Buel – Dancing With Devils Of Mine

I wrote “Dancing with Devils of Mine” with Adrian Gurvitz and Sarah McTaggart from Transviolet.

Adrian Gurvitz is an artist and producer I always admired. He showed interest in my music and wanted to produce my album. Adrian and Sarah frequently work together writing songs and that’s how I met Sarah. I wanted to work with her because she is really great at reading minds and grasping people’s essences. It’s very rare that I can write lyrics with someone else and she definitely made it very easy. 

Sarah McTaggart was talking about the lack of support from families to the people who come out. I thought to myself ‘Why do we even need their support or validation?’. Why is coming out a ceremony? This is such a personal thing and it shouldn’t be others’ business to accept or discuss. 

Together, we recorded the song the day we wrote it, at Adrian’s studio in Los Angeles, probably around a year ago. 

Talking about the recording sessions, Adrian and I are pretty stubborn and difficult people so there is always a tension in the room when we work together. But we are so similar that we always have a kinship even when we drive each other nuts. So when Sarah came, the vibe changed and became much more upbeat and friendly. She kind of became the mediator between us and the process just started to flow. 

A few anecdotes:

Adrian and I stopped talking for 2 weeks because he refused one of the words I used in the song. It was pretty funny. I think we both needed a break. 

• One day we had a writer over and we couldn’t quite click. The writer guy was constantly smoking, was high and fluent in small talk. So at some point when he left to smoke outside, we were trying to figure out a way to let him go. Then we realized that he left his phone recording inside and our whole conversation was recorded. We both didn’t know what to do and started to argue on who should erase the recording and all of a sudden he walked in. We finally had to confess to him and ask him to erase it for us. 

• One day Adrian sent me a track and I hated it. All of his tracks are great but this particular one’s style just didn’t click with me. He invited me to the studio to work on other tracks. We worked for 5-6 hours and right when I was about to leave, he played this track that I hated again and told me to try some vocals on it. I realized he was waiting for that moment for hours. I was extremely tired and felt like recording and showing him that it won’t work would be easier than arguing with him not to. So I recorded some vocal melodies not taking it seriously and it actually became my favorite song in the album. The moral of the story is, I don’t always know what I hate or love and so I have to stay open and his vision is pretty clear.

Stay tuned, as we actually recorded and finished the whole album with the same people in the same studio. It will be released in 2023.