Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.

Rob: We are joined today by our guest, Ezra Vancil. Our opening question for you, Ezra, is this. Both Brent and I really love live music, whether it be going to a show at Red Rocks or a dive bar down the street, and I'm the guy that'll stop on a street corner to listen to a really good performer, which drives my wife crazy. What is one of the coolest, most inspirational, or craziest venues that you've ever performed in? Give us a little bit of backstory there.

Ezra: The greatest show I've ever played and the most interesting was in a prison. It was in the Texas Hills near Uvalde, Texas. And my band, we got invited to play at a prison because the chaplain knew who we were. It was an incredible thing, to this day, it's the greatest show I've ever played. And maybe because there's a captive audience. But it was an incredible thing. There was just a moment that happened between me and about, I bet it was 150, 200 men, and our music, that it was just beautiful. There were sing-alongs, and I got to go with a few of them. They let us go back in the cells and meet and talk afterwards, and it's just incredible. It's still a show I look back on very fondly.

Brent: What was the stage of your career that you did that, or stage of life?

Ezra: So that was in my mid-30s, and it was in kind of the dark era of my life, and maybe at the midpoint or the beginning of kind of the darkest years of my life. But still, this is a funny thing about music. My memories of that era that we're going to talk about have all these shadows and darkness, but shows don't. The music was always a part of me that I loved and enjoyed.

Brent: You brought me back to all the Johnny Cash albums, where he did a lot of the prison ones, and those are always really special. Yes, captive audience, but I think what you could get through the music, and maybe you could describe this to us, is that it was a chance for them, the prisoners, to be transported out of their current condition or whatever their situation was. Did you feel that or get a sense of that?

Ezra: Yeah, I felt like during that, it was a long show, it was like a two-hour show, that they forgot they were inside those bars behind those fences, and there was just a joy, and you know, it's what music does. We all came into a moment together, and I could feel it, and I could feel it with the prisoners afterwards getting to meet them and talk to them, that it was something that they will remember too.

Brent: Thanks for sharing that, because it's interesting when you think about you being a musician for several decades. There's so many places that you could take us to, but you also brought us to a place that can be so transformative for people in different ways than just going to some famous venue that we could all recite or say, oh, I saw three shows there, and things like that. And you probably left such a big mark on all the people that were there to listen to your music. So thanks for sharing that. That caught me off guard. I'm glad you shared that. So thank you.

Rob: I was thinking, Brent, that I was going to be able to say, oh, I've seen a show there. That's great, but I can definitely say I've never seen a show in prison.

Ezra: Good for you.

Rob: Well, our guest today, if you haven't been able to get a little bit of our vibe going on, is our guest is Ezra Vancil. Ezra is a Texas-based singer-songwriter, artist, and now author. I think I can say author, that you're a published author, Ezra. He's received numerous awards, including the Americana Artist of the Year for the Richmond International Film Festival. He's been featured on Discovery Channel, BBC, and even VH1. His story is about midlife collapse and the rebuilding years. And this is more than a story about addiction and recovery. It's about how anyone can rebuild their life and how the power of acceptance is really the baseline for building your next great act. His most recent project is called Morning and Midnight. It's a double album and a book that he built with both his daughter and son. And he and his daughter actually have their own band called Cozy and a Flounder, which I want to hear more about that name as we get into our discussion today. I love that. We think he's the perfect guest for our podcast. When we asked him what he sings about, his answer was, I sing about everything. Everything that we're dealing with in our lives: marriage, divorce, children, parents, sex, loneliness, drunkenness, heartbreak, old oak trees, oceans, and beer cans. Ezra, welcome to the Midlife Circus.

Ezra: Thank you, Rob and Brent, thank you so much for having me today.

Brent: We're so excited for this conversation. And what was fun about the connection that we made when we were preparing for this is how a lot of us have this aspiration to go do creative projects. And so we had this role reversal because you had shared, like, wow, I did a lot of my creative work throughout most of my career, but now I'm doing some business things, and we were kind of sharing the changes. So we're excited to share stories back and forth. But where I'd like to start in our conversation is a bit of your backstory. And from my understanding, your parents were in the traveling band. Is that correct?

Ezra: Yes, gospel band.

Brent: So talk a little bit about that from an informative years, but then where did it take you into your teens? Because you were picked up pretty early on from a record label. And tell us about how you evolved in your music and the preferences and what you're exposed to, but then how did it launch your own career at such a young age?

Ezra: Growing up with my parents, it was a life of music, and we moved so much that I get different counts all the time. It's somewhere between 30 and 35 before I hit preteens. And so there's kind of the good and the bad. There was a lot of instability. I don't have any memories of like school friends or teachers, that kind of thing. We would just move on. And it was also a very, although a very warm, you know, there's no coldness in our family. It was a very strict religious upbringing. I didn't listen to popular music. Bob Dylan, I stole that from my dad's albums in the attic. That was my only one that was outside of my approved listening, and that's why I think I love Bob Dylan so much. But what happened was in those young years I learned music. My dad taught me guitar. Every once in a while I would get on stage, and me and my brother would sing with my parents. And so music was not something I was unfamiliar with. And so I began playing. First song I wrote was to impress a girl at 15. And I started meeting other musicians, and before I knew it, I was in a band. And somewhere in my late teens, we went to record the first album. And it's kind of like you see in the movies. We're just these kids, kind of most of us small town kids, and we go to this studio to record an album, and the engineer had had an LA group in there before with their management team, and they told him if he sees anything interesting, call them. So after our first session, he called this production management group in LA. They flew down in a week, and suddenly we were talking deals and had contracts in front of us. And so it was kind of a progression. My family, you know, I think this was something my dad has been in music all his life, so they kind of jumped on board with this, and it was just this incredibly exciting time in all of our lives. Although this was not, you know, this was mainstream music. I wasn't going down the gospel music road, but they still were very happy. And so that's the beginning of it. And, you know, I don't know if you want me to get into the lifestyle of that time or you know what it's like.

