Ryan Ross Hernandez sat quietly in front of me. It was a rare sight for anyone who had ever been in the same room as him. The last time I saw Hernandez was in October of 2013 when he performed at the Hollywood Bowl in support of his sixth studio album Traveling Tales, which was released that same month. That evening, we saw the Ryan Ross Hernandez everyone loved or loved to hate. He kept a sold-out crowd of over 18,000 at the palm of his hand all night long with not just his performance, but also his far-reaching charisma. It was a star-studded affair with fellow musicians and general LA-based celebrities coming out to see Hernandez do exactly what he does best; play music. There was a celebratory feel to the entire night, as it rightfully should have been. The singer had finally overcome his bouts with vocal issues that restrained him from singing to his full potential, tour for two years, and even from speaking at one point. That chilly night in October, I was not attending the concert as an assignment for any music publication. I was rather out with friends to see a musician who I genuinely enjoyed and had just so happened to have interviewed in the past. In 2008, then again in 2012, I interviewed Hernandez. Out of those occasions, we developed a casual friendship, mainly kept in touch through mutual friends and shared conversations when we would run into each other on a night out in Los Angeles or New York City. After the show that night, I got a chance to speak with him for a few minutes, just small talk as we caught up, while Hernandez mingled with his bandmates and friends alike over drinks before they took the gathering to Chateau Marmont, a few of those celebrities that were in attendance hopping along with him.

It was nineteen months seen I had last seen him. Although to be fair, for over a year now, Ryan Ross Hernandez has been a ghost. After wrapping up his last tour in early 2014, the now 37 year old just disappeared. He vanished the Twitter-sphere after having just returned a few months prior, left his followers on Instagram with no trace of his whereabouts. The once tabloid darling who’d we see candids of every other week whether it was leaving a restaurant in West Hollywood or catching a plane at JFK, none of those were anywhere to be found. Not even any low quality fan shots of him at a coffeeshop have been seen in the last year. That reasoning is simple; he did not want to be seen. There is no long hair grown out or any sort of hat to be worn like when he moved out to Montana and returned with the look highly inspired by his surroundings. Some would argue the look felt forced when we saw it three years ago as he went the folk/Americana route with his 2012 release, Break in the Clouds. Per usual, as was the case with Hernandez, no matter what he looked like or even said publicly, he always found a way to receive the praise and approval from people once the music was out there. Break in the Clouds served as not only his triumphal return to music after several controversial issues following some interviews he did years prior, but many fans and critics alike made a case that the record served as solidifying his case as one of the best singer-songwriters in the last fifteen years.

Now as I had this ghost sit in front of me, nothing seemed calculated about his look or demeanor. He had his hair uncombed, casually dressed in a plain blue t-shirt and a pair of jeans. The only difference in his appearance was the pair of glasses he now tries to wear most of the time. “They aren’t a fashion statement. My vision just isn’t 20/20 anymore.” He had no record to promote or seemingly much to say even. Hernandez was known to be as long-winded as they come, not letting a single moment of silence fall in a conversation, always having enough knowledge of most, if not any subject to jump right in and share his own observations. Not this time though, not now. He was quiet when we began, and with no entourage around him, a far cry from last time I had seen him. No one else was here with us, because there simply was no one else to be there. Over the last year in a half, the praised singer-songwriter has broken off his over a decade long professional relationship with his manager, also parting ways with his publicist, booking agent, and even his long-time personal assistant, Lisa, who was known well in professional circles and among long-time RRH fans, as she always by his side for a number of years. There are no newly inserted substitutes in these positions, at least not yet. The only notable professional associate that Hernandez has kept around was his sound engineer and best friend, Chad Jennings.

“It wasn’t an easy decision to let any of those people go. Past the fact I worked with them for the better part of my career, I also considered all of them friends,” Hernandez explained, looking out of his kitchen window while he tapped his thumb mindlessly against the wooden table as he recalled those people who are no longer a part of his life, which he insists was solely his choice. “It wasn’t a professional decision where I felt they weren’t doing their jobs to the best of their ability because that’s not true. Each of them dedicated so much time and effort and resources in making sure I only had to focus on the music, that’s it. Mike [his former manager] spent weeks at a time away from his family,” you see, this self-imposed disappearance Hernandez made was a conscious decision all along. “I knew when the Traveling Tales touring cycle ended, I had no plans to go on some major, eighty-nine date, worldwide tour. I didn’t know when I would return to a point where it would be profitable for them to be working on my behalf.” That touring cycle he speaks of did in fact not last very long at all, touring the United States between October and December of 2013, before hitting select dates overseas in January and February of 2014, before calling it an end to the album’s active lifespan. “It was a very personal decision where I wanted them to find other artists and clients to work with, while at the same time, knowing that when I decided to return, I wanted a fresh start from everything I’d known as a recording and touring artist in that last fifteen years.”

