Better Than Ezra’s lead singer and founding father Kevin Griffin began his music career earlier than most.
His first foray into songwriting occurred at the ripe age of 12, after he and some friends entered and won a talent show.
Their prize, the opportunity for the pre-teen rock band to record a single in Jackson, sparked Griffin’s first creative piece.
“The name of the song was ‘Think, Find, Destroy’ and it was about aliens coming to attack the planet. That was the A side,” Griffin said. “Typical 12-year-old fare.”
“The B side,” he added, “was ‘Cold Gin’ by Kiss.”
And that is how it all began.
Griffin grew up with musicians who are now labeled classics, including Elvis, The Beatles and Joe Cocker, and was exposed to Led Zeppelin and Elton John by his older brother. He developed his own taste in bands like R.E.M. during his high school career, but it was his college experience at Louisiana State University that started him on his path to fame.
Better Than Ezra, who will be playing at Rick’s Caf tonight, formed in 1990 at LSU through mutual friends. Griffin said they found a drummer, put an ad in the university newspaper for a bassist and began playing fraternity parties and bars.
“Then we started playing Ole Miss and other people started wanting us and it grew from there,” Griffin said.
The group stopped playing for a while after Griffin graduated, then Better Than Ezra reformed in Los Angeles around 1991, Griffin said. The demos they cut during their time in California turned into the album Deluxe, which was released in 1995.
Better Than Ezra played their first Starkville show in the early ’90s after a friend on MSU’s student government board booked them to open for the Hoodoo Gurus, a college band that was popular in the late ’80s. Griffin said the show was a huge step for them and that after that appearance at the Humphrey Coliseum, fraternities and bars started wanting to book the band.
Rick Welch, owner of Rick’s Caf, said the band played their first show at Rick’s the first year he opened in 1994, just before the group went national.
“The great thing about Better Than Ezra was that they kept coming back no matter how big they got,” Welch said. “I really appreciate how they stay true to their roots.”
Welch also said that just this summer the band stopped in for a visit between shows in Tupelo and Jackson.
“They put on a great live show and I’m really excited to have them back,” Welch said.
Griffin’s songwriting has come a long way since his alien masterpiece.
Griffin said Closer, the band’s most recent album released in August 2001, is one of his favorites the group has created.
“Some bands hit it with that first album, but we’re kind of late bloomers. We were together for seven years before we got signed, but finally we got that sound we were looking for with Closer,” Griffin said.
The music Griffin writes is affected by those influences he grew up with, and Griffin said that songwriters are being dishonest when they say their music is not affected or influenced by the work of other musicians.
“You take what you hear and put it through whatever personal sieve you have as a songwriter and you try to create something that people will enjoy,” Griffin said. “If there’s a certain feeling or pause that I like in a song, I try to think of how I can take what I write and put that feeling or that pause into it.”
Griffin also said the band has been through some changes since their humble beginnings in 1990.
“We’re better musicians now. We’ve gained experience and navigated the world of the music industry- which can be very fickle- and managed to have pretty normal lives with good families and all that stuff,” Griffin said. “And we’ve gone through every rock clich there is, from losing a band member to being sued. It’s crazy.”
Griffin said he likes coming back to places like Starkville because, not only are they easy venues to play, but it gives the band a chance to play new songs and get good practice in between tours.
“It’s fun, too,” Griffin said.
MSU senior Meaghan Bailey said she is ready to see Better Than Ezra because she had to miss the last show they played in Starkville.
“I’ve been a fan of Better Than Ezra since middle school so I’m really excited that I’ll get to see them play,” Bailey said. “I hope they play all of their old songs, but I want to hear their new stuff, too.”
In the often brutal world of music, where so many aspiring artists try and fail miserably, Griffin said Better Than Ezra was able to succeed because they never quit.
“There were bands that were more talented and more fun than us, but they quit,” Griffin said. “If you don’t quit, you’ll persevere and the door will open. Then you just have to stick your foot in it.”
Griffin said he remembers playing at Texas Motor Speedway with Aerosmith and listening to Steven Tyler as he was being interviewed by a member of the press.
“They asked him how Aerosmith managed to still be popular after all those years, and Steven Tyler said ‘You just stick around.’ And he hit it right on the head,” Griffin said. “Quality never goes out of style.”