIÉ: I love how you referenced earlier that you’re no longer tethered to outcomes. You’re there for the ride and the process of it all, and that becomes the reward in and of itself. When people experience this new era of your work, what do you hope stays with them after the last song ends?

EZRA: I went through a major struggle to get sober and repair my life and family. Things happened that I didn’t know were possible. I didn’t know that somebody could change as much as I did. I always thought you were just stuck where you were.

With my music, I only want to put out there who I am. I want to do it in a way where people can listen to it, enjoy it and find something very true there. I’m not trying to gloss things up too much. I’m not trying to hide anything or simply get their attention. I want them to hear somebody who is trying to be honest.

What I hope people take away from that is that they can also be who they are in this world, and that it’s okay. They don’t have to put on the mask. I try to make a lot of my music very raw. Many of these songs were recorded live in my studio. Musicians will know that we usually block things out and record the vocal and guitar separately. With this album, I tried to capture moments so that my true self could come out without me correcting everything or fixing my vocal. I wanted something very true. I hope that people who listen to me feel a little more encouraged to be themselves and know that it’s okay to simply be. ∎

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Find & follow Ezra on Instagram: @ezravancil