Rob: Being a teen and signing a contract had to be an incredible lifestyle. I mean, I think about my prefrontal cortex not fully developed, and having some money at my hands, and a lifestyle of a musician. Tell us a little about what that lifestyle was like and what that experience was like as a teenager getting signed.

Ezra: Yeah, I mean that's a really good point because I didn't have anybody around me. Everybody was naive to this. All we know is the movies, like these big wigs come in and they're in limos, and we were sitting in offices with lawyers for weeks, if not months, working out these contracts, which I don't know what they were saying. I didn't even know my lawyer. So it was very scary. I thought I was getting taken advantage of all the time because these people that came, I love them now, I think of them very fondly, but they were slimy to me back then. They seemed just like something was off. So there was like a fear going into it, and then there was this side of it where I'd grown up pretty poor. Well, like I would say we were below the poverty line all of our life. And when I got there, it was, I don't know, I don't even know what the contract was for. I think it was close to a million-dollar contract or something like that. But it could have been like less than that. It was a lot of money that eventually this contract was for. What it was to me as a teenager was just a blank check. They said whatever you want. When we'd go out to eat, we would go in a limo and they would take the menus away and say, just give us everything from your menu. And they would fill up the table with food. We'd stay in the penthouses, and it was just wild. I don't think our band was prepared for this. Our band was kind of small town, and we took advantage of the blank check, and we soon had a house, and we would pick up people on the road. Sometimes in our house, people would just be living there. I didn't know who they were. I think we picked them up at a gig. They'd been living there for weeks. We eventually, and it got pretty crazy there. We had a drug bust on our band studio. The police came in with all their drug gear, whatever, they're all dressed up, and came in and tore up the house one day, and I saw guys running around to the toilet and flushing things. And so there's some times like that going on. We were known as not a great place for young people to be at. So it was a mixture of, I was kind of falling into my first introduction into addictions, and it became very evident very fast that I reacted to alcohol like nobody else. Everybody partied really hard, but I never stopped. I would keep going throughout the night, and I'd wake up and keep going. So I had like something that was very different than other people. In fact, a lot of those people I know now, they got their lives back together, careers and everything, but it kicked off something that just kept going for me. And eventually I ended up in LA, and just a quick story there, you know, there's rubbing shoulders with movie stars, and we were in a studio when, eventually I went solo with this management team, and I was in the studio with Guns N' Roses. I was in a studio with Guns N' Roses, and I was told don't get near them because I was in studio B and they were in studio A, but I could see Slash walking into the kitchen and getting something out and walking out, and met all these kind of celebrities. And here I'm just a kid. And we would go, the money was the crazy thing. It was just everything I ever would want. When we'd go shopping, they would just bring three carts and just grab all the clothes and take them home and try them on, and then have somebody send back what we didn't want. And we were staying in Ozzy Osbourne's old house, and so it was like a dream. But I got to tell you, all through this, that I wasn't all excited, I was feeling very controlled. I felt like I had no agency. I had all these older men in suits around telling me to change my lyrics and to do this, and so I became very kind of bitter towards them. And eventually that's where it broke down. I got a call when I was 21, I think, and they said we're dropping you. And that was the end of it.

Brent: So you had this meteoric rise, all of a sudden you got picked up and you're in LA and you're living this rock and roll lifestyle. But then you started to realize, was there a moment in time that you started to realize that there was a change, when you said you're surrounded by these executives and you never really trusted anybody, because you're like, wait a minute, what's going on? Can you go back to that moment in time where you're starting to say, huh, this isn't right? I'm trying to put you in a place that I can't even imagine at 20 years old or 18, 19, 20 years old, because I have kids that age, and I can't imagine them being thrust into that environment and the excess that's thrown at you, when you're like, yeah, they just give you a couple shopping carts full of clothes, try them on, and somebody's kind of taking care of you, telling you to do this, do that. But then you're living in crazy houses and being exposed to Guns N' Roses and all those things. But did you ever have these moments in time where you're just like, huh, I don't know about this?

Ezra: Absolutely. This is a strange, well, it's actually kind of a blessing in my life because I had a huge realization during this time. I grew up, you know, poor. We didn't have a lot. We were never like food poor, but it was close sometimes. And then I got everything I wanted, and so much food I could not eat. I had like a food scarcity problem back then. And what I realized is this doesn't fix me. I'd come into this band with kind of a hole inside of me, just from I don't know, kind of carried that with me when I was in my teens. And I realized that all this doesn't fix me. And I kind of interpolated that as if I keep going this direction with these guys and what they want to do, it's not going to fix me. And I don't think I could have articulated that at that time, but I look back and I just remember kind of turning against this, knowing that this isn't actually what I was looking for, creatively or something internal. And I say it's a blessing because I look through my life, I look back and I know that riches and fame are not going to fix my problems. Now they might be a nice thing, a tool or whatever, but they're not going to fix this in here.

Rob: When you think back to, so you said 21 is really kind of when you get dropped by the label, and was that the year that things started to transition for you, or was there a period of time in between before the big life change that you went through, Ezra, that you realized you had hit either bottom or you wanted to make a drastic change? Was it at 21 or was it later in life?

Ezra: It was later in life, it was at 40 when I changed. So I got on an elevator that was going down until I was 40 years old. For 20 years.

Brent: Wow.

