Steve Hall, a venture capital tech investor and amateur musician, combined his two interests during quarantine and, unexpectedly, became famous.

Growing up steeped in the Pacific Northwest grunge scene, Hall decided to cover favorites Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) and Chris Cornell’s (Sound-garden) collaborative “Hunger Strike,” recorded when the two performed in supergroup Temple of The Dog. No band? No problem. Like many musicians during quarantine, Hall dragged out his guitar—and his bass, drums and vocal mic—and shifted his tech focus from the NASDAQ to hands-on, plug-in technology. Hall played all instruments, sang all parts, recorded and, with some help from his kid brother nearly 3,000 miles away, mixed the tracks, and shot and edited the video—truly a one-man band.

“I worked on it off and on for a couple of months,” Hall said. “I was using the project as a catalyst to teach myself a bunch of new things around mixing, recording and video editing/lighting so there was a ton of experimenting along the way to get it right.” Support came from brother Les Hall, a longtime producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist who has toured with Trey Anastasio and served as lead guitar player, co-writer and producer for the platinum-selling hard rock band, Crossfade. Oh—and he runs 537 Studios, a recording studio in Atlanta, GA. Steve and Les did most of the mix together on Zoom.

First, however, he needed to lay down the tracks, an uneven process. “The bass track I probably did in two takes within half an hour,” Hall told Elmore. “For bass, I always use a DI (direct input) recording into my DAW so I can tweak the tone and sound later. For guitar, on the other hand, I went back and forth many times experimenting with different tones. The Eddie Vedder vocals I did in just a couple takes. But for the Cornell parts, I did probably ten takes just to make sure I had plenty of options to work with to nail the high parts. And the drums…..oh man, I probably did 30 takes. I’m a hack drummer and Matt Cameron has some wicked cool fills on that song, so that was really a stretch for me to pull this off.”

And for the tech geek in him and his brother? “We ran everything through a Universal Audio Apollo Quad interface using Logic Pro as a DAW. The UAD Apollo is really the heart of the recording, enabling a range of standard studio gear—everything from preamps and compressors to EQ, gates, reverb, etc. We are also a big fan of FabFilter plug-ins, particular the ProQ visual equalizer.” Maybe not standard basement-recording equipment, but just listen to the results.

Even the photography was in-house: “I shot the video by myself just using a tripod (trust me, if I had anyone else shooting it, they would have walked off the job based on how many takes I was doing!). I wanted to use this project to learn about higher-end video editing so I went out and bought a new Sony DSLR camera, a bunch of lighting gear and Final Cut Pro and then consumed a bunch of YouTube tutorial videos learning how to use it all.” Hall was helped here by yet another Hall: “There were also a couple of zoom-in shots that I had my 13-year son shoot for me,” he said.

Steve posted the video to Facebook. Much to his surprise, it took off and soon it was approaching one million views. In the midst of a global pandemic, Steve Hall had turned his favorite hobby into mental health self-care, a learning experience and a way to pass the time, and in the process, he trended.

Next up, we asked? “Honestly, I have been mostly focused on just practicing my vocals. I just started singing a couple of years ago and there remains a big difference in how consistently I can perform a single live take versus taking my time over multiple iterations. So I’m really working hard to make the “live” version of me live up to the “video” version. The next one or two tunes I do will likely be a little more stripped down and less produced. I really consider piano to be my most comfortable instrument so am hoping to do something along those lines to change things up a bit.”

Piano? Can’t wait.

Connect with Steve Hall on 537 Studio’s FACEBOOK and Steve’s TWITTER