BTS @ Niles City Sound

Here are some words on my upcoming single — out June 27th via Toast Toast Recordings — with photos by Rachel Franks (above):

I’ve always thought casinos were a bit of a joke. The notion that you can rub two coins together and make a fortune from them is laughable, especially when you remember that the house always wins and that nothing is for free. But maybe my real contention is with the material world and the machinery that makes it go round – the one that sells us on the idea that we should be dissatisfied with our lives, always wanting more. Are you unhappy? Scratch this ticket. Pull this lever. You could win it all! 

I visited quite a few of them as field research for my new song, “The Game You Choose.” Winstar. Caesar’s Palace. The Bellagio. The Palms. The Golden Nugget. El Cortez. Slots of Fun. Walking from quiet hotel corridors towards their blinking, carnival lights always feels like passing through a portal to a new world. The best advice I got while navigating those smoke filled mazes of tables and machines? Choose the game that speaks to you.

They say poker is the perfect game because it blends strategy with luck. We’re all dealt a hand in life, and in that sense, the nature of choice can seem absurd. Chance – that joker of fate – has its own plans. What matters is how you play the cards you’re given. The more I’ve embraced that philosophy, the more I’ve learned to loosen up. But I also think about those who were dealt worse hands than I — and how ultimately winning the pot means someone else has to lose.

Both Sin City and the paved over parts of Oklahoma feel like seedy ToonTowns filled with outsized characters, cabarets, and snake oil salesmen. They’re worlds that have been explored before – in Hunter S. Thompson’s famous ride on Interstate 10, in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, and in what’s arguably the most fertile ground for myths and storytelling, country western music.

Stylistically, the song is an homage to the Texas music I grew up listening to – artists like Billy Joe Shaver and James McMurtry – mixed with contemporary influences a la Kurt Vile and the Violators. It’s a gonzo take on the classic gambling song, as if Tom Waits reimagined Kenny Rogers.

I wrote the lyrics during a period of reading bedtime stories to my daughter – particularly Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! – with a few lines lifted from Colson Whitehead’s The Noble Hustle, a book I was also reading at the time.

I had a lot of fun bringing it to life at Niles City Sound, and I’m indebted to the many talented folks that helped me pull it off.

I guess it’s about the risks taken and not taken in life. Winning and losing in equal measure. And the random nature of it all.

I hope it moves you – makes you dance, makes you feel, makes you think, makes you sing.

And as always, best of luck!

-Cory