Ezra: You know, and there's the ups and downs in there. I had some children, I had some good years in there, but the trajectory was down from that point on. And it might be because I dropped out of high school. I was going to be a rock star. I had no other plan B. And so suddenly I was dropped, and I didn't know how to make a living. The first thing I did is I tried to start a window washing business. And here I am, a guy that was like touring around and playing for these big audiences, and I'm out washing Subway's windows, and wishing I was in Subway, which I eventually took a job at Subway. But I tell you, it was like I had messed up, I had missed my calling in life, and I was desperate to get it back. And I did, kind of. I had another big kind of outbreak of my music in my late 20s where I got publishing deals again and went through this all again. But I tell you, I had, I think, complete fear of the unknown because my plan didn't work. And instead of going, okay, accepting that, now I got to do something, I just started this long road of kind of destroying myself.

Rob: It sounds like, as you're describing it though, Ezra, it sounds like a lot of peaks and valleys, a lot of ups and downs, going from washing windows. I don't know if you were still doing music at that time, but you weren't a known artist, at least at that time. No one was publishing your music, it sounds like, to getting published again and now having resources to have that lifestyle. It sounds like some peaks and valleys happened during that 20-year period of time.

Ezra: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, it's not as simple as just this descent. It was up and down, hope, loss of hope, a lot of striving. I kind of see it though as whatever was going on, whether it was a peaceful time in my family or it was a rocky time, what was underneath was this bubbling, like lava, that I have to differentiate myself. I have to be great. And I just couldn't find the channel, and I would take jobs and I would still play. So I feel like the resurgence of my music in my late 20s actually destroyed my marriage and my family because I was working a full-time job because I had to. I had a child and a family and a house. Plus, I was trying to keep up that old lifestyle. I would drive from my job at 4 p.m. I'd get off and drive three or four hours, play a show till three in the morning, and drive back and be at work at eight in the morning, and do this over and over. And it just started tearing me apart. It's kind of like my desires, my wanting of this, was just ripping my life apart.

Brent: When you said earlier on that there was this hole in your heart, can you talk a little bit more about that? You probably acknowledged it the way you described it, you understood it was there pretty early on, and there was something missing. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I think that'll start to bring us into some of the realizations that you even had in your 30s and then into your 40s.

Ezra: Yeah, you know, growing up, I don't really know why I was like this, but I was kind of a solemn kid. I just kind of thought of myself as a lone wolf. There might be a lot of the moving, there was no real friendships in my life, so maybe I was just very lonely and I took on this identity as the lone wolf that I don't need anybody. But there was, I remember back in my early teens, and especially about 14 or 15, just a real loneliness and like I don't belong in this world. I don't know what's going on, but this is not for me. And I did have, and I won't go too much into this, but there was kind of a traumatic event where someone very close to me in my family got put in a mental hospital when I was 14 or 15. And I remember going, because I felt all these strange loneliness when this happened. I remember going and visiting at this state mental hospital, and it was terrifying to me at that age. There was people babbling around, and I won't go into all the terrifying things. And I left, and because this was family, I thought, what if that's me? What if I end up here? And I think I started thinking, maybe I'm broken, maybe I'm really messed up. And I think that's where that hole maybe developed or was revealed, that I just felt not like other people.

Brent: Well, you think about what you were navigating in life. I mean, if you've moved that many times and you've referenced a few times where you just didn't have lots of friends, so it's that connectivity. So you're almost forced into this lone wolf, but then you're forced into your own head of trying to navigate life as a teenager. And then think of the next evolution of now you're in this mega spotlight. Like, how do you navigate all these things? It's peaks and valleys and changes and all that, which I just find, it's amazing that you've been able to navigate all of this. And I'm assuming there's highs and lows and grace that you're giving yourself now at the age that you're at, you're like, wow, this is a lot of work to get to where I'm at. But it's interesting when we go back to our inner child and we think about those experiences. And Rob's talked a lot on this podcast about how he grew up and sometimes there weren't meals. It wasn't the meals, but it was just not a lot on the table. I think that's the way you described it, Rob. And so when you've got those things and then navigating, all of a sudden you're thrust into, I cannot imagine being thrust into the environment that you're thrust into. And I'm also a huge GNR fan, so I would have totally broke their rules. I was this close.

Rob: Slash, slash, come here, slash. Well, the phrase you just said though, Ezra, in the middle of your answer, was something was burning inside of you where you had to be great. And I don't think musicians are the only people that actually have that. I think a lot of us were born into a world, whether you go into being a business executive, you go into the arts, you go into something, is that you have to be great at it. There's no mediocrity, there's no average. It's either I'm fantastic or I'm a failure. And I imagine that had some weight during those peaks and valley years for you in particular, that had some weight in there that made the valleys a lot lower and the peaks a lot higher. So the emotional swing pretty giant. Was there a point in time, was it a, we were going to get to a place where you had to make a change? Was it a slow burn to get there, or was there a certain moment where you realized I can't keep doing this to myself? You said it in your 40s, but was it a slow burn to get there, or was it a single defining moment that you had where you realized that something needed to be different?

