New Orleans, LA · alt-rock

Better Than Ezra

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'Good' still is — New Orleans alt-rock lifers with easy charm and a '90s catalog deeper than the one-hit tag suggests.

Better Than Ezra formed in 1988 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when four students at Louisiana State University began playing together. The band's first show was at Murphy's, a local bar, and the origin of their name has never been explained, feeding decades of fan speculation. Followers of the band still call themselves Ezralites.

Original guitarist Joel Rundell died by suicide in 1990, and the remaining three members, Kevin Griffin, Tom Drummond and drummer Cary Bonnecaze, took time off before continuing as a trio. They kept playing house parties and fraternity shows across the South through the early 1990s, eventually recording Deluxe in 1993 on their own label, Swell Records, a release that drew major-label attention.

Elektra Records signed the band in 1994 and reissued Deluxe the following year. Its single "Good" hit number one on the Modern Rock chart and pushed the album to platinum status by the end of 1995, an overnight leap that took, as Drummond later put it, seven years to get signed and seven weeks to reach the top. The catalogue since has moved through power pop, post-grunge and a smoother adult-contemporary sound.

Kevin Griffin has fronted the group throughout and also works as a songwriter for other artists. Live, the band leans on the loose, talkative rapport built over decades of touring, mixing radio hits with deeper album tracks, and they remain closely identified with New Orleans, where they are based today.

The band has released nine studio albums to date, most recently 2024's Super Magick, with Griffin and Drummond now joined by drummer Michael Jerome and guitarist James Arthur Payne Jr., keeping the group active more than three decades after its start.

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alt-rock