Derek Moss and Tom Messina are two super talented artists that have been a part of the Long Island music scene for years now. I had the chance to sit down with them, via ZOOM of course, and get a more detailed look into their backgrounds, current projects, and plans for the future. Looking back and connecting the dots on how these two came to collaborate on a single, during quarantine nonetheless, is something to marvel at. Derek and Tom had known each other for years, as they had both played the same venues as part of their respective bands, but never worked on anything together, then, quarantine happened. One day Derek noticed that Tom had put out a solo album of beats and he liked what he heard. He organized a ZOOM call and they got to work almost immediately. I’ll let you read the interview to see how it all went down but what this showed me was how nothing, not even a global pandemic, can stop the flow of art and collaboration. It’s super refreshing to speak to people that have the musical passion that’s so clearly conveyed when these two talk about their craft, and I hope you enjoy this brief look into their stories.
They have a single out now called Overpass available now on all streaming platforms.
*We went off on a couple tangents about our opinions on the current state of the world that I’ve spared from this transcript.
Rizzo
What’s up guys, how about we start with a little background story?
Derek
So me and Tom both come from bands, and that’s how we know each other. My band is Mariguanas, and Tom’s actually “Tommy six bands” over here. He’s been in Secret Beaches, currently in Emily Beck’s Band, and was in my personal favorite band, Gnarly Chaplin. We ended up meeting and built a relationship because we played shows together as bands. We had never collaborated or jammed before this song, Overpass, we just recognized each other. We saw each other play live and were aware of the other’s musical ability. Fast forward and quarantine happens. Tom puts out a solo album, and I’m expecting it to be like guitar and stuff. But I listen to it and it’s like beats. I was like, oh, sick this is lit. Then I pushed myself to put out a song too called Poppycock. It was just an instrumental kind of lo fi, similar to kind of what Tom did, too. I got inspired to keep on making music.
Rizzo
What made you push yourself to put out a solo single?
Derek
The reason I haven’t put out solo music in so long was because I struggle writing by myself. With that first song, Poppycock, I really pushed myself and struggled but finally mustered up courage to just put something out there, and it got a really good response. From there, I knew I wanted to keep making music but didn’t want to write alone, so I hit up Tom.
Rizzo
That’s awesome, how did it all go down?
Derek
I know he’s fucking serious about music, so I just texted him. After that, we did a Zoom call and I was like, all right Tom you start. I want to see you make a beat and do something. I kind of mouthed something to him and watched him do it and loosely guided him, but watched him do his thing, too. That got my gears turning. We started passing the file back and forth. He made a sick drumbeat, zipped it up to me, then it was my turn. Later that day, I was just on my guitar and playing with that little loop and little chord progression so I just thew a little guitar lead on top of it and zipped it back to him. We kept doing that back and forth like eight or nine times and eventually had a song. It was super collaborative. It wasn’t like I did this, Tom did that. There was a dialogue about every little thing.
Tom
There was a point in one of the verses, there’s like a little keyboard lead that comes in. And Derek had the session open, and he kind of like typed in his idea on the keyboard. And I was like, oh, like, what if we spaced out a little bit more? Then we did it. Then Derek was like what if the notes change? That added a little variety. Then I heard it and picked up my guitar and figured out the notes. So like one person would be engineering, producing, and the other person would be there also giving their two cents.
Rizzo
What past projects have you guys worked on?
Derek
For me, it’s been the Mariguanas for three years doing this shit but I’ve been making music on my own since high school. And there’s 350 little projects on my laptop. Some of them are pretty much done, but I don’t know if I’m confident enough to put them out yet. Other than that, it’s just been the Mariguanas for me.
Tom
And then for me, I’ve been playing in bands for almost 10 years. Since the end of middle school year, I had a couple of friends who played guitar, and we had a friend who sings really well so we were like let’s do it. From there we gigged around New York, which was pretty cool. There were some really supportive venues like right in Middletown, New York and Poughkeepsie that would hook us up. And then from there I started playing in my first more serious band, Ghost Walk, which was a pop punk band in my senior year of high school, shit was lit. We played Warped Tour. We went and did this Battle of the bands that got us on there for one day. So yah that was fresh. And then I ended up going to school up in Oneonta where me and Derek crossed paths. That’s where I linked up with those guys and Gnarly Chaplin. And we we did our thing for like three or four years, almost the entire time we were up there.
Rizzo
Did you ever put out solo music?
Tom
I never put out any music for myself until that instrumental project Derek was talking about. And it was probably a curveball for some people, just like having like trapped high hats and like, you know, I used a random ass sample. You ever see the movie Boondock Saints?
Rizzo
No but I’ve heard of it.
Tom
Oh, man, it’s awesome. It’s these two Irish like vigilantes of the night in Boston, who fight crime. It’s pretty bad ass. But anyway, I use like a sample from that, like a boom bap hip hop beat. It was a test for myself to really try something new. I’ve been playing guitar in bands for so long and I appreciate music so much more than just guitar and like rock music. It was cool to kind of start to expand my horizons like that.
Rizzo
What’s the name of the song you guys did together?
Tom
It’s called Overpass. It’s everywhere, Spotify, Apple, everywhere. It came out May 15th. Spotify is super dope because it’s not like a feature track. We are the artists on it instead of it being “Derek featuring Tom,” which is cool.
Derek
We’re close to eight thousand streams on the song now in like 17 days. And it was fun. We made a little marketing plan. We had a little budget and I think we have a bit of a plan, too, for when things start to roll with the vocal edit. We had a plan to do like a Facebook and Instagram paid campaign. But then we realize that there’s probably going to be vocals added, so maybe we should just hold off.
Rizzo
Are there future plans? Are you going to do more music together?
Derek Moss
Yeah, definitely. We actually tried to the other night.
Tom
It was like a brainstorming session. We got to get the gears grinding again.
Derek
Tom’s friend Laci wrote a verse to Overpass and took a video of her singing it and put it on Instagram. It sounded so fucking nice. So now we’re trying to organize putting a vocal version of this of the track out there.
Rizzo
Is there a long term goal?
Derek
We’ll see where it goes.
Tom
Yeah definitely. I’m super open and flexible on working with artists. Just having fun and playing it day by day.
