It’s funny how one moment can change the rest of your life.
For Allyson Ezell, this moment was in 2013 when her then-partner bought her a guitar and said, “Write a song.” Within a few months, she was signing her first publishing contract with Universal Music Publishing and had the sensation that her feet were finally on the right path.
Before that day, Allyson had never written a song. The closest she’d gotten was singing solos in church as a kid and writing poems and stories in her diary. Strange for the descendant of a family of musicians, from her guitarist father to her self-taught multi-instrumentalist grandmother. Maybe her blood had finally caught up with her.
Allyson quit her job in fashion - a career that had taken her from her native Iowa all the way to Paris, France. She entered the world of songwriting sessions through the trend-defining French electronic music scene, collaborating with artists such as Point Point and Tepr and eventually landing a featuring with a trio of young DJs, Jabberwocky, signed with Polydor. Following this release, labels began contacting Allyson directly for songs and before long she was in high-demand for sessions.
“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”
PAULO COELHO
The following years had Allyson participating in songwriting camps across Europe, writing with the Black Eyed Peas, collaborating with French rapper GIMS, Lil Wayne, French Montana, participating in UK Eurovision songwriting camps in Sweden and Denmark, recording vocals for an official remix of Charli XCX’s “Lucky” and integrating several production teams in France and England. It was as if everything was in its right place.
In 2018, Allyson created her artistic alter ego, Coco Bans, with the intention of fully expressing herself through her own personal storytelling, tapping into emotions that seemed sometimes superfluous in the world of session-writing. A tour agent discovered the band playing at an underground club in Paris and immediately signed them, securing a spot at the MaMA Festival that same year and a concert within the heart of the festival at the renowned rock venue, La Boule Noire. Coco Bans played to a sold-out crowd and was chosen as one of the Top 5 artists to watch by Rolling Stone.
“Brilliant collaborator of the greatest pop singers and rappers out there right now, this American artist has all the makings of a future star!” ROLLING STONE
2019 was marked by extensive touring, invitations to play at large festivals in Switzerland and France and a first group of shows in London. Coco Bans opened for Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park) at the Zenith de Paris and performed with him his single “Make It Up As I Go”, originally a featuring with K Flay. She also opened for soul icon Brittany Howard following the release of Coco Bans’ debut EP, Fantasy & Parables, and signed a new co-publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music France and Foster Arts Publishing.
Allyson went into the studio with French artist and music video creator for the stars, Woodkid. With him, she co-wrote nearly half of album S16, sharing song credits with Ryan Lott of Son Lux and collaborator and producer, Tepr.
And then Covid arrived. While the industry and the world went on hold, Allyson paired up with organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and gave fundraising concerts from her apartment. She was part of online music festivals, a firm believer in the power of music to offer healing and togetherness to the masses confined at home. She collaborated with media and brands like The Kooples for live sessions via their social networks.
Because music had never really been about the glitz and the glam for Allyson. And that became even more apparent during the shutdowns of 2020 and 2021.
Songs are a way to connect the inside and outside worlds, a vehicle of expression, comprehension and connection.
A new chapter was being written. Allyson began exploring the changing environment of her emotions and life. A breakup, near homelessness. The ups accompanied by the downs. She sought to make sense of it all as she had always done: through words and melody. She leaned into her family’s artistic legacy.
In the midst of this shedding and growing, Coco Bans was named Le FAIR laureate in 2021, an initiative of the French Bureau of Cultural Affairs. She was also a ADAMI 3D Award recipient for her debut LP, Chronicles of an Altered Life, and recipient of the SACEM Production Grant.
Allyson Ezell was selected for an artistic residency in 2022 at Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands where she was able to immerse herself in a creative bubble surrounded by organs, pianos, amps and microphones from the 1950s and a studio space that opened up to a curtain of trees. Here, she wrote. She opened herself up and started recording instinctively, preferring the pure emotion of a moment over the rationalization of the brain. This marked a change. She was taking the reins of her music’s production. She embraced imperfection and spontaneity, the creaks of old instruments, the chairs of her friends moving across the floor. From this residency sprang the beginnings of a future project.
American Joy
In 2023, Allyson was awarded a writing grant by the French National Center for Music (CNM) to continue the musical exploration she had undertaken in Holland.
She returned to the roots of her childhood in central Iowa and for three months wrote at length about the experience of watching her grandmother lose her memory but still light up when she would talk about music and how, with her dad and his twelve brothers and sisters, they would all sit outside the family home in Bucklin, Missouri singing and playing their instruments. Allyson wrote about meeting her two aunts that she had never known and discovering that one was an author and the other a painter, learning that her estranged maternal grandmother had published a book before passing the year before. She wrote about finding contentment in belonging and blood, making sense of her own life’s choices that took her from middle America to New York and then to France, where she had her son and put down roots. She wrote about what is to be a vagabond, a nomad, the definitions of home and the relationship between the joy we chase and the places we come from.
Allyson accompanied her research with hours of film, documenting the rural suburbs that have developed around the capitol of Des Moines, Iowa, the changing landscape of former farmland and the families that inhabit these neighborhoods of cul-de-sacs and artificial ponds.
This video footage has, and continues to be, transformed into a docu-series entitled The Future of Beautiful Things with narration and music written and produced by Allyson as reflections on hope and the things that keep us going.
How do we plant the roots of our existence? What does it take for them to last?
2024 sees Allyson Ezell continuing to elaborate these themes of belonging, home and joy, pulling on threads from her family’s middle American story and her own transatlantic experiences. The intention for this research and creative questioning is to culminate in a performance told through spoken word and song, an exploration of the oral tradition of storytelling and the emotional textures added with instrumentation and melody.
In parallel, Allyson continues to write for and with other artists and several releases with international artists are planned for the near future.