Ezra: It was a single defining moment when this change came, but that single moment had a slow burn that was leading to it. It was a catharsis, it was like nowhere else to go. And my 30s, you know, that second music revival died, and I just went into a bottle for my whole 30s pretty much. And that life, if you know people that have dealt with alcoholism or addiction, it's a never-ending, it's Groundhog's Day. It's the movie. You just wake up and you do the same thing. Where the slow burn was happening was inside of me, that I was just becoming less, I was becoming a void, and I pulled away from people emotionally and physically to total isolation as much as I could. And so that was the slow burn, more and more isolated, more in my head, less and less a part of this world. And it was almost like you mentioned at the beginning of that, if I can't be special up here, I'm going to be special down here. I'm going to be the saddest creature you've ever met. And so it made me special though, and it did because my family would come in and try to rescue me. It was a never, it was like a full-time job taking care of me. And that all led though to a night when I was probably about to turn 40. Yeah, it was in the February before I turned 40. That was a catharsis. And I had, in those years, I had tried to take my life so many times that me and my wife can't count. My wife stayed with me through all this, and a few of them, I did it right, where they told her that I wasn't coming out of the emergency room, to get prepared. And so that was my life at that time, just the darkest thing I can imagine. And it came down to a time where I had a lot of medications and all kinds of things, and I met a doctor, and a lot of these medications kept me going. They put me down at night, helped me get up in the morning, and make it through a day, and calm my anxiety and panic. And I went to a doctor and I was telling him everything, and I had just gotten out of the hospital for trying to off myself, and it just happened to be a time where doctors started sharing some kind of computer, like locked in, and he could see for the first time, because I could just get a different doctor. And I went to get all of my, I'll call them happy pills from him, and he said, I'm not giving you anything but Antabuse, is what it's called. It's for people, alcoholics, because you're an alcoholic. I'm not giving you anything. And that was the catalyst that started about a month of just chaos. And I have to mention I had gotten a felony during this time, so I was facing prison and everything. It started a catalyst where I just had the most insane month, which for me is pretty insane, until it all ended one night on the kitchen floor where I had woken up to my phone in my hand, and had saw walls of texts of blabbering nonsense. And every once in a while I'd see my son writing back, Dad, why are you doing this to me? Stop, please. And I just crumbled. And I had somehow kept all through this that at least I love my children. I would hide all this from them. And that night on the floor, I just realized I can't be this anymore. I can't be this story anymore. I don't care what happens to me. I just can't be this. At that time I would call myself kind of an atheist kind of person. I was very religious and I had drank myself out of that. I didn't want there to be anything after. But I remember just saying, whoever you are, whatever's up there, I'll do anything at all. I just can't be this. And that began a change. I woke up that next day. Because I was a felon, I had to go to these groups with people with problems, and I hated them. But I woke up and the first thought was, you need to go to that group. And I did. And I began a long journey. That's where the long journey began, of finding a new story, a new me, or actually finding the me that I lost.

Brent: Thank you for sharing that. It's like that slow burn. And I think all of us have moments in life where you just go through these transitions, and maybe you're not the person that you wanted to be, or maybe you've been built up to the person that you don't want to be. There's a couple of different ways you can look at it. So we want to transition into the rebuilding years because that's part of the great story and why you're here today. But before we jump into that, we've talked offline coming into this conversation. Would you be open to singing a song for us? And I know you said you've been working on some stuff. Would you be open to that? Absolutely. Well, let's hear it. This is perfect transition.

Ezra: Actually, this is a song I just wrote. And it's on my mandolin, I don't know if you can see on the camera. This song I just wrote recently. I thought I knew kind of your show, and I knew what we would be talking about today. And I was just thinking about this song because I live in East Texas now, out in the middle of nowhere, and there was a horse right down the road that I would drive by, and he's an old horse, and he would look in his little pen out on this beautiful, one of the most beautiful fields out here. And I thought of that as me, as kind of this guy that I'd see that horse thinking, oh, I could have been so much more, but instead I'm here, I've got some cows around me, this is not cool. But I see him kind of looking at that field and dreaming about a life, and I believe that's what was with me my whole life. It's that I knew there was another life. It was in my dreams. I just didn't know it was possible. And so I'm going to play a little bit of this song for you here.

[Ezra performs his new song live on mandolin]

Brent: Wow. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Rob: I got to answer that early question. I now have another favorite venue that I could actually say I've listened to live music. It's my home office. That was incredible, Ezra. Thank you.

Ezra: Thank you, thank you, guys. And I've never done this on a podcast, so it was neat that y'all even thought to ask to do that. So thank you.

Brent: Your music is just so beautiful. So thank you. And I know we've talked about it in preparation for this conversation. The one thing that you do so well with your music, and we'll jump back into some of the rebuilding stories, is you have this ability to bring me into your world very, very beautifully, and it's so nice. So thank you for sharing your gift, and you're so talented. So thank you. It just blows me away because it's so far from my own creative abilities. You're like, well, I just kind of wrote this recently, about the horse down the street. I love it. So now from a process perspective or just from a life, you're now, you've realized I need to change. And you had your wake-up call, you probably had many coming up to it, but you had this really big experience, and it lasted, you said it was pretty intense for a month, and there's a lot of things going on, but I'm sure it went longer than that. But let's transition into the approach that you took to rebuild. Because that's part of life's journey and part of life's story, sometimes we do hit these stages in life, whether people going through a divorce or a major change in their career or midlife circus, a lot of times people are leaving something behind because they know it's time to change. Can you talk about how you approached your rebuilding and what worked and maybe what didn't?

Ezra: I think the first thing is, it's something that you hear a lot in East Texas with all these forests here, if you're lost, stop. Stop walking and figure out some kind of plan and trace back your steps, something. But if you just keep walking when you're lost out here, and I know this from experience, this is something in my life that had to happen, is I had to stop. I had to stop my game, I had to stop the story that I was telling myself, and I had to take a moment in my life and allow myself, because even though all this, my whole life was crashing, I was still striving to be, I don't know, I was still making music, I still had some kind of striving, striving to make my marriage work, striving to get money and jobs, all this was still going on. I had to stop all that and just take a moment, allow this space in my life to heal and to kind of reflect and look back and go, what's going on here? Where am I in this forest? Where's the sun? And so that's probably the biggest overarching thing, was just a period of, I would say even years where I let myself dedicate all this energy to healing and finding out, you know, it's something we ask when we're a kid, what do we want to be when we grow up? Well, I'm 40 years old and what did I want to be? Not just the things I wanted to do, what kind of person did I want to be? How did I imagine? And starting to ask these kind of questions. And I did get involved with a lot of groups that help with addiction and stuff. So another huge thing I did that I never would have dreamed I would do, is allow people into my life, because I was so ashamed of it. And I had to keep up a front so much. I had to make sure people thought a certain way about me. And I let that whole veil fall in front of some people that I started to trust and allowed people in my life, because apparently what I was thinking, my plans were not working too well. So I thought I would accept some advice and some, a mirror, somebody to reflect back to me what I was saying. And that for me took a lot of courage because it's very hard, even to this day, to let people into my life to look critically at what I'm doing. But I did that and that was a life-changing thing. To this day, that's a lifeline for me. I have to have mirrors in my life, I have to have people who know my insides that I allow in there.

