We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ezra Jordan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ezra, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I’ve been set on a career in music for as long as I can remember. I come from a musical family and have always thought of music not only as something that I love, but something serious and important that can beF a career as much as any other traditional line of work. Because of my early exposure to music from this perspective, as well as taking lessons starting from the age of 4, I developed a lot of the practical skills for making music pretty early on. I got to watch my parents write songs, play concerts, and navigate the industry throughout my childhood, and I think in a certain way it gave me a leg up when I decided to start taking things seriously when I was around 19. However, there were also a few drawbacks to having this early exposure that I didn’t really realize until I had been working in the industry for several years.

Navigating the waters of a creative industry is often times a much less straightforward path than a traditional 9-5 job in the business world. Although I learned bits of pieces of this process through osmosis and through conversations with my parents, there is a different kind of learning that takes place when you’re going through these things yourself and it’s your career on the line. As a 19 year old cutting my teeth in the music industry, I was an amateur among other amateurs my age, which meant a lot of the professionalism and standards I had seen from watching my parents do their work wasn’t yet present in my own career (neither from me nor my peers). It was a bit of a weird disconnect to know how things are done at a high level, but not quite have the skillset or budget to be able to do it myself. This applied both to the music I was making, and the other facets of surrounding structure such as playing live gigs, making visual content to accompany my music, and marketing my music

There is also a great deal of personal growth that happens when you go through the experiences of carving out a career in the arts that will ultimately help you be able to take your work from a piece of art sitting in a studio to something that has a life out in the world and in the lives of your audience. There is as much “business” in the music business as there is “music”, and over the years I’ve seen people that got into music later than me go further than I have because of their skills and willingness to pursue the business side of things. Often times they aren’t necessarily great musicians in terms of technical skills or artistry, at least at first, but those things can come after learning the business. There isn’t one singular path to forging your career, but in my experience it seems to start happening for people when their knowledge of both sides of the coin reach a certain threshold. It is rare to have success without understanding both halves.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

For those who don’t know, my name is Ezra Jordan and I am singer, songwriter, and piano player from Toronto, Ontario. I am an indie artist who writes, records, and releases music under my own name with the help of a small team. Beyond the creation of the actual music, this means shooting music videos, playing live shows, and creating marketing content so that my music can be packaged in a way that gives it the best chance to reach as many ears as possible. I also write songs for other artists to record, and although I love recording and performing, I’d have to say writing is my favourite part.

What I am most proud of about my work is probably my ability to be involved in every step of the process for my own music. Many musicians specialize in a certain facet of the process, whether that’s being a session instrumentalist who only plays their chosen instrument, a recording engineer who records other people’s music, or a songwriter who doesn’t perform or record the music they create. This is not to say that any of those things is of lesser importance or skill, because I work with every one of these specialists all the time. But when it comes to my own music, I’ve developed the skills to wear many hats, and I like to be involved in every aspect of my music’s creation. This means I write or cowrite the song, I go to the studio and help engineer and produce the recording (this means choosing the recording technique and helping shape the tone/vibe of the recording to match the song), I perform various parts of the song or have input on the session musicians who play their parts, and then I work with a mix engineer and then a mastering engineer to polish the recording to it’s final form. It’s a long and complicated process but I feel that it is important to understand every part of it, even if I’m not doing it myself, so that I can effectively communicate the vision I have for my work and create the best work possible.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think the biggest struggle for artists these days is getting paid what they feel their art is worth. Everybody works hard for their money, and everybody has to make choices as to what they spend their hard earned dollars on. There are needs and there are wants, and most people would all agree that essentials like food and shelter come first, and other things like entertainment come second. However art affects the world in ways that are harder to measure, but no less important than many things that we deem essential without a second thought. The amount of music, TV, movies, and other forms of art that we consume and have access to is many many magnitudes greater than at any other time in history, and yet I would argue that most artists are struggling to be compensated fairly more than they ever have before. It isn’t the fault of the consumer, but we’ve all become used to the idea that a few cheap monthly subscriptions is what unlimited access to art anywhere at any time is worth, which doesn’t seem right to me.

Beyond changing the industry structures that allocate money in ways that are disproportionately skewed towards the corporate institutions of art, it is my hope that people will start to think more about the real value that art of all kinds has in their lives, and choose to support artists in any way that they can. Go to shows, invite your friends, share their work on your social media, buy their merch, whatever you can do. These are the things that move the needle for artists.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me the most rewarding thing about being an artist is that there is always something more to be learned. Creating art isn’t linear, you never know when or how you’re going to create your best work, or what your “best” work even is. Just when you think you’ve figured something out, there’s another revelation waiting around the corner. Many times I remember feeling like I’ve really made a lot of progress playing piano or writing songs, only to look back on my work a year later to see how far I’ve come. The beauty and the pain of it all is that you never arrive, but the journey is always interesting.

Contact Info:

• Website: ezrajordan.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ezrajordan/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EzraJordanMusic/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EzraJordan/playlists?app=desktop

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