Press Kit · Singer-Songwriter · East Texas
Ezra Vancil
Honest songs from the space between morning and midnight.
Biography
Ezra Vancil writes the kind of Americana that isn't trying to win you over — it's just telling the truth and letting you decide.
Raised by working musicians who followed the gospel circuit from town to town, he spent decades writing songs: through an early development deal in Los Angeles, years on the road, and a long stretch he nearly didn't come back from. Addiction took a lot before sobriety and a survived divorce turned the work toward something quieter and more honest.
He came home to the East Texas woods and built a small studio, Nearhome, where he records the way the songs seem to want — live, unpolished, sometimes without headphones, the room left in. His daughter Cozi began singing beside him, and a second chapter opened up.
His latest is Morning & Midnight — a record he began during a divorce, couldn’t finish, and set down for ten years, then picked back up alongside a second album about the life that came after it.
Latest Release
Morning & Midnight
Two albums written a decade apart, made together at the cabin in the East Texas woods
One of these records is ten years older than the other. Midnight was written in the dark — a marriage ending, and me trying to stay sober and get a life back under me. I couldn’t make it then. It was too hard, so I set the songs down and left them alone.
A decade later I felt ready to go back for them. And somewhere in the middle of recording those old songs, new ones started coming — that’s Morning. The life on the far side of that night: the same marriage, rebuilt. I never set out to make a second record. It showed up while I was looking back at the first.
Most of it was made at the cabin in the East Texas woods. I spent those mornings — and a fair number of midnights — out there by myself, and the songs came the way they came. We cut them mostly live and then left them alone. Nobody polished the life out of these takes: if a performance had the thing in it, that’s the one on the record — the room, the breath, the timing that isn’t quite square. My daughter Cozi is all over both albums, singing beside me on most of these songs. A lot of this doesn’t exist without her.
The older record. Written while a marriage was ending and I was working to stay sober — then set down for ten years, because making it was more than I had in me at the time.
Stream MidnightWritten while I was finally making Midnight. The story of what came after that night — the marriage restored, the light on the other side of the dark.
Stream MorningThere’s a book with it: Mornings & Midnights, two hundred pages of poems, journal entries, and hand-drawn work made out there by a little stove fire while these songs were coming. Every copy includes both albums. See the book press kit →
What the Press Says
“Master composer and intelligent songwriter.”
Hollywood Digest“Impeccable folk-inspired magic.”
Indie Pulse Music“Quintessence of modern folk.”
Artist Rack“Different. Intimate. Extraordinary.”
Side Stage MagazineOn Screen · On Stage
Discovery Channel
BBC
Kerrville Folk Festival
NewSong
Richmond Film Festival