Brent: With the way you're describing that, is there is that moment in time when you do have to trust other people. And you said something that's so profound is you also had to acknowledge that whatever you had been doing is not working. And so you need to lean on others. And was there a moment in time when you felt as if maybe this will actually work? Meaning, I've been spending 20 years of my life in this roller coaster, and I've had so many highs and I've had so many lows, but the last 10 have been pretty low, or very low in your 30s. Now you're in your early 40s. Did you have this moment almost like, not necessarily like this big shocking breakthrough, but just an awareness that came over to say, I think I'm on to something here, or I think I'm on the right path. Like, congratulations. Is there something that you can reflect back upon that?

Ezra: Yes, that goes back to just having other people in my life. And this is not just with addiction or alcoholism. Having people that have gone through the same things, at least similar enough where I can see that they understand my life and what I've done, I think is so important, because the way that realization came is through sharing with different people that have been through what I've been through, with felons and with people that had gone to the other side, that they are now living a life that they were proud of and that they loved themselves. Seeing that gave me the proof because I would look at them and hear their very authentic stories that sounded just like the kind of things that I did, and I could see that they weren't there anymore. And it gave me so much hope that I could be where they were, that I wasn't that different. There's a word, it's kind of a cliche now, but I was terminally unique, is what they call it. I was so unique that nobody could help me. And I started having to look at not so much my differences with these people, but what do I have in common? And suddenly there was this connection. And they could explain something that they had done to try to rescue themselves that hadn't worked or hurt themselves. And even though it wasn't exactly me, I could completely see, oh, that's the same thing that I was doing. I had the same motivations or the same actions. And so I could almost look at myself up the road if I just kept going in this new direction.

Brent: I like how you describe that, because it's when you can start to visualize things and if you can see yourself in a future state, that's such a big part of making a transformation, is understanding like I can now see myself on the other side. And that is a really, it's tough to do. And a lot of what we talk about in midlife circus is that, because we've defined ourselves for so long, and whatever our experiences might be. So for me, as an example, I defined myself and my identity was so tied to this role of being a worker, being an executive leader, being an entrepreneur, being a founder, whatever it might be. But then it's understanding can I see myself beyond that? That's hard to do. So congrats. I mean, for anybody, it doesn't matter. And it's also in your situation, when you've got an addiction, you're also navigating, and I'm familiar with it a bit, is you're navigating this wiring in your system towards alcohol or whatever the addictions may be, and it's controlling you in ways that your brain is not capable, you got to unwind it. And it's not a switch. You wish it was, right?

Ezra: No, it's not a switch. Well, gosh, yeah, I would pay for that switch. Yeah. That's why I said this isn't just about alcoholism or addiction. That principle of visualizing it, and not only that, but seeing, it's the mentor thing. It's seeing, I've had mentors because I'm in business now, but I had the same problem. I've been a screw-up my whole life that barely kept a job. How can I be successful as a professional and as an executive? That was a long path too, but I had mentors. I had people who had started somewhere. They weren't that when they began. And I could see that, okay, I can see that there's steps to this. I just have to be willing to take these steps.

Rob: Ezra, your music and this story, I think, will resonate with a big portion of our audience, if not all of our audience, because I think a lot of people can hear some of their own story in what you're talking about, and not necessarily in a story of addiction, but a story of change and a story of the story we've all told ourselves for a long period of time, as Brent just said, the story of being an executive and a provider and a senior leader and all of those things. We all have this baggage in the story we tell ourselves. We've talked quite a bit on this podcast about the power of acceptance. As two former executives, as Brent and I, we've talked a lot about our own imposter syndrome, our own issues of identity and failure and the striving, always striving for something greater. And you've talked a little about that as well. As you think through your music, how does your music talk about or share a story about personal acceptance?

Ezra: I have one song, it's out there on the internet called Glow. And that's a song that actually talks about this, where it talks about, though I've built this road, I don't have to walk it alone. Though my life, I've crashed it, it doesn't mean that the story has to be over. And my songs, you know, I love that they connect with people. I write them to connect with me and help me understand myself. And there's that song is really about a time where I had to accept, you know, I'm 40 years old. A lot of times, if you've gone off the rails, or if your life has not turned out exactly how you want, and you're in midlife, you're like, oh, I've wasted all these years. And I could have stayed in that for 10 more years of just kind of feeling the regret. But that song, Glow, is a time of accepting, accepting, like you said earlier, there was ups and downs. There's still a lot of beauty in my life. I have beautiful children. I have beautiful relationships. But accepting that and not trying to change my past anymore. I'm not going to expend any more energy in that. It is what it is. And maybe it is allowing me to sit here with you today. So maybe there's something of value that I can derive from this. But I couldn't see that until I stopped and accepted it. And, you know, my music in general is like a therapy. I write music to help me understand. There's so much in here, you know. And I like to just kind of get it out on the table and look at it. You could do it in other creative ways, but I think it's real important that you got to have some kind of mechanism, whether it's just talking to people, get this thing out. Let's look at all the parts here.

Rob: It's funny, this podcast has somewhat become therapy for me. I don't know for you, Brent, but just talking about issues out loud, making it public, has definitely become therapy. So I definitely resonate with that comment you made about the music becoming somewhat therapeutic for you. I think about for Brent and I and a lot of our audience, very much achievement-oriented, you know, performance, success, being able to accept things feels like a weakness or feels like you're settling. And personally it does. I did that for years. That was the story. Why would I ever accept mediocrity? Why would I ever accept this? I'm settling, I could be great. That goes back to that I have to be great. What would you tell somebody that's struggling with that kind of internally right now? Around I have to be great, why settle? Why be accepting of my current state? Why can't I desire something else?

