A QUICK CHAT WITH KEZRA
Congratulations on releasing ‘Back Home’! It’s a beautiful track, what was the inspiration behind it?
Thank you! It was at a time in my life where I was feeling very uninspired and stuck during lockdown. So I sat on the floor of my living room, plugged in my vocal harmoniser pedal and improvised some vocal ad-libs, this really inspired the whole sound of Back Home. The chord pauses on the guitar are echoing that feeling of being stuck, whilst the warped harmonising vocals are mirroring all those voices in your head which are overthinking and analysing every situation.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard something new from KEZRA. What have you been up to?
oh I know, it’s been far too long. I had spent a lot of time overseas traveling through Europe and America and earning all my inspiration points. When you get to explore the world, your mind begins to explore more, that lead to me working on new music and falling back in love with songwriting. I also spent some time writing and performing in an original duo called Ironess; a folky pop project which really took me out of my writing comfort zone learning how to collaborate with someone else oppose to writing on my own. I’ve finally finished my solo recordings and can’t wait to be releasing them to the world.
What are you influences and how do they affect your songwriting?
Personal experiences are what influence me the most with my writing, even if I’m not going through those emotions at the time, there’s always some past feelings that can help me with the narrative. Undoubtedly, I’m heavily influenced by some of my favourite artists, like Holly Humberstone and Maggie Rogers - they both have unique styles of story telling and production styes that I absolutely love, you know those songs that you can easily listen to and never get sick of. Depending on what instrument I start on, that will completely change the mood of my writing. If it’s on acoustic guitar I will most likely begin with fingerpicking and find some funky chord shapes that sound cool and roll with that. If it’s on electric guitar I will generally stick to more solid chords, building up the strumming patterns, and incorporating guitar riffs to be the feature of the song, whilst on the keys, I will play around with more of the soundscapes and use a groove to improv over.
How did you start playing music?
I was in grade 3 at the time, I remember stealing my brothers guitar and just started to make up random chords (upside down of course!) singing along with it, thinking how awesome it was. I went and showed my parents my new terrible song on the guitar that I knew nothing about, and they were like yeah we need to get you some proper lessons haha! I never turned back, I thought guitar was just the coolest instrument and was stoked when I learnt my first guitar riff to ‘Bob The Builder’. It was only natural that I started writing my own songs. My first song I wrote with my guitar was called ‘Dreams’ a poppy corny goodness banger - sadly it wasn’t as advanced as the Fleetwood Mac version, however, I can safely say I have up-skilled my writing and performing since Primary school.
What do you have planned for the remainder of 2022?
I’m heading over to the states again in August to play some live acoustic shows in my fave musical city of Austin, Texas (insert cowboy emoji) which I’m super keen for! The rest of year will be full of new Kezra tunes and hitting the stage in AUS to play these songs live for the first time with my full band! Woohoo!