My latest single, The Devil Whispers in My Ear is now available everywhere that music streams, including Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp and wherever else.

I think I wrote The Devil Whispers in My Ear sometime in 1991.  I remember roaming through the house sometime in early summer strumming and singing it, thinking I had something pretty catchy. It wasn’t really the kind of song that moved in the direction I thought I was going, which would be much harder edged (this would become clear in the next couple of years as Kiss Me Screaming coalesced), but I liked it quite a bit regardless.  Sometime later that year I recorded a demo of it at Gene Fiero’s basement studio with Donn Deniston on drums.  Very likely we sent that demo around to some A&R people, but I don’t believe anyone was too excited about it.  I thought it was a perfectly constructed demo of a little pop song, but my definition of “pop” was already at least two decades out of date.  It was decidedly not the pop music of the day, which was more C&C Music Factory, Janet Jackson & Young MC.  I took the deaf ears this tune landed on as proof that I needed to be much more loud and aggressive.  And so I was.

After having moved decisively in that harder edged direction, writing and recording songs like Avalanche and Glowing in the Dark for what would become the eponymously titled Kiss Me Screaming album, toward the end of 1994, my KMS bandmate and pal bassist Oni Werth and I laid down the tracks for what I called “songwriter demos” of The Devil Whispers in My Ear and a Map of the World song, Next Time Around.   The idea was that these demos would allow me to shop the songs to other artists, however I don’t believe anyone – including myself – ever listened to either of these after the tracks were cut and roughly mixed to a languishing cassette, shortly after being recorded.  

Nonetheless, when I came upon them in 2025 while perusing the songs I had transferred to digital from 1/4″ tape but hadn’t yet worked on, I was surprised that the tracks for these two songs were as well concieved and recorded as they were.  Oni’s bass playing was, as usual, solid, driving and all around excellent, while the guitar tracks were well constructed and executed.  The vocals were not embarrassing.  No drums, however.  But it’s 2025 and I’m using Logic Pro X.  So, just to see, I added drums to Next Time Around.  With a little work, I had those dialed in quite nicely.  So, a few months later, I started working on The Devil Whispers in My Ear, and voila – with drums, some background vocals in the choruses and a mellotron pad behind the guitar solo added to the original tracks, I had the second single for vault I.  Because, you see, I am now the A&R person, VP of Marketing and CEO of the record label – and if I say it’s a hit, it’s a hit.