Ebun Lawore wants to make the student music scene at Oberlin less competitive and more chill. The 20-year-old singer-songwriter and guitarist has had plenty of performance experience, but she’s relatively new to playing her own music in a live setting. Putting yourself out there isn’t an easy feat at the musical pressure cooker that is Oberlin, but a shift in the scene’s culture starts with performances focused less on perfection and more on fun.
This Saturday, March 14 at 8:00 pm in the Cat in the Cream, she’s making that a reality with her first headlining show at Oberlin and her first performance under the name Eboon to feature a live band. I sat down with Lawore at Azzie’s to talk about her music and her upcoming concert. I began by asking her about her musical experiences growing up.
“High school was a really crazy musical development time for me… There were all of these new musical opportunities that everybody was throwing at me because they just saw something in me, I guess. It was crazy.”
Lawore had been performing on and off in children’s choirs at church and school since she was five years old, but it wasn’t until sophomore year of high school that she started taking music more seriously. She started by joining her school’s a capella group and choir, then later singing with the jazz ensemble and performing in school musicals.
Lawore started really getting into choral music. “I would sometimes compose it, and I’d also write regular songs for fun. Every so often I would play them for somebody, but I was always so nervous about it. I had this one friend who I would consistently play my songs to and then I would get more comfortable.” Outside of school-sponsored ensembles, she started performing with her friends for events, playing covers and sometimes even her own originals.
It wasn’t until she came to Oberlin that she began to really hone her songwriting skills. “When I came here my first year, because I was so bored, I was writing songs all the time,” she said. Eventually, she got to the point where she felt like the material she was writing was actually good.
As a songwriter, she picks up inspiration from everywhere: the music she listens to, the things her friends say, or the techniques she watches songwriters break down and explain on platforms like TikTok. She’s always coming up with new ideas and new material, and giving herself prompts like trying alternate guitar tunings or writing linear narratives to spark inspiration when she runs into writer’s block.
Most of her lyrics are personal, letting her express her thoughts and feelings and make something good out of it. Lawore says that the one original song on her setlist that isn’t about a real thing she experienced is hard for her to perform, “because I have no emotional attachment to it,” but she’s playing it anyway because her friends really like it.
Last semester, Lawore opened as Eboon for The Army, The Navy at the Cat in the Cream, and played guitar in the Steve Lacy band as part of the WOBC Coverband Showcase. She describes the latter experience as interesting and unexpected, due to the sheer intensity of the event for any party involved. The ’Sco was crowded and full of energy, though perhaps too much as she was unable to hear herself play. “That was really fun but… I’m never gonna be the guitarist in a band again, it’s just not for me.”
This semester, she played a cover set at A-house for a Black History Month event, but her show on Saturday will be her first performance to feature her originals since she opened for The Army, The Navy. For Lawore’s upcoming show, she recruited her friends Nico DiMaria and Lia Subramanian to play bass and drums, respectively.
Having other people play her own songs with her was a “really nerve-wracking” experience. Her anxieties as a songwriter came to the surface when faced with the prospect of rearranging her songs for a band. However, her bandmates picked up her music easily. “After we’ve done a song and I think it sounds good, it feels so good because I have songs and I hear a full band in my head but I’ve never been able to have it be real.”
Lawore considers her biggest challenge as a musician to be her struggle to reach out to potential collaborators. For a long time, she wanted to be the kind of artist where she could do everything by herself and not have to rely on others. “But, I also feel like there is no way that my best music will come from me and me alone.” By playing her own songs in a band with her friends, she’s hoping to get out of that individualist mindset and try something new.
The concert will primarily feature her original songs, though she has a few unannounced covers prepared. Lawore describes her music as “very chill and relaxing,” with “a lot of emotion and intention” behind it. One thing she’s trying to overcome with this concert is the feeling that you always have to be totally perfect. “The fear that you’re not going to be as good as everybody else.”
Lawore wants people attending the concert to see that playing music can be fun and uncomplicated, that you can go to a show and it doesn’t feel like the person on stage is trying to prove a point or flaunt their expertise. “Even if you’re trying to do [music] seriously, you don’t have to lock yourself in a room and practice for six hours.”
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