Michael Martin Murphey closed out a successful decade of recording with the album "Land of Enchantment", which contained "Never Givin' Up on Love", "Got to Pay the Fiddler", "Route 66", and "Land of Enchantment", which became New Mexico's state ballad. Despite the impressive critical and commercial success he achieved throughout the 1980s, Michael Martin Murphey's creative heart and spirit began to focus on the Western music that first captured his imagination as a boy growing up in Texas. As early as 1985, Murphey performed with the New Mexico Symphony in a show called "A Night in the American West", which led to many
One of Us Is the Killer was being written. He acknowledged that the relationships were with guitarist Ben Weinman and his girlfriend, which he described as in "a state of turmoil" and "unhealthy". Prior to recording "One of Us Is the Killer", the band essentially constructed a studio around its practice space. Vocalist Greg Puciato noted that the album "took a lot longer" to record, with the band members recording their respective instruments on consecutive days rather than alternating: "This time we did it traditionally and everyone tracked their instruments in succession. So I spent 25 days in a row recording vocals," said Puciato. He explained