I realized I had a lot of Character driven songs, but I didn’t have any love songs. So, I sat down to specifically write a couple for the album. Just before deciding on the songs for the album, I wrote and handed in three songs: “Roll the Dice”, “Strung Out” and “Top of the World” and they all made the final CD.
“Roll The Dice” was written around a string of gambling metaphors about taking chances on love. I had written the chorus first, which is unusual for me, as I normally start with the verse. But I wanted to concentrate on coming up with a catchy chorus to grab the listeners ear.
I had been listening to Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream”, and I really loved Mike Campbell's guitar part on it. This influenced what I tried to do with the guitar riff I used with the verse. We overlaid a sax and later slide guitar along with it and the end result wound up being something completely different sounding from where I started.
This wound up being the first single we released. I never envisioned it would be a a single, yet it has done quite well with over 100,000 Spotify streams.
For this song Sarven Manguiat played all the slide and lead guitar work, while I played all the rhythm guitars, Rob Hall played bass; Stephen Haaker was on Drums and Aaron Durr was on all Keyboards. Fabian Chavez, as he did throughout the entire album, just absolutely killed it on Saxophone. Harrison Crenshaw and Phoebe Crenshaw along with Diana Ortiz, are on backing vocals and harmonies.
The song was engineered and produced by Stephen Haaker and Brett Grossman. We recorded it at “Perfect Sound Studios” in Frogtown CA and Cosmic Voyager Studio in Los Angeles. Emily Lazar from the Lodge in NYC Mastered this song.