As Devil Doll slides into "St. Christopher", she beckons you to follow. She's talking to you… yeah you… With a vice-like grip from a satin cocktail glove, she grabs you by the reproductives. She appears vulnerable, yet obviously never a victim. With a Latin flavor served over brutal honesty, Devil doll tears into "You are the best thing, and the worst thing". Your heart pounds deep within your chest to the rock solid of "heart sized crush". As she continues to weave her tale so intimately, you can feel the warmth of her sultry tones penetrating the base of your skull. Devil doll is pure sex with a sorrow chaser. She eases into the haunting lament that is "Walk with me". Track after track after track, like the angelic opera of a Tommy Gun. With her last ounce of energy, Devil Doll peels away her final layer of harmonic lingerie on "If I died in your arms"…. You don't know what has happened. . You look up to see only the barrel as it retreats, leaving the milky smoke rings that spell Devil Doll.

She was the first thing I saw when I walked in. While my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, I saw her there. She was sitting atop a barstool leaning her elbows on the bar, long dark hair cascading over alabaster shoulders, past glorious wings, the kind of wings you get from spending long hours under a tattoo gun. Neon advertisements hanging above bottles of bourbon and gin created a halo of green around her head and I was drawn in. I pushed my way through the humidity of densely packed bodies in a room not designed to hold their number and sidled up to the bar next to her. She was tapping her fingers on her glass in time to Patsy on the jukebox in the corner. "Crazy… Crazy for feelin' so lonely…" She was drinking a Shirley Temple straight up, two cherries, two straws and half gone. "Can I get you another?" I asked.

She turned her head slowly to look at me, big green eyes under thick lashes sizing me up without ever leaving my face. An eternity of seconds passed and then the faintest hint of a smile began to curl around the corners of her ruby lips. "No," she said, eyes never leaving mine. Slowly she turned her body back to the bar, her head turning to follow.

Her mouth made me bold. "Why not I asked?" I asked. She was lost in her own thoughts, or maybe it was the song on the juke. Whatever it was she didn't hear me. "Why not?" I asked again, this time grazing her arm with the tips of my fingers surprising myself by the coolness of her skin.

"Because I don't do that," she replied gazing into the near emptiness of her glass.

"Do what?" I ventured, not wanting the encounter to end.

She slowly swung her petite frame toward me again, emerald eyes meeting mine, a smile once again curling the corners of her mouth. "Favors," she said, and descended the stool. The throng instinctively cleared a path for her like she was Moses dipping a toe into the Red Sea. She strolled effortlessly through and disappeared into the swell.

I turned back to face the bar and ordered a bourbon neat. "Here's to us," I said and threw it back just as Patsy was canned from the juke. The electric hum of people intensified and the bar lights found a dimmer shade of dark. The crowd jockeyed for position- all vying for the best table, the best chair, the best standing room only. And then she was there, on stage, in a pool of white light. The multitude eagerly clapped and whistled their greetings and then fell silent as she began to strum her bass. "It was raining, the day you left me…" she sang softly. And the crowd was captivated. Her clarion voice rose and fell with the emotion of the song and the audience stayed with her. She moved right into the moody, haunting beginning bars of "King of Brooklyn," and the audience not already standing came to it's feet anticipating her angry refrain. "Fuck you for never being true, the horse you rode in on and your girl too." She pointed into the audience, speaking for every broken heart in the joint. She danced. She stalked. She writhed. She worked that stage backwards and forwards. And she sang, sweet Christ, how she sang. Sometimes soft and sultry like in "Faith in Love" where she scats like she's channeling Ella herself, her dirty torch sound in "Bourbon in Your Eyes," or her pissed off sneer in "St. Christopher." By the time she started into "Liquor Store," the place was really swinging. Glasses knocked from their tables smashed onto the bar room floor unnoticed, but then, the angel on stage was more intoxicating than all the spilled booze on the floor. I wasn't surprised. I'd seen it before.

I'd been following her for a while. And if she seemed to be able to speak to people's heartaches, it was only because she'd lived it. She grew up Irish and working class on the west side of Cleveland, a part of town endearingly referred to as Old Brooklyn. The kind of place that makes you world weary and wise before the training wheels are off. In that part of town it's either the mill, the mob or the bottle. But she got out. And it was her voice that saved her. She was singing and playing guitar like she was on a mission before she was even legal. Heartbreak, loss, hope and redemption have kept her company from the Elbow Room in Chicago, Coney Island High in New York, to the House of Blues in Las Vegas. And whether she's playing with Mike Ness, The Cramps, X , Reverend Horton Heat or any of the others, the crowds are always the same; Every woman wants to be her and every man wants to own her.