Hektor Mass

Blog: A Year Of COVID & The Lesson Within

Well. Here we are. A year later & still, we’re here…well, at least many of us are.

I was talking with my friend Lindsay the other day & she brought up a time during the first two weeks of quarantine in which I offhandedly made a comment something to the effect of making plans for when life goes back to normal in just a couple of weeks, little did I know just how wrong I was. I guess hindsight is 20/20 but man, has it been a year.

I entered quarantine on March 12th, 2020 as many of us did, fully expecting life to be back to normal by April. I couldn’t have imagined a year later finally, just now, getting glimpses of the light at the end of this miserable, virus laced tunnel. I guess that’s a clear sign that fortune telling isn’t my calling.

Pre-quarantine I’d planned out my year right up until about midsummer. I was planning to fly to Barcelona in order to premiere “Obliterated” with Hektor Mass, I was in the studio, in the middle of recording “When He Was Me,” & had planned a post-Stagecouch radio tour for the UK in late April/Early May. Needless to say none of these things ended up happening. I’ll be honest though, I held out hope for those last two, especially in the early days, but blatant government mismanagement quickly put an end to those plans. I really didn’t mind the first two weeks of this whole mess. It felt like a little vacation, a respite that the entire world was taking together, a massive global inhale. I think things changed around the time of my 28th birthday. April 16th.

I’ve always been of a mind that we as humans should celebrate the anniversary of our own births joyously; doing the things that make us happy despite exterior input or perceived extravagance. I tell my friends often to celebrate their birthdays by doing something they’d be thrilled to do alone & if others choose to join & be a part of that, great! If not, then your day is still your own & yours to celebrate however you see fit. I was incapable of doing what I wanted for mine this last year but fortunately I am surrounded by a lot of amazing people who threw me an incredible virtual birthday despite the circumstances. At the time I was doing daily “silver-linings,” essentially little videos I’d post on my instagram story that were meant to put a little bit of hope back into a wildly uncertain world. Eventually those faded out, not out of lack of desire to create them but more out of fatigue & in my mind, lack of visible hope.

This past year hit me hard. Luckily I have been fortunate enough not to have lost anyone near & dear to me as so many have but as someone who has struggled their entire adult life with depression, things really haven’t been easy. Where a lot of people were able to continue working virtually, I had been doing supplemental work in person, a job I could no longer do. In addition to that, the job I’m passionate about, music, came to a screeching halt. All the progress & momentum I felt I had made or was making felt like it’d been thrown out the window. On top of all of that I found myself in the high risk category for COVID, having spent the last year & a half dealing with respiratory issues so my options for work were limited, further so perpetuated by the surmounting unemployment crisis we’re facing in this country.

It’s hard to find inspiration as a songwriter in a life without novelty buried in the monotony of it all. It’s hard to get up every day to the same Groundhog’s Day hellscape & try to force inspiration & drive. Coasting becomes your default, simple tasks being to feel like unscalable mountains, & your life becomes a stagnant void where you always feel like you’re just sitting around waiting on your life to begin all the while aging. Harder still is watching how truly selfish some of your peers can be. So many continued life as if nothing was happening; people played shows, went to massive get togethers, went out, all while completely ignoring CDC guidelines that could have helped return life to normal for all of us long ago. Trust me when I say, those of us who have been doing out best day to day will remember who you are.

COVID has shown a light on just how much some member of our society just don’t give a shit about others. This was further magnified in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement that happened over the summer & the divisive at best November election season. We talk a lot about how much we care for those around us or practice religions where that is one of the core tenets but when it really comes down to it we have a massive shortage of empathy & compassion. For me the last year has proven that ten fold.

We have to be better. We have to see the struggling, the hurt, the disenfranchised, those without privilege, or those at high risk of whatever (not just COVID) & put our selfishness aside to truly help out “the least of these.” This pandemic & the last year have provided ample opportunity for that & we as a society have fallen short time & time again. Even within the last week & the surmounting hate against those in our asian communities, we have fallen short. It’s disheartening, it’s frustrating, & it’s down right infuriating. I hope we will do better. I hope on the other side of COVID-19 lies a brighter world & I guess in the end that’s what I’m holding out hope for. We have to be the change we want to see, the burden doesn’t fall on others. I choose to see the message that the divine has nailed into our heads all year long & accept the challenge. Will you do the same?

