Revered New Jersey singer/songwriter Jared Hart, vocalist and guitarist for Mercy Union and The Scandals, released his first solo offering in 10 years today on Mt. Crushmore Records. The new EP, called The Condor, features three original songs from Hart and a cover of hip-hop artist Mac Miller’s R&B tune “Come Back to Earth” reimagined as a rock ballad.
The EP serves as tribute to one of Hart’s dearest and most special friends, one he met in college during a Sociology 101 class. “There wasn’t a lot of culture there,” Hart recalls. “Not a lot of people who have experienced life. There was a lack of identity. But one day this guy walks in with a shaved head and a Minor Threat shirt, and I’m there with blue hair and a Rancid shirt. We give each other this ‘What the fuck?’ look, because we were the only two on campus like that.” The pair became the closest of friends, even living together at one point, and the name “The Condor” became somewhat of a joke between them. “He would tell everyone, ‘People call me The Condor,’” continues Hart. “And a running joke was that in front of people I’d be like, ‘No one fucking called you that. There’s not a soul on earth that calls you that!’”
The two parted ways when “The Condor” moved to California, gifting Hart with a copy of good mmornin, Rayland Baxter’s tribute album to Mac Miller, as a goodbye present. While there were plans to visit each other, they never came to fruition as one day, the day that Mercy Union’s “Prussian Blue” came out in March of 2022, Hart received news of his friend’s untimely death. “When I heard the news, I became pretty useless,” he remembers. “There was so much going on with the band and everything else, but at that point it hit me like a ton of bricks. ‘Nothing is Important’. Everything stood still for a while. Making this EP was literally the only way I could attempt to make sense of any of it.”
Recorded with Matt Olson, who co-produced the EP in addition to playing drums on it, the EP was put out under Hart’s own name because of how incredibly personal the project was. “I needed to write something that showed that he always was that thing that he said he was,” explains Hart. “He was larger than life, and that void just can’t be replaced.”
Check out the heartfelt EP below.
Join Hart tomorrow for the release show for The Condor at Crossroads in Garwood, New Jersey along with Ben Nichols of Lucero.
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Photo courtesy of Ryan Johnson
