By William McGuirk

Some are just born into music. It surrounds them and then it is them. Evan Rotella from Niagara is one such singer/songwriter and he has recently released his debut album, ‘Happy To Be Here’. Many folks will be happy Evan is here in Oshawa, playing the evening of Friday Dec 15 at Kops Records. He opens for Stephen Stanley. we had a quick email chat.

Slowcity.ca: When did you start playing and writing your own songs, why did you start?

Evan Rotella: “I started writing my own music when I was 12 but it really wasn’t good enough to start putting out there and showing people till around 15-16. I started writing because I felt that that I was a good writer at a young age, and being a musician was something that at a very young age was a massive dream of mine so I started writing and playing.”

SC: Congrats on the album, nice to have something solid - tell me about the genesis and recording of the album, is it a collection of songs or did you approach it as a full body of work?

ER: “Thanks! Ya it’s nice to finally have a physical copy of my music for people to have, it definitely feels a lot more professional. The album was really just a collection of songs I wrote from around 15-18. But as we started putting them together we realized that they flow really nicely, they follow the same themes and stories so it works very well.”