Blog: Obliterated

About two & a half years ago I was sitting on the steps inside my former manager’s Hollywood apartment jotting lyrics into my notes app to a song, humming softly to each line that popped into my head, all while Danny sat less than three feet to my left at the computer programing a track. This song started as an idea I had in passing about those who had lost their love & never recovered, those whose hearts had been truly & utterly “Obliterated.” Fast forward to today when I’m having my first ever international feature release with an artist I’ve come to call a friend, Hektor Mass!

Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’m going to fill in the details from the last 2.5 years, I’m just currently in a bit of a state of disbelief that this song is finally seeing the light of day, especially in its current form!

If you don’t know songwriters there’s a little known fact about us that I think the outside world should know. Much like your Miranda Rights, anything you say or do can be used against you in a song. Thus many of us have hidden lists; in our phones, on our computers, in notebooks, on random post-it notes, of all the things we’ve heard in passing or all the thoughts that crossed our head that we think would make intriguing song ideas. As I mentioned above (see above), I had the idea for a completely decimated heart in passing. I’m not entirely sure how long it sat in my notes, but I don’t feel like it was there for that long before it got put to use.

The fire that ignited the idea for Obliterated, sonically, came from a song called “Lips on You” by Maroon 5. Danny, otherwise known as The Delta Mode, & I were driving around in Billie, our former manager’s, car & I had the aux. I put on the song & remarked about loving the production, to which Danny said “you know we should do something in the similar vein!” That was really all it took. We got back from BevMo & immediately got to work on the song.

I remember it not taking long to write. I remember it lyrically being a very stream of consciousness idea as Danny started to assemble the bones that would make up parts of the track you hear today. I’d pitch him lines, he’d tweak them lyrically or melodically or offer me another approach, but the song as a whole took about 30-45 minutes to write that day. I remember Danny & I had a long discussion regarding the use of the word “Obliterated” itself. At the time the idea was to do the song then potentially release it under The Delta Mode, so Danny’s concern was that German audiences, where he lives, wouldn’t be able to say/understand the word. My counterpoint was “good, make them look it up, drive more views to the song.” So the lyric stayed.

After the initial write was done Danny set up a small tracking mic in Billie’s closet. Truly a three foot by two foot space with a ceiling that sat about five and a half feet tall. For those that have never seen me in person, I’m a tall gent, 6’4” to be exact, so did I record vocals with my head cocked to the side, right up against the ceiling the whole time? You bet your ass I did.

The session itself happened at some point in the afternoon. I think I, myself, took a break & ventured down to Barry’s in Hollywood. By the time I got back Danny had taken Billie’s Ovation guitar & recorded a drop lick very reminiscent of Slash himself! Of course it had gone through compressors & filters galore to get from sounding like an acoustic guitar to an electric but parts of that guitar line are still present in the songs current form!

From there we had a very well produced demo, it got passed around amongst our friends & collaborators & everyone was head over heals for it, but I thought it was missing something. A second verse. See, at this point in time the song was just a verse, pre-chorus, chorus, & post chorus then it had a drop & would repeat everything save the verse a few times. I sat with the song for weeks trying to wrap my head around a second verse idea but I couldn’t for the life of me recapture the inspiration I had the afternoon it was written. So I took it to Evan Michael. Evan was very keen to write on the song, he loved the idea, the melody, etc. He was able to see the song from an outside perspective & find new angles to come at it with. And thus the second verse was born.

From here the song entered a series of disagreements. Danny would want one thing, I’d want another, we’d try to compromise to no avail; I am hardheaded after all. Danny himself claims to have done about a hundred different versions of the song but was never happy with it himself, so it was put on ice for about a year. The next time the song came up was to be under the newly minted Delta Mode, a group that expanded outside of just Danny & his brothers, in which the production would be cut back to the original demo, vocals would be recut, & the second verse would be added. However, it never came to be. Once again disagreements, misunderstandings, & life got in the way & the song was iced indefinitely.