Ezra: Yeah. So I'm a very driven man. I think before I was probably 30, I had some 40, 50 awards, national, international awards. That kind of tells you who I was. I drive, I drive, I drive, I drive. And in that old mindset, it would feel like weakness, like an excuse to accept. But I see acceptance now as a strength, and it's an uncommon strength. It's something that, you think of someone that's drowning, I've seen it in movies, but you have to sometimes debilitate them. I've seen a movie where they socked him and knocked him out so they could save him. Acceptance is like that, is when you find yourself where you're blindly doing things, I think of myself as that swimmer. And it's not that the acceptance is some kind of placing a judgment whether this thing is good or bad. It's just saying, this is. I had some mistakes too in this. And so I carried those into my next marriage. And in my second time when my wife filed a divorce, I knew if I was going to stay sober and stay in this new path of my life, I had to accept this. And it took me accepting her as her own person, that she has her own volition and her own choices. And it had me accept that I had a lot to do with this. And suddenly I wasn't in this narrow thing, and I was looking at things more holistically and could actually heal a lot of things, see myself where I had failed. So now my wife came back a year after this, and she got sober and she's here. So I don't think that would have happened without a stop and accepting everything in the situations, accepting her, accepting my failings. And then I had this clarity, and I'm not telling you it was easy, it was painful. It was still very painful, but it was an activity of mine. It was an action of going, I know this is terrible, but I accept that it's happening. I accept that she is her own person. She is not a Siamese twin. She is not bound to me. She belongs to herself. She can make her own choices, no matter what I think. I accept that I've caused so much of this. I had clarity. Suddenly I could start seeing all these things and work on these things that I have caused. Start to love her just for herself. And when she came back, there was a new love there. It was very hard, and I keep saying that because I don't want people to think, oh, this was just this beautiful little thing. It was a hard and beautiful time because when she came back, I loved her as another person instead of just this projection of me of what I wanted her to be. And all that happened during that year of this hard work of acceptance. So I think of it as a strength. It took everything I had to do this, to wake up every day and not fight against or go make something happen, and just go, this is it, this is what's going on. It allowed me to start looking at where I did have any control at all, and that's right here. I didn't have control over the situation that I thought I did.

Rob: That's really wise. As you're sharing that story, I tried to put myself in your shoes, and I don't know if I would have an even close similar reaction to that as accepting it. I could see myself continuing to fight, but the wisdom you just shared is so powerful. You've also shared with us, and this kind of keeps us in this conversation around acceptance, is you chose a quieter family life as opposed to having a major label. Tell us more about the why and how has that impacted your design of life right now.

Ezra: You know, so what's funny is as I started getting better, music returned. I kind of lost it just with the inability to really do anything for a while. And it came back and I wasn't even looking for music anymore. I sat down one day and I just wrote a song, and before I knew it, I was playing again. And here I am in my 40s, and of course, I think nobody, I'm not going to be a pop star, nobody's going to care about me. But this manager who had just stepped down from, oh gosh, I think it was Columbia Records as a vice president, had a dream of being a manager, and he saw one of my videos I put out, and he flew down from New York, and he had a plan too for an older guy like me. We were going to go into Americana and roots where I could be accepted. And I don't know what would have happened, but we worked on contracts for a year, and I realized as we were making plans, see, I'm about to go on tour, I just started barely being able to take care of my family again, barely getting to know my children again and healing things with my wife. And I had this life at home that I never even thought I could have. And here I am planning to go out and leave them for probably most of the year, and not for much money. Regardless of what people think, it costs more than what you make to do this. And I couldn't work out the math of that, but that didn't matter. I was like, you know, I have something here that I've dreamed of my whole life, and music has never given me that. And so I'm going to take a chance and I'm going to go for my family instead. And I remember it was a crushing decision because I felt like this is my last chance. And I remember calling him and saying, the contract was done, he was waiting for me to sign, and I was like, I can't do this. And he was like, why not? I was like, I can't leave my family. I want to be here with them. And he was very angry. Okay, I got to tell you though, so this is kind of the serendipity of life, is my brother who's a businessman, he called me that same day. Actually, he called before I called this guy the same day. And he said, you know, I've been thinking, brother, about helping you. You've done design and marketing your whole life, and helping you start a business like that. And he's an entrepreneur, he knows how to. And this was when I was going through this decision, I had this contract in front of me. So I remember that was all at play, and I was like, I don't, businessman, I can't do that. I got long hair and a beard, I never shave. I still don't. But that was a part of it, is I'm going to take this road, I'm going to choose my family for maybe the first time in my life, and do what I thought was right at that time, which they were tired, they needed to be taken care of. And so I took this offer from my brother, we started a business, and I left that contract and let it go. And I am where I am now.

Brent: That's so beautiful. Sometimes we just have to make those, at the time, the magnitude is so big for big decisions like that. The weight is on your shoulders, like, what if this is my next big thing? And it's so relatable in so many ways because as we get to this stage in life, we're often introduced to ideas, or people will call you out of the blue, like, hey, you know, in my case, hey, do you want to join a board or do you want to be a part of this? And wait a minute, I think I've left some of that behind. That's also part of your storyline, and I think the important part of the acceptance is accepting all of it, accepting you've done a lot of these things, but what about the things that you have in front of you? You've just built this beautiful life, and you know the end result wouldn't have been great if you would have gone on the road. There's probably a realization, you knew it. Yeah, you could chase another round of a dream, but maybe you're already fulfilling this other beautiful dream. So thanks for sharing that.

