Kevin Griffin

Serving as the frontman of Louisiana alt-rock trio Better Than Ezra, Kevin Griffin first reached mainstream audiences in the mid-'90s before redirecting his skills toward a thriving career penning material for acts including Howie Day, Sugarland, and Barenaked Ladies. Although Better Than Ezra maintained an active recording and touring schedule well into the 2010s, Griffin’s attention increasingly centered on songwriting from his Nashville base. Marking three decades in the industry, he issued his debut solo album, Anywhere You Go, in 2019.

Born in Monroe, Louisiana, Griffin studied at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he and three friends launched Better Than Ezra in 1988. The group’s hook-driven songwriting quickly established it as a fixture on the Southern college-rock scene, leading to a 1995 Elektra contract after several independent releases. Powered by singles such as “Good” and “King of New Orleans,” Better Than Ezra secured significant modern-rock airplay through the late ’90s. Following Elektra’s decision to drop the band at the decade’s close, it kept issuing independent albums and scored another hit with 2001’s “Extra Ordinary.” Griffin began his parallel songwriting path around 2003, contributing tracks to Blondie, Meat Loaf, and Howie Day, whose Griffin-co-written “Collide” reached number one.

Months after Better Than Ezra released Before the Robots in 2005, Hurricane Katrina forced Griffin and his family from New Orleans; they relocated to Los Angeles for the rest of the decade. There he expanded his writing and production work with Howie Day, Tristan Prettyman, Train, and James Blunt. After Paper Empire appeared in 2009, Griffin notched another success with Sugarland’s “Stuck Like Glue.” He settled in Nashville in 2011 to immerse himself in its songwriting community, later collaborating with Barenaked Ladies, Daniel Powter, and Christina Perri. Alongside sporadic Better Than Ezra performances, he created the holiday project Band of Merrymakers and co-founded the Pilgrimage Music Festival in Franklin, Tennessee. Three decades after forming a band and supplying songs for others, Griffin finally stepped out as a solo artist with the 2019 release of Anywhere You Go.