Hernandez also no longer lives in Montana, at least for now, while he gets renovations done to his home there. Hernandez invited me into his new home, which he chooses not to disclose where it is located publicly yet, wanting it described as a simple suburb in the upper midwest, opting to move just a few states away from Montana was an easy choice for him to make. “Once you get comfortable with a certain way of living, you don’t want to leave that. When I moved to Montana, that actually felt like a home to me, I feel the same way here. That’s a feeling I never had when I lived in Los Angeles or New York.” He’s always had a love-hate relationship with LA and NYC, without argument the two biggest capitals in the world when it comes to entertainment. He had an apartment in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City for nearly eight years before selling it in 2013, while his lavish West Hollywood home was put on the market and sold a year earlier, to coincide with his move to Big Sky Country. With his record label, North Hill Records folding last year, which offices were located in Los Angeles, he now says he has no reason to be in that city. “I have such respect for people who can live there and not lose their fucking minds,” he half-jokingly says with a small chuckle, the first time I caught a glimpse of his white teeth this day. Now when he does need to visit those two cities, he opts to stay in hotels, and at all costs, avoid places where he knows the paparazzi eye is lurking.

While he has kept himself out of the spotlight, that certainly does mean it has kept troubles away from him, behind the curtains. In the last year, he has gone through personal turmoil which he describes to be his biggest battle yet, much more difficult than any controversy he has dealt in the past while in the limelight. “There was a point, very early on in this exile, where one by one things just started collapsing around me.” During his time away, he began a relationship with a woman who he will not mention by name, nor say if she is a publicly known figure as most of his past exes have been. When that romance ended, it created plenty of faults which he is still presently in the midst of. “Your life could be an absolute mess, yet you have this one thing, whether consciously you realize it or not, that is keeping everything else together. But when that piece is removed, you no longer have an excuse or reason to say ‘I’m okay.’” And he hasn’t been okay, a fact which he realizes now as he attempted to seek comfort in another human being while overshadowing the issues he had to face with himself. “I’ve always had generalized anxiety, I had my first panic attack over twenty years ago when I was sixteen years old. When you have any mental disorder, no matter how small or big it is, it’s gonna be with you until the day you die. There’s no surgery or medication that is going to cure you of a mental disorder.” Hernandez went on to say that his anxiety rose once his career got underway in the early 2000s, but without the need for any anxiety medication, he was in a better headspace the last few years where he was able to keep his anxiety in check. “Over a period of five years, I probably had five or six panic attacks, one per year, give or take. I knew things had changed when over the course of last summer [in 2014], I began having three or four panic attacks per week. That was new to me. In twenty years, I felt I had a general understanding of my anxiety and what triggered it, but last year, it got to a point where I did not know how to deal with it.”

When these extensive panic attacks began at the height of the summer last year, he choose a rather unhealthy way to try to cope. “I started drinking quite heavily. That was after for about five or six months where I had not drank any hard liquor, so I felt like I had a twenty-four years old liver again and I could just drink everything I saw in sight.” He was also not going out to drink, he had these sessions of binge drinking mostly at home, by himself, avoiding any contact with his friends or family. “It’s fine if you live alone and after a long day you have a drink when you get home, but it’s a different story when you’re drinking entire bottles of whiskey in a night.” On the nights when the whiskey and other hard liquor he consumed were not enough, he would self-medicate with Xanax, a prescription he had been given by his therapist for years now, but never actually took them. These days though, he makes sure to keep one in his pocket whenever he leaves his home. “I’m scared. It’s a fear-inducing thought to imagine that you could possibly have a panic attack at a grocery store or airport, once you have a single panic attack, you’re prone for it to happen anywhere you go.” Now unless he absolutely feels the need to, he does not take Xanax very often. With alcohol on the other hand, he does admit to still drinking a couple of times a week. “I'm no longer drinking to the point where I pass out. I'm drinking a glass or two because I know better than to continue further and be drunk four nights a week when I'm trying to get work done.” On the rare occasions when he is in Los Angeles, he still visits his long-time therapist, although he is already making weekly visits with a new therapist in the city he now calls home. “I'm not a spiritual person, I'm not a medication taking person unless I absolutely have to. What I feel helps me best in treating my problems is just going into an office and seeing a therapist for an hour. Whether that hour is spent just me talking non-stop or actually hearing her advice, I feel better when I leave that place, even if it only lasts for the rest of the day.”

Hernandez laughed as he recalled his extensive research on anxiety. He is an information sponge, obsessing over any particular issue that gets stuck in his mind, hungry for as much knowledge as possible. This research, led him to findings which he found humorous, or perhaps that was just the defense mechanism he used to repress the reality of it. “I read a book that said anxiety could bring depression along, which in turn may also cause people with such a disorder to binge drink. And a study someone or some group of people in the world conducted, that such behavior is most commonly found in people who have never married, who had no children, did not have a higher education, and were not religious. So I remember making check list and going; I’ve never been married, I have no children, I dropped out of college after a semester, and I do not believe in any organized religion. According to whoever wrote that book or did that study, I fit the mold for someone who does have anxiety, and bouts of depression, and partake in binge drinking.” While he attempted to play this off as a simple joke out of his own expense, his voice made it sound more heartbreaking than it did funny. “Yeah, I’ve had my bouts of depression over the last year,” he responded in a reserved, hushed tone when I asked him if he did experience depression through this whole bender he’s gone through. “Anything a human does can become addictive to them. If you are adventurous, you’re going to want to go sky diving or rock climbing, anything that gives you that rush, you’re gonna seek out to do. If you find a hobby or some sort of creative outlet that makes you happy or less stressed out, you’re going to immerse yourself in it. For me, I’ve been in this particular state of mind for so long that its tough to get out of, which I’m not going to speak for everyone who has any mental health disorder like anxiety or depression,” he is quick to state before continuing, not wanting to become a poster child for anyone these days. “For me, dealing with these things, I naturally write about them a lot, almost exclusively. And I don’t write because I feel it helps me with my problems. I’m not a writer that if I write a record about a break-up, it’s going to help me get over that person and that heartbreak. No, I don’t believe writing to be therapeutic. I find writing to be emotionally exhausting for me, but I write about these things because I need to. If I didn’t write songs or just put down whatever thought I have in my head or feelings I’m dealing with at a given moment, I’d lose my fucking mind.” While we likely won’t be hearing an inspirational, anthemic song from Hernandez, he does insist on having major respect for those songwriters who are capable of that. “If you’re going through some shit in your personal life but you’re able to go out there for two hours and perform those songs with a smile on your face, fuck, I have respect for you. I couldn’t do that. I’m not strong enough. I don’t have that ability, especially now, to perform songs at a moment when I’m not feeling them, even if they were hits of mine. It might not be fair to the fans, but it’s not fair for an artist either.”

Heartbreak, love, lost, anxiety, depression, alcohol and drug references, and general introspective views of himself are the central themes of the record Ryan Ross Hernandez is currently working on. Well, rather, he has worked on-and-off on writing and recording a new album for the past year. Almost a year ago to the date when this interview is taking place in mid-May, Hernandez went back into the studio with all intents of crafting an album that followed the Americana footsteps he had taken with his previous two albums, while adding the twist of blues-pop that many of his longtime fans have been longing for. Above the sounds and nooks about it, the songs he had written towards that particular project had a positive outlook towards love, life, the grand horizon of what was in the future for him. “It was natural, ‘cause I was really happy at that time. I was writing love songs and I was picturing a life with someone in those songs. It was a beautiful headspace to be in.” His eyes teared up as he visually recalled that time of his life. Of course, these songs were written before the break-up and mental health issues took much of this bright headspace away from him. “I was actually pretty excited about those first few sessions, I had a few of the musicians who worked on Break in the Clouds and Traveling Tales come in and lay some stuff down. I was only in the studio for maybe two or three weeks though, but I had about five or six songs written that I was proud of crafting. We only completed two of those, the other ones, I just recorded demos of with just me and an acoustic [guitar], maybe a pedal or two.” If that project had panned out, and none of the personal problems had come up, we’d likely have already seen the release of it, and with such, we would have gotten the first glimpse of Hernandez was capable of writing when he was writing from a truly happy place in his life.

Back to the actual seventh studio album we will be getting from the thirty-seven year old; he has spent the last three months going to the studio on a work schedule he has self-imposed, going four to five times a week and spending about eight hours each day secluded in a recording studio. Unlike his past six records, he has no intentions of writing or recording any parts in Los Angeles or New York City, the two cities he has left behind in his rearview mirror. “I own studio space at Capital Records, which is where the album, once its finished, it’ll likely be mixed and mastered there. So if a musician can’t come out here, their parts will be recorded out there probably. Once I’m in Los Angeles though, it’s because the record is done, everything on my part is recorded and laid down, every song is fully written. I don’t want to do any of that in LA. That city is full of distractions and I do not want any of that to reach this album and these songs that were made in a different mindset.” Much of this time between the recording studio to his suburban home, is spent alone, as he is only calling on musicians to come in and record their parts until he has a fleshed out idea on how a song should sound. “Every day that I’m in the studio, I’m recording something, whether it’s a finished song from a writing standpoint that I’m trying to figure the chords and melodies to go with it, or just a verse or chorus that pops into my head. It creates a very slow recording process but that’s fine with me because I feel no pressure in having to release an album.” He is paying for these recording sessions and the musicians that he brings in, out of his own pocket, as he is currently a free agent being unsigned to any major label. Hernandez will start to meet with record labels in the coming months though, to try to reach a deal before the completion of his forthcoming album. “I can’t say I’ve ever had any label executives or A&R breathing down my neck and controlling what I do as an artist, in that aspect I’ve always a freeing creative control to whatever I did. When I was signed with Studio 60 and other labels I’ve been on earlier in my career, I would still call them and say, ‘hey, stop by the studio if you wanna see what I’m working on.’ Not so much to get their thoughts on it, but more so to show them where the money they gave me to book a recording studio for seven months and hire the musicians I wanted, was going, they’d be in the loop about it.” He adds that he will not be releasing this album as an independent artist or create his own imprint to release it through. “I don’t want to deal with that aspect of it. I just want to create the record that I want, then hand the mastered copy to someone and let them press it, distribute it, market it. I’ve been in that place before, I know how it goes. I don’t want to bother with it. This next phase of my career is to just focus on the music and when I’m not working on music or touring, I’m not gonna be visible because I no longer feel the need to find other ways to stay relevant.” It sounds clear that he has his mind set on removing the ‘celebrity’ connotation that has so strongly been associated with him in the past, even if it was warranted at times.

“These newer artists make it look so effortlessly, so easy,” he says through a chuckle, recalling the early days of his career while sitting back in the recording studio in front of a soundboard as our conversation moved to the downtown-setting studio. “And I understand, I can’t blame them for loving everything about [fame] because I did when I was their age. At some point, most of them, should reach a point in their lives when they just grow up and learn that it’s not always about the fun and parties. Thankfully looking back, while I had my public fuck-up’s, it never got to the point where I was doing hardcore drugs or arrested for some idiotic bullshit. My major problem in the spotlight, was an obsession to be liked and accepted and believing that I could please everybody.” At thirty-seven, moving to thirty-eight years old this October, by the time of his next album release in the fourth quarter of the year, he speaks more like the veteran at the table, more so than the guy who is still trying to hang with the younger crowd. “It took me a long time to get comfortable with the space I have in music now, because I had a lot of ambitions. I wanted to play the biggest venues, I wanted to be successful enough to indulge in my other hobbies and venture into other things that interest me, I wanted to date the most beautiful women in the world.” One could argue that Hernandez was able to accomplish all those things over the course of his career. Thanks to his success musically, he has been able to do everything from owning a record label, to writing, directing, and starring in a television series, Sweet Unknown. And arguably, also has dated some of the most well-known and desired women in Hollywood over the years. While he chooses not to speak publicly about his past relationships that arguably made him just as famous as his music, he is not shutting the door on the possibility of dating another public figure. “I’m not seeking it, I’m not looking for any relationship at the moment. But it would be unfair of me to meet someone and tell them that, while I’d love to get to know them better, I can’t do that because of who they are. That would be ridiculous to put that limit upon myself on the pursuit of finding a woman to love.”

Moving on to the topic of his failed venture into network television, which famously starred him along with a cast filled of musicians-turned-actors. “Sweet Unknown was always meant to be something massive, both in terms of production, as well as just star value in the show. I wanted to film everything on location, I didn’t want to use studio lots. The network executives and I butted heads quite a bit because I did not want to compromise the vision I had created.” The show only ran for one season before getting axed by FX. With North Hills Records on the other hand, the label was able to last nearly two years, from the get-go going up against Studio 60 Records, ironically and infamously, the label he was once signed for, which ended in quite a messy public fallout. “A lot of mistakes were made on my part, with both the show and with North Hill [Records]. There was a point in my life a couple of years ago where I wanted to write for, act in, and run a TV series, run the day-to-day operations of a record label, be an active recording and touring artist, but still wanting to be left alone in Montana.” He sighs out with a fading grin, shaking his head as he looks up at the recording booth. “I wanted it all, and that’s just impossible.” He points his index finger towards the booth before circling it around in the air as he speaks. “This is where I belong, in a studio creating music or on a stage somewhere playing it. I'm not an actor, I'm not a comedian, I'm not a label exec. I'm a singer, I'm a musician, I'm a writer. Everything else is just vapid, it's bullshit.”