EZRA BELL

A new album from Ezra Bell, one of the 21st century’s most successful folk/Americana bands, is something to celebrate—a kind of birth. But what happens when it’s tangled up with a death?

 

One week after sax player Aaron Mattison and lead singer/lyricist Ben Wuamett met in the studio to put some of the finishing touches on the album, Ben passed away, a victim of liver failure capping a years-long buildup of inner struggles.

 

Now the band’s ninth release is here, the full-length Chin Chin. And the band is not going anywhere anytime soon.

 

The first glimmer of what became Ezra Bell emerged during a song swap on a Portland, Oregon porch in 2013, where Ben Wuamett and Jeremy Asay discovered a musical brotherhood. A loose collection of musicians came into their orbit, and as the band relocated from Portland to Salt Lake City, what Aaron describes as “a collection of fractured people” became “glued together like a Japanese teacup.”

 

The “folkestra” has since released a gusher of albums and EPs, generated tens of millions of streams, built up over a hundred thousand monthly listeners on Spotify alone, and played and sung its way into the hearts of countless loyal fans all over the USA and beyond.

 

Ezra Bell’s gritty, homegrown, eclectic approach to instrumentation and arrangements was part of its DNA from the start. Their mix of street-hard lyrics with folk-pop and Americana takes in elements of rock, blues, jazz, and R&B. The result is a sound like no other.

 

A Super Bowl commercial in 2015 featuring the band’s cover of the Sam Cooke hit “Wonderful World” pushed them further into the limelight. But their main fuel has always been their originals, with Ben’s distinctive keening, scratchy vocals delivering his often dark lyrics with a heart-on-sleeve honesty that fans find empathetic and even, according to some, lifesaving.

 

The pandemic didn’t slow them down. In 2020, they released This Way to Oblivion, where Americana Highways discerned “part Dixieland, part jazz, part indie folk. Then you hear the jazz/gospel vocals…just listening is a far better option than trying to describe this.” Three more albums followed, and with a busy touring schedule, the eight-member collective was primed for new adventures.

 

Then tragedy struck.

 

And yet, with a brand-new album and a new record deal with ONErpm, a new era is underway for Ezra Bell.

 

“cannonball wingman,” the first single, reflects Ben’s beginnings in the hip-hop world. The internal rhymes and syncopations of that aggressive genre often find their way into his lyrics. The song is a gangster tale, but with a love story manqué too. The release-day focus single, “it looks like love,” makes the latter theme more explicit, echoing relationships within the band and Ben’s outlook on love: “It looks like love but it's a matter of faith”—faith that a partner will stay loyal.

 

Or that a beloved collaborator will be around for the long haul.

 

“Ben's life's work is our life's work,” explains Aaron. “It's the biggest thing that keeps us alive.”

 

A memorial singalong show in Portland in January 2025 saw hundreds of fans shouting along to Ben’s lyrics. Ben was, says Jeremy, “a genteel emotional poet/songwriter…and although his suffering was masked, he was loved, treasured, and supported beyond measure. Time and a sequence of poor decisions and circumstances in the past led him to where he is now.”

 

The band Ben helped to build has plenty more to say—in his memory, and into the future. The second single, “let me in,” sums up the living contradictions of life and music-making: “Now I'm sorry to say that I cannot stay and it goes that way most of the time / you just climb in my pocket, the good lord leaves no one behind… let me in, let me in, lay the pulse of your skin next to mine.” It reflects the lyricist’s turn toward guarded optimism in the last years of his life, “embracing,” as Jeremy says, “a larger swath of human emotion and experience, wishing the best things for everyone he cared about.”

 

“A thoughtful loving coda for sure,” adds Aaron.

 

 

EZRA BELL is:

Benjamin Wuamett: lead vocals; lyricist

Aaron Mattison: horns and horn arrangements; backing vocals

Elizabeth Anderson: violin and string arrangements; backing vocals

Tommy Mortensen: bass; tap dancing; backing vocals

Jonathan Myers: drums and percussion

Jeremy Asay: pianos and organs; backing vocals

David Asay: guitars and banjo

Maurice Spencer: guitars and backing vocals