Rob: Well, it's the story of every senior leader, every senior executive, everybody that's in business, Ezra, but it's the big contract, the big opportunity, the big job that keeps getting put in front of great people and a lot of our audience, but it comes at a cost. And you made the difficult decision to not let it come at a cost for your family, which a lot of us, and I didn't do it for years. I kept on that train and on that track for years. I didn't make the choice for my family. And finally, when I did, it was like that weight lifted off my shoulders. We had a guest on here recently that talked about the 30-year backpack that she was carrying on her shoulders for 30 years of everything else and all the expectations. And when she finally set it down, she was able to find herself. And people find that too late in their life. And it's really cool you found it early, at least earlier than a lot of other people do. Let's talk about now. So I'm really excited to hear what's going on now. So, what are you excited about in your music today? What do you see your lyrics telling a story for people to hear right now?

Ezra: Today is, you know, I moved into the business world, and like we were talking about at the beginning of the show, I kind of went backwards. And I'm a very busy man now. And I completely get that. In a sense, when I look back at my younger life, a lot of my hiding from the world was hiding from all these decisions. They're endless, and there's a lot of loose ends. We're not real sure, there's a lot of uncertainty, and we have to make a decision. And that's where I am right now. I have many decisions in my life. And I live in a forest in East Texas. I soak up everything I can with my family now. And what my life is about right now is supporting that family that I value so much. It took me a long time to see, and not just my immediate family, but my extended family. It took me a long time to see that there's no just one person thing. There's people that I affect, there's people that I can affect. And that ties into my music too, is that my music is something that I believe I have to give. And all of us, in some way, if we look, we have something that we've developed or we have a passion for, or a talent that's different from other people. And it could be anything, but right now it's about giving my music. I'm no longer looking for the leather pants, the tight leather pants in the pop star life. Not that I ever wanted that, I'm joking. But I'm no longer pursuing that. I want to dig deep into my heart and give something that I feel is truly human to the people that want to hear it. And so music is a beautiful thing. I have a band with my daughter, and I have a business with my son. I'm just in a place of going, let's just be here. I don't want to, there's plenty of goals and stuff all over, but essentially I just want to be here for this time in my life, and that requires a lot of decisions to not take opportunities, to take opportunities that support my family. I almost won't take any traveling gigs unless it allows me to take my family with me. Why would I go be alone in a hotel? I don't want to do that. I've done it, I know what it feels like. But that's neat because it's brought out the kind of shows it's actually created. I end up at festivals, I end up at house concerts, I end up at really kind of intimate shows that I've grown to just love because I sit and visit with people afterwards and sometimes spend a weekend with people. It's brought the community into my music. And that's where I am now, is let's just be here, make the decisions to keep clarity and keep myself from being so distracted that I don't catch this part of my life.

Rob: If you would have signed that contract, you probably wouldn't be in business with your son or have a band with your daughter. And if you did have the band with your daughter, you wouldn't be playing so much with her as much as you could or are today, it sounds like. I don't see how any of this could have happened.

Ezra: And my wife, she would have had to go to work, and my kids, my son would go off and find his own path in life, and my daughter would have to just go maybe face the same music industry that I faced and learn lessons where now I get to go with her and she wants to be with me. And so it's incredible. Yeah, it's really an incredible thing. It's a great thing, I think, to look back at our life and go, look at the good things that you have, and see that all that had to happen had to happen for you to be where you are right now.

Brent: What a gift. You think about the way that you describe that you're working with your kids. So that's a gift that not everybody gets or pursues. And then the other thing that I love, and I hope other people resonate with this, is you've taught us and talked about just being present and not getting overly myopic about all the things you could do, or all the things that you're saying no to, or all the things you're saying yes to. You're like, I'm just living. And I'm mixing and matching right now. And a lot of times we call it a portfolio lifestyle, meaning you've got a little bit of music, you got a little bit of business, you got a little bit of family, you got a little bit of, hopefully, some you time in there. You're doing a lot of different things because that's meeting you where you're at today. And that is awesome. And you're not getting overweighted, it sounds like, on one thing or another. You're just going with it. And I know you've got a double album that you did with your daughter that recently came out. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Ezra: Yes, it's called Morning and Midnight, and it's a double album with a book and artwork. It's got prints and it's a whole big thing. I made this in 2025, and the album itself, so when I went through that divorce with my wife, I actually started writing an album, but when she came back, it was just too painful at the time to hash through all this. So I put that album away. I didn't want to look at that era. We had a new era we were doing. Well, a couple of years ago, I found some of the songs, and they really made me feel something. And so I wanted to put them out there. They're times of vulnerability and love and kind of the pain of finding each other, and losing each other. And I decided I want to do that, but while I started working on that album, all these new songs started coming out, and it was almost like I would be recording one of these songs that were a little bit on the darker side, and my consciousness would go, wait, wait, but what about this? And it would tell me some beautiful story of my family or of my wife. And I would sing a song about how lonely I was when she left, and then suddenly, but what about what she's giving you since then? And so one album is from today, it's my life today, and that's the morning album, and then the midnight album is of that period. So it's like looking at the two sides of the coin, the before and the after. And while that was happening, one of the things I enjoy doing is getting up before work and going and sitting in the woods with a little rocket stove and writing. And I started writing poetry and started writing parts of this book, and that was all happening at the same time, and I was exploring some new art that I was doing. And it all got packaged into this one piece. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. It's kind of the story of that midnight, of the darkness and the light after. And the book is little pieces, it's an easy read. It's just kind of poems and journals of that transition in my heart and in my life and what it took for me to get there. And it really was written for me to kind of, like I said earlier, just put it all on the table and go, what really happened? How did I get here? And so that's what it is. It was a beautiful thing doing it with my daughter. She's now so entwined with my music, we write together and we just spend so much time. And I have to mention that because you said something there about working with my son and my daughter. That was a beautiful thing too, because I needed, after the way I'd lived with my family, I needed to heal those things. And it was going to be more than just watching a movie, going out to the movies. I needed to somehow find a place in their life where we both have something deeply in common and work together on it. And that's both my son and my daughter, and I had almost another chance to parent them, to be the parent that I wanted to be. And so I feel like the luckiest dad on earth that my daughter even wants, I don't understand, I always joke, why do you want to play with me? I wouldn't even want to get on stage with my dad. And so she said, I love it so much, I wouldn't play with anybody else. Kids are weird today, I don't know.

