I moved cautiously, a twelve year old who knew what the repercussions of getting caught were. The witching hour rang out eerily from some watchtower, as I arranged pillows in the proverbial lump on my bed and descended down the rank basement stairs. Rats and cobwebs soon gave way to naked bulbs illuminating a red shawl that my mother must have worn when she still believed in red---underneath it lay my prize possession: an old radio. Its sounds extended me out from my puritanical prison into a world of pure bliss. To my parents, rock music was from the devil and led directly to the sin of sex before marriage, but I took a fancy to this "devil" and procreated nightly with music in secret basement liaisons. Screaming in silence I would chop my air guitar, then shudder with some nameless trumpet player and his nocturnal everything, lost in rebellion and redemption...what I was denied as a kid ended up consuming me.
Ezra Huleatt was born into a religious intentional community in rural Pennsylvania on March 12, 1978. Though many styles of music were forbidden in this part-hippie, part-Amish pacifist commune, he grew up indoctrinated by the classical masters and on his tenth birthday received a trumpet. Loud nothings progressed to Sousa marches, trumpet concertos, and then the discovery of Miles Davis and the language of jazz: a language of losing everything in the search for love and freedom. While most kids were emulating Kurt Cobain, his hero was Clifford Brown.
Upon completion of High School Ezra escaped his family, country, and past, by traveling to Haiti, where he volunteered at a hospital for a year, attempting to satiate his curiosity of voodoo while learning from one of the richest, most electrifying cultures. He then set off alone, biking the coast and back-country, living and working with peasants he met along the way, discovering first hand their hospitality and the island rhythms and drums that kept them alive.
Ezra returned to New York City where he worked as a bike messenger and planned naively how to pursue his passion for music as an unsupported kid. A stolen guitar, peanut butter sandwiches, drugs, activism, and Bronx projects somehow led to a year of college that only left him more restless. Accidentally he stumbled across the writings of Jack Kerouac and, wanting to experience the beauty that lay in those pages, he exchanged school for the open road: hitchhiking the states, boating, bussing, and flirting his way through all of Central America, Cuba, South America, and Europe, falling hard for Spain with its castles, surf, bull-running and tomato fights. Everywhere he went his trumpet and guitar came with him, often at the expense of anything else, but the gypsy lifestyle of no money and big adventure suited his romantic head and hungry heart.
Ezra's travels eventually returned him to college, this time on the West Coast, under the guise of studying Afro-Latin jazz in Los Angeles. His ulterior motives were to visit the haunts of many of his favorite bands, to capture the searching immediacy of the Doors and the energy of Sublime in their home environment. Ezra then returned to New York City where he graduated with a degree in music from Hunter College. Inspired by everything he plays out all over the city, releasing uncompromising lyrics over rock garnered from the L.E.S. streets coupled with the island dance grooves of reggae and his love relationship with trumpet and unconventional jazz.
I know you have been waiting for the return of a Chet Baker or Louis Armstrong,
trumpet player/singers who could caress your soul and have you making out with
God for a second before stabbing you and leaving you skewered on a pitchfork in hell.
Musicians whose combined weapons, the voice and the horn, could challenge
and change you yet still entertain you. Don't. Wait. Any. Longer.
Check out the artist's website:
http://www.ezranyc.comTrack List:
1. twentysomething
2. haiku
3. i'll montague your capulet
4. citi soleil
5. frequent flyer
6. angel undercover
7. college anthem
8. reality is only on tv
9. february fires
10. mad to live / imagine
Other Genres:
