Mason Thomas Confronts the Performance of Healing on New Single “Therapy”

Greenville, South Carolina rocker Mason Thomas steps forward with “Therapy,” the first single from his forthcoming debut album, My Shell Is Gone, arriving September 18. After years spent playing bass with Nordista Freeze, Sarah Shook and The Disarmers, Pretty Embers, and Liam Bauman, Thomas is putting his own songwriting at the center.

Rooted in alternative and indie rock, “Therapy” turns an uncomfortable realization into something instantly relatable. Framed as a back-and-forth between therapist and client, the track explores a “people pleaser’s nightmare”: wanting the benefits of healing while presenting the most put-together version of yourself instead of confronting what is actually wrong. The idea comes from Thomas’ own counseling experience after losing his mother to cancer in 2019.

That loss sits at the heart of My Shell Is Gone. After returning from the hospital following his mother’s death, Thomas picked up his guitar and returned to a “comfort” riff he had carried for roughly a year. That moment became the album’s title track and eventually the starting point for a much larger body of work.

Across nine songs, My Shell Is Gone documents the six years that followed, including Thomas’ turbulent entrance into adulthood and the arrival of the pandemic only months after his mother’s passing. Grief and anxiety run through the record, but they are balanced by heartbreak, love, self-realization, and the gradual process of understanding who he was becoming. Thomas describes the songs as a source of solace during years when he struggled to make sense of himself. Recorded with longtime collaborator Blake Tallent and drummer Jack Foster, the album turns that personal history into Thomas’ proper introduction as a solo artist. With “Worker’s Comp” arriving August 28 ahead of the September 18 album release, “Therapy” sets the tone for a debut built around finally confronting the things Thomas once kept hidden.

“Therapy” explores the instinct to present the “best” version of yourself in counseling. When did you realize that performing wellness can actually get in the way of healing?

I’d have to say it took fumbling over myself (and my own story)  in and outside of a couple of sessions to finally just release my pent-up honesty and frustration. My therapist at the time could relate to 1. Being a musician and 2. Losing a parent, so by the time they opened up themselves, I felt I had nowhere else to hide. Not to mention, what was the point of even being there if I wasn’t going to try and actually get better? Healing only happens when you take a brutally honest look at yourself and take the steps necessary to find your remedy. In my case, that was letting go of a certain image and instead embracing the reality of who I am.

You’ve spoken about entering therapy after losing your mother. How did those early counseling sessions change the way you understood grief and yourself?

The first challenge I encountered in those early sessions was coming to accept the fact that I am a very sensitive person. I mean, we’re talking about the kid who’d get so mad in competitive sports that he’d start crying… But of course, I tried my best to repress emotions and be strong. By starting to do the work in therapy, I gained a greater appreciation for that softness and became more connected to my true self. Those early sessions helped me understand the fact that grief is an ongoing process.

I had experienced grief before my mom’s passing, but the particular weight of her loss really made grief feel like a looming, gargantuan monster. My therapist really helped me knock down grief to its true form, and I was then able to learn how to live in tandem with it, not the fear of it. My favorite line on the whole record comes from the second track, “Note On The Door:” “It feels like the grief never shakes off.” It encapsulates the doomy feeling that grief slaps its victims with, yet it also offers a window to the reality that it comes in waves. 

After years of feeling uncomfortable sharing your own songs, what finally gave you the confidence to step forward as Mason Thomas and release this music?

I started to force myself up on stage. The first time I played my songs in front of anyone was at an open mic night in Savannah at Abe’s On Lincoln fall 2021. My girlfriend (now wife :) )  and I were visiting friends who lived there, and then they encouraged me to get up and sing a few! I really thought I botched it, but both my people and strangers said I did awesome, so I kept on going. I did a few solo sets in Nashville in 2022 and 2023, and then in January 2024 I did my first full band shows with a trio. 

I also began learning how to finish songs. For the longest time, I’d have a riff and play it for two years straight until I’d eventually stumble into a vocal melody and a basic structure. I wrote the song “My Shell Is Gone” in 2019 after seeing my mom for the last time, and took a “comfort riff” I had and made the song in 20 minutes without any critique or overthinking. That instance really broke a lot of the fake walls I had built up around myself as an artist. While I still do plenty of overthinking, as I write more and more,  I lean further into that pure feeling rather than what I THINK I should be making. My obsession with artists such as David Bowie and Robert Smith over the last four or five years has certainly shifted my process for the better.

“Therapy” introduces listeners to My Shell Is Gone. Why did this song feel like the right first chapter for the album?

While I wrote a few of the songs on the album before “Therapy,” I feel that when it was fully written, I had an actual album on my hands. I spent a lot of time listening to the record to figure out what the singles should be. Ultimately, “Therapy” has a hookiness and punch to it that best represents what listeners will hear throughout the rest of the album. Opening the album in a therapist office also enlists a mood for the songs to come.

The album traces grief, anxiety, heartbreak, love, and your entrance into adulthood. Looking back at the person who started writing these songs, what has changed most about you since then?

I am way more confident in who I am than I was in 2019, 2020, or even in 2023. While I liked to be outgoing with others, I always held a bit of timidness and self-hate around everywhere I went. There was always an inkling of hope that I could be fully seen. Come to find out, my friends really care about me and who I am –  I’m finally able to see my own self-worth, which is something I’m not sure I would have said even like 10 months ago. My community in my current home, Greenville, and the ones prior - Nashville and Birmingham - are my lifeblood and are absolutely the reason I can look back and see any sort of personal growth.