“I started playing guitar around four and a half years ago, completely self-taught. I meet a bass player through the School of Rock who invited me to audition for his band. I got it, and we play a lot of local gigs and that kind of stuff. He’s also part of the Paul Green Rock Academy and told me about how he got to go on tour, so I ended up joining that also.
We do a lot of shows in Philly and then in last December, I got the opportunity to go on tour with the academy through pretty much the whole West coast. It was a lot, like very long bus rides, but I had the time of my life. We played shows in Seattle, LA, San Francisco, Portland. Once I did this tour, and got to see what this life was like, like hotel rooms every night and playing shows every other day, I realized I loved it so much and it solidified what I want to do as a career.
Then, last summer, I got to go with John Anderson from the band, Yes, on a tour through Europe. The first show was around late July, we headlined a music festival in Germany. I remember being backstage not seeing the crowd, and I was on the first song of the show, and I remember just like walking out and I couldn’t even see the end of the crowd, it was insane.
We went all the way to Ireland the next day and played a show in Dublin. Then, we got on a ferry to England to play a tribute show for John Wetton from the band, King Crimson, and it was a charity event since he died of cancer a few years ago. They livestreamed that and I think like forty-thousand people watched it. I got to play with a lot of members from some pretty big 70’s bands, which was just like a crazy opportunity to meet and play with some of my heroes. We had two more shows, in the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. I’ve never even left the country before, so just seeing the culture and all the different people was insane. I plan to continue music and play in college, hopefully at USC.”
-Ezra Menegaux, Senior, Class of 2024.
