Life is a Gamble was written in 1989 when Ken was looking for a professional band to help him record. Ken ran into this person named Tami who sang for a band in the Farmington, Connecticut area. Tami was very anxious to see what kind of songs Ken was writing.
“I think she anticipated that I would hire her and her band if she let me sing with them…anyhow, money never changed hands but I was able to get a very rough copy of what we recorded”. They did that recording in about 4 or 5 takes. Tami did not have very good recording equipment at the time…so she did the best she could do. Ken sounded horrible after listening to the tape…but it was all he had. He was off key in several areas of the song and way too loud. Ken wishes to this day that it would have been just the music playing in the background. They were really talented musicians and came up with everything on the fly. The keyboard guy was awesome…he said he just thought of it in his head”.
Ken attempted to mix the song, but was unable to do much with it. Ken thinks the song is being played way too fast…eventually he will re-record it again when he can find some ‘live’ musicians that can play like Tami and her band played back in 1989.
The song was written about a one night stand Ken had back in the days. He said he felt ‘cheap’ when he woke up and found himself alone. All things started to go through his head and figured it would be a good time to get it down on paper. Ken mixed his experiences with a previous girlfriend that he had been living with sometime before. “She was always coming home in a bad mood…yelling things…getting the dog all wound up. All the time she was cheating on me, yet blaming me of cheating on her. When I think back on it now, it was a crazy period in my life”.
Life is a gamble tells about how everyone is dealt their own hand to play in life. They can make what they want to out of what they have. They can ‘trade in’ a card for something else…kind of like getting rid of something and replacing it with something else. Everyone wants to shoot for the stars…or be the best they can be. That is what Ken tried to relay in this song. “I don’t trust a sure thing…but I’ll take what I can”.