Fire Ants were born out of a project I had begun with my bass player friend, Eric Massimino, whom I had brought out to L.A. from New York to play on the Five For Fighting CD, Message for Abert, that I was producing for EMI with their president, Davitt Sigerson. Eric and I had grown up playing music together and while he was staying with me during the FFF sessions, we started to jam like the old days. Only we came up with four songs that were pretty good. So we recorded them in me crib on my mobile studio and suddenly I was back on the road to becoming my own artist again. We needed a singer and Eric knew a guy, J.J. Appleton, a singer/guitar player back in New York, who he thought would be a great fit. We flew back to New York to audition J.J. and he was just what the doctor ordered.

After recording his vocals and mixing the four songs, the demo found it's way into the hands of Ahmet Ertegun, legendary founder of Atlantic Records. One day, Eric got a phone call from the man himself, asking what this Fire Ants thing was that came across his desk and whether it was real or not. Well, I had been waiting for a sign from God to escape from L.A. for quite some time and this was close enough for me. I packed my things and headed back to New York to finish this CD and start a new life.

Fire Ants had quite a bit of indie success at the cusp of the internet explosion around 1997. We had a number one song on MP3.com, Save The World, which led to some amazing free PR. First, CNN called to see if they could interview us for their Science & Technology program on how people were using the internet to further the careers. Then Rolling Stone called and interviewed me for an article titled, 'Is MP3 the End of the Music Business?' (little did they know). I remember Matt Hendrickson, who interviewed me for the Rolling Stone article, asked me off the record if all this internet stuff really translated into tangible success. I said, 'Hey Matt, we're an unsigned band and you're a major writer for Rolling Stone and you called me. What do you think?' Wired Magazine followed after that with another interview. Not bad for a total PR budget of ZERO!

The Fire Ants CD has elements of pop, rock, blues, punk, soul and psychedelia. The payoff came in an odd way, when we were allowed to partcipate in the IPO for MP3.com when they went public (remember when you could make a serious profit off an IPO before the tech bubble burst?) Well, we made a nice taste indeed.