DESCRIPTION:
Michael McDermott - From the album Hit Me Back (Rock Ridge Records) - Available Sept 25, 2012
michael-mcdermott.com
twitter.com/michaelmcdermot
Album produced by CJ Eiriksson
Video produced, directed and edited by Brian Fitzpatrick, Bayondai Design

Michael says of the song: "For as light hearted as it seems, "Hit Me Back" is actually a fairly dark song. I was driving 2 hours everyday to see my mother in the hospital - was 6 weeks from when she broke her hip to when she died. I was destroyed by seeing her slip away. As she shuffled off this mortal coil.,,,, I shuffled some things off too. 2 hours in the car listening to the radio and hearing these pop songs gave me the idea......I can write me one of these .... So I did..... The lyrics to the chorus came first, driving down LaGrange road."

BIO:

"What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish
in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh
and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music...
And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon.'"
- Kierkegaard

The anthemic, arena-filling "Scars From Another Life" (from his forthcoming album Hit Me Back) paints the picture of how far singer-songwriter Michael McDermott has come: "I was so down... I had completely lost my way / When I hit Broadway I began to realize / That all they are are scars from another life." His life since becoming a recording artist—full of myriad highest highs, gutter-skimming lows, and absolute rock bottoms of the past two decades—could read like a screenplay, but with stories so ridiculously outlandish that they couldn't possibly be true.

All of it—the addiction, the failed relationships, the financial dramas, the career hurdles—have left plenty of scars, but McDermott's moving on, moving up, and taking charge. He makes no excuses for his past—it has made him who he is today—but sings to everyone listening (and to himself): "Don't run away, they're scars from another life."

Hit Me Back exudes McDermott's trademark embrace of faith and hope in the face of adversity. The lyrics are, as always, uniquely evocative: McDermott sings in poetry; his tunes are literate story-songs. On the haunting "Ever After," he offers the listener palpable insight into the jarring confusion and doubt felt in the days that followed his mother's passing (in October 2011). The wryly observed title track puts a new spin on fighting a long-time nemesis, alcohol. His demon-banishing in the aforementioned "Scars From Another Life" is echoed in the love-is-redemption refrains of "Let It Go." The exploration of temptation and bowing to its siren call is explored in the Americana-laced "A Deal With The Devil."

Influenced by such musical giants as Springsteen, Dylan and Van Morrison, McDermott exhibited a talent for mature and lyrically dense songwriting that soon caught the eye—and ear—of then-talent scout Brian Koppelman (now a screenwriter, novelist, director, and producer; best known as the co-writer of "Ocean's Thirteen" and "Rounders"), who immediately signed him to Giant Records. That first album, 620 West Surf, boasted a Billboard Hot 100 charting single, ("A Wall I Must Climb"). McDermott continued to write introspective, character-driven songs that won him an enduring band of appreciative followers. In the liner notes for McDermott's self-titled album, bestselling author Stephen King wrote: "Michael McDermott is one of the best songwriters in the world and possibly the greatest undiscovered rock 'n' roll talent of the last 20 years."

Discography:

"620 W. Surf" (Giant Records/Reprise Records, 1991)
"Gethsemane" (SBK Records, 1993)
"Michael McDermott" (EMI Records, 1996)
"Bourbon Blue" (Wanted Man Records, 1999)
"Last Chance Lounge" (Koch Records, 2000)
"Ashes" (Pauper Sky Records, 2004)
"Noise From Words" (One Little Indian, 2007)
"Hey La Hey" (Pauper Sky Records 2009)
"Hit Me Back" (Rock Ridge Records 2012)

Video Credits:
Artist: Michael McDermott
Song: Hit Me Back
Produced, Directed and Edited by: Brian Fitzpatrick / Bayondai Design, LLC
Camera: Mike Heinzer, Scott Higgins
Art Direction: Jon Paul LoMonaco
Makeup: Jenny Lynn Bender
Production Director: Debra Shecter
Production Assistant: Don Pyatt
Actors: Scott Fairlamb, John Powers, Fred Machetto, Bill Van Goor