In 2017 I reviewed When We Were Kings by Scott Sorry for Huffington Post. Sorry was the former bass player for the British juggernaut, the Wildhearts, a criminally under-appreciated band of musical mayhem, an untethered arena-worthy group that fuses punk, pop, hard rock, prog, and metal into a molten mix loaded with walls of Marshall stack riffage. Sorry was always the true punk of the band, raised on Ramones, the Clash, Sugar, and the Replacements. He left the Wildhearts in 2012 to spend more time with his family and to care for his oldest son who was diagnosed with autism. He soon set out to record his debut solo album, a rust-belt rocker that was at once honest, reflective, and raw—Springsteen’s Nebraska crossed with classic Social D.

When my review ran, Scott reached out to say thank you. From that point forward we struck up an amazing kinship, bonded by our love of rock and roll, books, poetry, art, and the mystical nature of creativity itself. Scott lived outside of Portland, Maine, and we would spend hours on the phone talking about Charles Bukowski, Tom Wolfe, Robert Frost, and then share our love for the Pixies and Social Distortion. When we were done talking music, we would discuss the beauty and isolation in the work of painter Edward Hopper. We forged a creative bond that was remarkable, inspiring, and inseparable. He knew it. I knew it. It was beautiful.

“One day we gotta work on something, dude,” he said to me. And I wholeheartedly agreed.

But in 2018, Scott’s world was turned upside down with a devastating diagnosis. At just 40-years-old, he was diagnosed with Glioblastoma, a particularly virulent form of brain cancer. His odds of surviving were slim, at best.

“When you Google ‘Glioblastoma,’ he said to me, “it says you’re fucked.”

But for anyone who knew Scott, there was no way he wasn’t going to try and slay this malignant dragon. Scott Sorry was a punk rock Jake Lamotta, a tenacious fighter who wasn’t going down easily. He went in for a risky surgery, followed up by treatment. The cancer was removed and as weeks and months went by, monthly scan after scan proved miraculous. He was in remission. The doctors were amazed.

When COVID descended, Scott and I started to formulate some ideas for a project we could work on together. I had finished revision work on my 7th book, Dark Black, a collection of 20 supernatural grief horror stories. In a similar gothic vein, Scott and I formulated a concept for a podcast of fictional stories, a retro throwback to the Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and old-time radio programs like Suspense and Dimension X. Scott would serve as our narrator, a punk rock Rod Serling, all-knowing, omniscient, a wandering troubadour, weaving in and out of episodes to drop his singular observations and to lay down story context. Scott would also supply the show’s soundtrack, dark, instrumental folk punk.

The K.A.O.S. Radio Hour logo, designed by Scott Sorry.

The concept of the show was that Scott Sorry beat all the odds by slaying Glio, but as a result, everything else in the world was now suddenly topsy-turvy, off-kilter, weird, and whacked. Right could be left. Up may be down. Monsters might be real. Like the concept of the “chaos theory,” where the smallest change can have universal implications, Scott Sorry beating cancer triggered the world into subtle chaos. With this in mind, our show was called The K.A.O.S. Radio Hour. I wrote the pilot episode and was confident it was one of the best stories I had ever written. Scott holed up in the basement of his Gorham, Maine house and hammered out an incredible second episode that absolutely buried mine.

“I don’t get jealous of other writers,” I told him, “But damn, I’m jealous of your story!”

It was some serious Stephen King shit, rife with creepy Catholic allegory, populated by white trash characters who had somehow opened the portal to hell.

On his birthday, October 20, 2021, Scott released a single, “Black Dog Dancers” with an accompanying music video that features his top-notch band, including his longtime collaborator, Roger Segal. It would be Segal’s last work with Scott Sorry. He was tragically murdered in a Philadelphia carjacking in February 2022.

“Black Dog Dancers” had obvious connections to Scott’s cancer. “I would be lying if I said time’s on my side,” the lyrics rang out. But Scott also threw in a secret nod to Robert Frost, tweaking a line from the poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to

Keep

And miles to go before I sleep.

The line revealed Scott’s profound love of poetry, and Robert Frost, specifically, but was also a metaphor for wanting to stick around for his family.

We kept up pre-production work on The K.A.O.S. Radio Hour, but life (and death) just kept intervening. Scott and I could just not seem to find the time to get our podcast project off the ground. And then, in 2023, Scott’s cancer returned. His speech and mobility were eventually impacted. Even more disheartening, the cancer was behind his eye and inoperable. He fought on, undergoing radiation and chemo.

I flew to Maine last March and spent a few wonderful days with my friend. We laughed a ton, did simple things like going out for pizza and shopping for books and records. Scott still had so many ideas, so many plans, so much hope and motivation for the future. We chilled and hung out and talked. His speech was impacted so it was frustrating for him at times. What we both found hilarious is that while he had difficulty speaking, he had no difficulty swearing. He could rattle off a gatling gun salvo of profanity with no effort at all. In a quiet moment, I asked him if he was afraid of dying.

No,” he said. “Not at all. I just don’t want to leave my family,” he said, struggling to string the sentences together.

We knew our project, The K.A.O.S. Radio Hour would never happen. And that was okay. Time with his family was more important. Our friendship was more important. We had both connected over a mutual love for art, music, and the power of the word. We were blood brothers in creativity.

My friend Scott Sorry died on his 47th birthday, October 30, 2025 and our dream of creating something together dies with him. More important, his wife Hänni and his three boys must carry on. And they will. Mama Sorry is tough as nails and the boys are cut from the same black biker leather as their Dad.

But just mere hours after getting the news of his passing, I put on his record, When We Were Kings and heard his voice and he was right there with me. And as I listened, I was reminded of a quote that we both admired immensely:

“All Passes. Art Alone Endures.”

Scott Sorry was an independent musician and artist. A GoFundMe has been established by friends to help his wife and three sons during this incredibly difficult time.