Brent: Take that train and stay on it. I mean, that's how I go. It's funny, because I have kids that are 17 and 20, and I just take advantage of, if they ever say, hey, dad, you want to do this? Yes. I don't even know what it is. Yes. Just because you do it. But then to hear you say your daughter is really excited about it, and then your son's excited about it, what a gift. And I agree with you, none of these things would have happened without all the things that you went through, with the acceptance and some of the ups and the downs and the challenges with your wife and all the things that you guys navigated, but now you're in a beautiful place. And I can't thank you enough for sharing your story. One of the things that we always try to think about with our guests, because we're all navigating midlife in different stages and different kinds of cycles. One of the things that we come across a lot is people asking the question, like, I feel like I'm stuck. I'm stuck at the stage that I'm in. I'm stuck in my career. I don't know what to do next. How would you give somebody advice? You've gone through some pretty significant changes in your life. What advice would you give them to navigate getting unstuck?

Ezra: I would have to fall on some sayings. I collect sayings and I love them. They help me bring to mind what I'm doing. I would first say that you can get to that other side of the mountain and you can be happy and you can be free. It is possible. And that's the first thing we have to know, is it can happen. Are you willing to do it? But there's a coin that somebody gave me when I first started on this path of recovery that on one side it says, if nothing changes, and you turn it over, it says, nothing changes. And you can read it, nothing changes if nothing changes. If nothing changes, nothing changes. And I would just sit and look at this thing. And that's maybe the biggest thing, is that something has to change usually when you feel stuck, and it's scary. There's another something I think about a lot is that I don't think I could ever think myself into right action or a right life. I have to act my way into it. Because that's another part of being stuck, is that it's stuck in here, and this isn't going to fix that problem. We have to start stepping out and engaging with our fears and our life in ways that aren't comfortable, because if they were comfortable, you would probably be doing them. These are new ways, it's a new life. And there's a joy in doing that. I've got so much I would say. There's such a joy, even in that time, those early years, my wife was leaving, and it was all just the avalanche of my consequences coming down on me, but there was still a joy inside of me because I knew I wasn't staying here. I'm going somewhere. It's like if anybody has ever lost weight, you got to come to that point where, I got to change, and it's not going to be easy and it's going to be a long road. But how happy are you week one, week two, month in, two months. There's a joy that drives you, even when you haven't dropped the weight yet, to wake up every day, I'm going somewhere, I'm going somewhere new.

Brent: That is beautiful. I like how you started with the mountain. I'm such a mountain person, there, you can get to the other side of the mountain, and then when you think about change, and we all know change is hard, but yes, you can do it, and it's just putting yourself to it. So I can't thank you enough for this conversation. It's so special. You've got this beautiful gift. What are the ways that people can follow you? How can people get to know your music, maybe your book, things that you've done? What are ways that we can connect you, our audience, to the work that you're doing?

Ezra: You can go pretty much on any streaming app and just search my name, Ezra Vancil. I have quite a few albums out, more coming this year. Probably the best way is just go to my website. It's ezravancil.com, and on there there's a shop, and you'll find my book. If you're into vinyl, some people are, there's vinyl on there. And also just social media at @ezravansil is my Instagram. That's pretty much the only social media I ever open up. But also, there's Facebook. You can find me there. I'm there sometimes. So probably Instagram would be the best place to connect with me.

Brent: Well, your music is beautiful. I've downloaded a ton of your work and I love it. And as I alluded to earlier, it meets me. I don't know how you do it, but it's probably because we're in the same kind of demographic. You're meeting me where I'm at today, and it's beautiful. And I just get so absorbed by it. So thank you. Our conversation, we've covered a lot of ground, and I really appreciate you sharing your vulnerabilities and your storyline. Some of these things are probably pulling out some wounds that you're like, oh boy, I left those behind. But thank you for sharing that. Where you ended with us was really the understanding of acceptance. And I find that you've shared how you don't only accept all the great things you've done. You talked about all the awards that you got and all those things. You also accepted the things that maybe weren't as bright and shiny. And you've got to own all of it. And I like how you described it as this dual acceptance. It's like you got to accept the good and the bad in life to make progress forward. But where you're at today, congratulations. That's so beautiful to spend time that you're now putting that right level of dedication, you're making great decisions. That's a beautiful one when you realize, I get to work with my daughter, my son. I've got this healthy relationship, not just with your inner family, but your extended family. So thank you for taking the time to spend it with us today. We always end our episodes with gratitude shares, and our gratitude is towards you. So thank you. Because your gift is so beautiful, but your story is just so ingrained and just a beautiful story that seems like you're on the right side of the tracks and doing some great things. So thank you, Ezra. From the bottom of my heart, I love what you're doing.

Ezra: Thank you, Brent. I really appreciate it. I'd like to have a gratitude share also. Just thank you, Rob and Brent, for this, for bringing up the music. I know you had to do some technical things and for starting today with such a special and rare song before we started today. It's very thoughtful. And I really enjoyed this.

Brent: Yeah, it's wonderful. Well, thanks everybody. We'll see you soon.

Lena: That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlifecircus.fm for show notes, transcripts, and all the latest happenings. And be sure to join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack. Follow Midlife Circus on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss your next great act. Quick reminder, the opinions and stories shared here are personal reflections, not professional advice. This show is for entertainment and inspiration only. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the Big Top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media production.