Having finished that last paragraph I’d like to interject something here. Music is a creative medium, it is very personal. We all, as musicians & songwriters, want for our vision of a song, especially one that’s personal to us, to be our vision. It’s hard to let other people’s ideas in to that vision from time to time. No one is the bad guy in this situation, no one is to blame, we’re all on good terms still, there’s no need to take sides on any of this, it’s simply the music business. Got it? Okay, good. Onward we go.

Like I said, the song was on ice for quite a while. I had many friends asking when it’d be released or how & I honestly loved how much people loved the song, I knew it had to come out in some form. Enter fate.

A friend of mine from LA, who is a writer & artist began posting a lot of different things with a Spanish gent in LA. I was curious who he was as I’d never seen him in any of his stories in the past so I acquired. He told me his name was Hektor Mass a DJ/Producer in town from Barcelona whom he was showing around. I was told to check him out, so I did! I followed Hektor, added songs of his to my workout playlist, then we began to interact with one another over Instagram. This continued for a few months before I eventually ended up in Spain for Medusa during August of 2019 & who was the headliner for the opening party of Medusa Spain? Hektor Mass.

Unfortunately I missed Hektor’s set due to delays & I was honestly a little upset I wasn’t going to get to hear his music live or have the chance to meet him face to face. Call it manifestation or destiny or whatever but on the last night of Medusa who did I see at the bar? Hektor Mass. We struck up a brief conversation, I told him about “Obliterated” & he asked me to send his way. He loved the song but wanted to put his spin on it & make it his own.

From there I reconnected with Danny after about a year of distance & he sent over the stems for the original track and Hektor & I got to work in LA. Hektor wanted to keep a lot of the bones of the track, which we did, but this is the point in which we pulled Max Hurrell into the mix. Max is an incredibly talented young producer out of Adelaide, Australia who now resides in Los Angeles, someone I am also proud to call friend. Hektor, Max, & I sat down in small classroom studio at MI Hollywood & hashed out the song. We pulled up all stems, sorted through them, kept the ones we liked, ditched the ones we didn't, & began to move forward. At this point Hektor proposed a rewrite of the verse melody, siting that he wanted it to be more rhythmic with less space to give people something to dance to live. I struggled with the idea for a while, thinking I had to rewrite these lyrics I’d grown so attached to but in the end we were able to find a nice compromise! We pulled a lot of the same lyrics but added new ones in to fill the rhythmic chunks that were missing. We gutting the chorus instead opting for a verse, pre, chorus, verse, pre, chorus, drop, chorus, post chorus set-up!

Next we went to Capitol Records’ demo studios to retrack vocals. (Thanks Jenna!) It was honestly one of the most affirming yet grueling vocal sessions of my life. Max & Hektor were looking for a very specific vocal performance out of me, which after a while I believe they got! I sang higher & fuller than I think I have on most of my tracks & left the studio that night exhausted. I’m pretty sure we ended up cutting hours of just adlib vocal.

I went home to Nashville the next day but Max & Hektor continued working on the song over the next two to three weeks replacing a large chunk of the original track & adding a whole assortment of new melodic themes & ideas into the mix. I was blown away when they sent me the initial mix. Which we then sent off to Jonathan Roye here in Nashville to mix & then to Mike Monseur for master. Finally the song was complete!

After finalizing everything the song came out today, March 13th! There’s a lyric video here:


There are purchase links here:


Steaming Links:


Credits:

Performed By:

Hektor Mass, Charlie Rogers

Produced By:

Hektor Mass, Danny “The Delta Mode” Bernath, Max Hurrell

Written By:

Charlie Rogers, Danny “The Delta Mode” Bernath, Hektor Mass, Evan Michael

Drop Guitar By:

Danny “The Delta Mode” Bernath

Keys By:

Charlie Rogers, Hektor Mass, Danny “The Delta Mode” Bernath, Max Hurrell

Guitar By:

Danny “The Delta Mode” Bernath, Max Hurrell

Drums/Rhythm By:

Danny “The Delta Mode” Bernath, Max Hurrell

Synth By:

Hektor Mass, Danny “The Delta Mode” Bernath, Max Hurrell

Mixed By:

Jonathan Roye

Mastered By:

Mike Monseur