Bill Mott in The Washington Post

More Bill: Bill Mott, The Bill Mott Band

The following article appeared in The Washington Post. It tells the story of the experience with death that inspired Bill's debut CD "Dancing with Angels." The CD was produced by Bill's own label, Brand New Hearts Records, and a few used copies are available from Amazon.com. Since releasing "Dancing with Angels", Bill and his band have been keeping busy playing live shows.

Born Again

"Dancing With Angels" is the title of Bill Mott's debug CD, and the 41-year-old Laurel native wasn't just being poetic with that choice. Three years ago, Mott's heart stopped in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

At age 36, Mott had triple bypass surgery to treat his ailing heart, but that wasn't enough, and two years later he was in that ambulance. "What I remember," says Mott, "is laying in the back of the ambulance saying to myself, 'My God, let me live.'" He then experienced what his doctors called "sudden death" before being revived with a defibrillator. "Lots of people don't come back," says Mott. "I was lucky." Dancing with angels, indeed.

His doctors at Johns Hopkins placed Mott on their transplant list after that episode, and in August 1995 he received a new heart. "I was pretty bad by the time of the transplant," Mott remembers. "I could only walk for about five minutes before getting exhausted. I couldn't go up steps or inclines." With his new organ, he immediately felt better, but then there was the inevitable question of "what next?"

The 14-month wait for a new heart had forced Mott into thinking deeper thoughts that most of his contemporaries. "Of course it made me realize there's only so much time left, so if there's something you really want to do, do it now." A guitarist and songwriter since his schools days at the University of Maryland, Mott had been planning to make a record for a long time but had never gotten around to it: "So I told myself if I ever plowed through this thing I was going to make that record."

He did plow through, and soon after his surgery Mott rounded up some of the area's best musicians and headed into the studio. Guitarists Billy Kemp and Bill Kirchen, pianist Deanna Bogart, keyboard player Mookie Siegel, bassists Greg Harden and Jeff Sarli and drummer Jack O'Dell all make appearances on the record, giving Mott's songs the support they deserve.

The record sounds like a tight bar band having a great night, with rockers such as "Girls' Night Out" and "Cocaine Katie" pulsing like Bristish pub rockers of a few years back, say, Nick Lowe or Mickey Jupp. Mott gets earnest but not maudlin on "The Price You Must Pay" and "Judgment Day," and the rest of the tunes have stood the test of being played on a car stereo while driving around on a Saturday night.

Mott has released "Dancing with Angels" himeslf, and while he hopes to get a record deal, he's realistic. "I've sent out copies to labels, but it's hard to break in. I'll probably put out more records myself, just because now I know it's what I want to do." Mott has a day job working for a college recruitment company, but says as long as his heart holds out, he'll be playing music.