What is your first musical memory?
Probably hearing Barney the purple dinosaur singing “I love you, you love me.”
Do you remember the first album you bought?
I remember walking into the record store and seeing a huge station dedicated to ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’. I was only 10-years-old and I didn’t know who she was. I bought the cassette, took it home, put it in the player, and listened to the whole thing. Then I rewound it back and listened to it all day.
You come from a very creative family: your brothers are the musician George Nozuka and the actor Philip Nozuka. Your mother’s half-brother is jazz guitarist Mike Stern, and her half-sister is the actress Kyra Sedgwick.
I guess yes, art runs in our family. My mum is a very big believer in the arts. She wanted to show us that there was this expressive path that we could take if we wanted. We were always encouraged to follow our dreams and get into whatever we wanted.
My brothers and I are all quite close in age, and very competitive, so we were all very influenced by one another. Once my older brother got into something, we all followed suit. That said, because we had such a big family, we also had to figure out how to stand out.
You started writing songs at around 12-years-old. Where did the motivation to write come from?
I played hockey growing up. While I was on the ice I was singing melodies the whole time. Even then, I was training my creative muscle and laying the foundations for writing. I got a little notebook and started writing lyrics, then I got a tape recorder and started taping my ideas. I never really finished a full song at that point—I think I was just mimicking what George, my oldest brother, was doing. He wrote songs for an acapella group we had together with my other brothers. Later, I got a guitar and started learning how to play from some friends at school. That opened so many new possibilities for me.