Charlotte musician’s new album is a triumphant moment after a stroke nearly derailed it

When Lincolnton-based pop-punk band BitterHearts filmed the video for its eerily prophetic, uplifting album closer “Any Day Now” during a cookout at Stephanie and Jonathan Hughes’ house in August 2019, no one expected it would be the last time they’d be together there.

The next evening, after taking in a movie with Stephanie and their daughter, Jonathan sat in the band’s studio working on the track.

“I’d finished recording the guitar that Monday and was playing keys. There was this bridge part and I was trying to make up something new, playing this part over and over,” Jonathan says, sitting on the couch of the couple’s new house, his 4-year-old English bulldog rescue Franklinstein nearby. “I was just about done with it.”

Hughes didn’t finish the song that night. Minutes later he was stumbling down the hallway, kneeling against the living room sofa as Stephanie dialed 911. He was rushed to the local hospital then airlifted to Atrium Health Main, where doctors performed an emergency craniotomy.

The surgery was a success, but it would be two months before Hughes was released. Their beloved home of 13 years was sold in favor of a new place that could accommodate his new physical limitations, which include compromised mobility on the left side of his body.

Once out of the hospital, Jonathan was determined to get the videographer a final track so he could finish the video for “Any Day Now.”

“Luckily the computer auto-saved it,” says Hughes, who grew frustrated with his lack of focus working from his mother-in-law’s, where the couple stayed between houses. Once they moved in January into the new house — a modest three bedroom with an open floorplan, level entrance, and fence for Franklin — he set up a computer monitor and keyboard on the kitchen table and slowly finished mixing the rest of the album.

“I had gotten pretty far before the stroke,” he says. “I had done most of the edits. I just needed it mixed to a point that it could go to mastering.”

On Nov. 1, a little over a year after Hughes was released from Atrium’s rehabilitation hospital in Mount Holly, BitterHearts released “Undone” digitally via Bandcamp. The album remains pop-punk at its core but with shades of darker new wave thanks to keyboards and Stephanie Hughes’ vibrant vocals and personal, uplifting lyrics.

While COVID slowed down the rest of the world, the last year has brought a lot of change for the Hughes. Their daughter Nora, who was home-schooled until this semester, now attends regular school while Stephanie works tech support from home. Jonathan has lost 100 pounds and walks with a cane, having only used his wheelchair twice. He wears an orthotic brace on his left leg. He can raise his arm and close his left fist and is working toward passing his driver’s test; though, frankly, he says, “My only goal is to play (guitar).”

Looking back now, “Undone” is full of songs whose meanings have only intensified given what BitterHearts has been through. “Any Day Now” is, as Stephanie, says “the most poignant.”

“We went through a lot of loss, parents, relatives, and friends that died,” says Jonathan of the song that reminds listeners to live life to its fullest. “The line goes, ‘There’s got to be more to life.’ It meant a lot when Kyle (Perkins) and Steph wrote the lyrics. It meant even more captured in the video of us sitting on the back of Steph’s El Camino doing what we did.”

The video chronicles a day much like many other days, when one of Hughes’ bands would practice in the Beat Lab at the old house.

“We’d go into practice and come out and there’d be 30 people. My dad would be grilling. Kids would be jumping on the trampoline,” he says. “When the video came out, we all watched it together. We all cried.”

With no shows in sight, the band — which includes Perkins and drummer Lee Norris — decided to release it digitally in order to get it out quickly.

But while his future as a musician is uncertain as is the future of live music in general, the album release helped give him closure.

“It feels like the last stretch of a really long marathon,” says Hughes, who has spent the last 25 years steeped in the local music scene, from playing in 25 Minutes to Go, Sext Msg, HU/LK and other projects to managing The Milestone Club.

“Once I can play again, I’ll play every second of every day.”