It’s taken over a decade for Omaha musician Noah James Mass’ self‑titled album to be released into the world. He was a successful regional musician performing in Iowa in groups such as the Josh Davis Band and Bright Giant, and when it came time to release his first solo album, he found himself overwhelmed, hospitalized and unable to even listen to music for years.
In talking with Mass, one can feel how intertwined he is with the music, from both a technical standpoint and also feeling it with every fiber of his being. Much of the conversation with him was a description of someone really living in their music, and it became apparent how he could become overwhelmed with getting it right and out in the world how he wants it, especially since he is also a music engineer.
The finished album is soulful, bluesy, guitar‑driven Americana rock and roll similar to Black Keys. Mass will throw in Arctic Monkeys, Queens of the Stone Age and Electric Light Orchestra in there as well.
Over the course of a one‑hour conversation, we pieced together the road back to being able to play guitar again and eventually mix and release the album.
“Early on, I was always making noises,” Mass said. “My nickname was Motorboat because I was always making motorboat sounds. When I was 3 years old, I had a plastic guitar and I was like screaming songs. My grandpa, he was actually the mayor of Carter Lake a couple of times, and he used to play under a pseudonym because he had to keep his political and music life separate because you know they keep getting threats from people. So there was always a guitar around.
“I would say, one of the most pivotal moments was when I was young and in church. The choir was really amazing, and they had a great director, and I would get goosebumps, you know, because they were so good. I was like, ‘Whoa, this is a real physical thing.’ I’ve always been fascinated by that, and I’ve always wanted to be able to try to be the one that created that, and be responsible for that. That’s always kind of been something that’s hovered over me. I’m always thinking about music in some way, shape or form. I can see it in everything. I’m constantly writing and I’ll probably get rid of more songs than most people write just because I don’t write to finish a song. I write to see if I can accomplish a certain idea.”
The self‑titled album has been a long journey for Mass, who said he started writing it in 2011.
“I have to write it on either acoustic, electric, or piano, something like that,” he said. “A song you should be able to play acoustically for it to be a song, in my mind, so I start there. In the creation process, if you can make an acoustic version of a song, that’s kind of how you know it’s really a good song. That’s one of the benchmarks, at least I think. I just had an acoustic wherever I went. It was with me on a long trip to California with me, I just always had a notebook around. This whole record’s really about a couple relationships that ended, and it just was so painful that I could not really deal with it, the only way I could deal with it was to make the record. I’m sure that comes across in the songs. It should.”
Fast forward a few years, and Mass was ready to release the album into the world, but one last thing would change his life in late 2014.
“When I was ready release it in 2015, I was like, ‘Well, it says you should probably have a music video, you should probably have a number of things,’ but I focused on the music video thing, and I was like, well, ‘I don’t have money to really put one together and what I wanted to do is an animated one.’ That’s expensive and laborious, right? And so I took on myself learning how to do animation.
“I think studying for the bar exam would have been easier. It’s just so much, and it brought me into such a gnarly headspace. By the end of 2015, I had no comparable music video, and I had completely lost it. Something switched in my brain, and I literally lost sense of reality. I ended up being hospitalized. Nobody really had a diagnosis right off the bat, I had to move out of my apartment back in with my parents, which got to me. I thought, ‘Oh no, all this is just coming to nothing.’”
Mass said he went to a “dark place” and was unable to listen to music for years. He ultimately got a job at UNMC as a utility operator. He commuted to work in silence. That silence would eventually give way to music again through a slow process.
“Finally, I started picking up guitars again every now and then,” Mass said, “I had to rebuild calluses on fingertips and everything. I finally started getting my relationship back with music. I went down a rabbit hole that I could not get out of, and it was at such a cost to my mental health that it literally institutionalized me. I did not pace myself from the moment in high school, I was like the Beatles were 18 and on Ed Sullivan or whatever, and I was like, I gotta go. So ever since that point in high school, I was like trying to floor it, and it finally caught up to me in 2015.”
“Then I realized that this record is probably good. If I still think the songs are good. My aim is to make them timeless.”
When asked if finishing the album broke the dam for new songs to come out, he said when the last song was mixed, new ideas starting coming.
“I have 10 or more tracks all that are already built out for the most part. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but yeah, I could feel it, like I could sense that there’s a bunch of stuff built up, I was building stuff, like these riffs that I’ve been playing my entire life,” Mass said.
“It is always good to know who you can rely on,” he says when asked for advice for other musicians. “In my case it was my parents. You’ll probably notice physically as well as verbally that it’s time to take a step back. Don’t let yourself get to the point where I got and don’t push yourself into doing things that really you know aren’t your job either. Everybody should recognize and just be aware that it’s a real thing and I think we are as a society doing a much better job of that.”