Gambles: Fighting for the Right to Folk

It will not stay a secret for long that Matthew Daniel Siskin, alias Gambles, makes emotionally evocative folk music in the mold of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, but that he also spends his days working as Beyonce’s online creative director. Because “GChatting with the queen” would make it on many a millennial bucket list, that alone would automatically make him the first person you’d like to grill in detail at a party. Despite all the obvious advantages of being in Bey’s Rolodex, it’s almost an unfair association, because no headline describing Siskin’s music will ever be as attention-grabbing as “Listen to an album by Beyonce’s webmaster!”

Fortunate, then, that the few Gambles songs that exist are astonishingly fully formed, packed with passion and linguistic detail brought to life through Siskin’s world weary rasp, coming off like a battle-hardened survivor of a very long party. Siskin, a never-made-it veteran of the early millennium Lower East Side world, emerged from the ether with last year’s “Trust” and subsequent Far From Your Arms EP. When we meet at Cake Shop, he instantly recalls a picture of a certain type of NYC aesthete: immaculately tailored, conversationally sensitive, self-deprecating but certainly confident in himself, well networked with local artists (he casually mentions Game of Thrones’s Gwendoline Christie—Brienne of Tarth!—and DIIV’s Devin Ruben Perez as friends), filled with recollections of a scene that most of us only know about through LCD Soundsystem songs. Yes, we talked about Beyonce, but it’s very easy to talk about everything else.

How long has the Gambles project existed?
I keep saying six months but I think it’s been longer than that now. Basically last December I put a song on the Internet; I’d written it, wrote it, and sang it right before that in November or December of last year, and I’d never written a song before that. I’d played in a band when I was really young—I’d played at Cake Shop when you’re 18 and you’re in New York and you want to play music though you don’t really know why. I’d had a series of things happen in my life and I was kind of was always wanting to do songs and I didn’t have a reason to, and then everything kind of changed and I felt like I needed to, which is what I guess everyone would say.

“When you’re 18”? How old are you?
I’m 31. Everyone thinks I’m a child, so I shouldn’t say that. I don’t give a shit, I’m an adult! My girlfriend says she thought I was younger than her and she’s 22, so what the fuck?

So yeah, it happened really rapidly and I put a song on my Tumblr where I’d post words and I don’t know how, but I got an Instagram from “ryanpitchfork” that was just a screenshot of my Tumblr with nothing else, but “at” me. I was like, “Who’s ryanpitchfork?” and I called my friend, but before that I’d gotten a phone call from Grant Singer, who I’d done some work with, and he said, “Dude, congratulations!” I said, “On what?” “Pitchfork just wrote about you!” “What did they write about? I didn’t do anything?” But their music critic had done a review of the song like, “This is mysterious, we don’t know what it is, but he’s doing good things.”

So you had this Tumblr that was unrelated to music, and just put up a track one day?
It was a Tumblr that already existed. I didn’t tell anybody about Gambles; I wasn’t encouraging it, I wasn’t talking about it, I hadn’t played live ever. And then somehow Pitchfork got it and wrote about it, and it started a series of events of getting contacted by people wanting to do stuff together, asking if I had more songs, me lying and saying I had more songs and I didn’t, and then I had to write more songs. So I did, and everything happened on that note.

It was a weird thing because of the way it came together. I was with my best friend, this guy Nicholas, and we were just drunk. I’d been for, several months before that, experimenting because I didn’t know what my voice sounded like singing. I wanted to have my own voice and I didn’t want it to be affected, and I’m like, “What do I sound like?” He’s such an amazing guy and a producer and as my friend I’d play him things and he’d say stop singing so much or stop trying to sound cool, and I’d be like, “I don’t understand.” So we were just talking about it, and one night I was at his voice and we got pretty wasted, and I sang “Trust” and three other songs and “Trust” was the song in that take—I didn’t write any words, it was like a freestyle moment. I hadn’t written anything, I just sang the words. So I sang “Trust” once and that’s the song that went on Pitchfork and that’s on the record. I found a process in that; I tried to do the opposite with him and say, “I’ll make a record now.” I had three other songs and tried to write the words and do the vocals and play guitar and it just sounded terrible. So I was like, “Fuck it” and then I got drunk again and sat on his couch in his control room and did one take and it worked again, and then I went away for a week and wrote ten or twelve songs quickly in the same format and sang them with him. And that was a record. Since then I’ve added three or four to that in the same way, but I’m all about process. It’s a delicate balance of not thinking about what you’re doing and speaking about what you want to feel like, I guess. It’s kind of a thing.

So why the pivot to folk music?
The thing was, I love singing. I love the way it feels to sing to people and I did that when I was in my old band; I would sing my band’s songs to friends on an acoustic guitar, because I felt like—I like direct and I like stripping away style and I feel like so many bands and so many people have a look and a feel but if you take the look away you can kind of tell what’s in there. It was at a point—for me, I guess—where I went through the stage where I wanted to sing with people. I’m a huge Leonard Cohen fan, more so than Dylan. I went through this weird phase one summer where I learned every Leonard Cohen song; the ones I like, the early stuff. He kind of lost me after 1982, and I still love everything but the songs I wanted to know and learn I found myself learning like “The Stranger Song,” like every verse, and I could sing them on command to a friend in a park, and I would actually be sitting in Washington Square Park like an asshole. But I enjoyed it, and I’d be singing Leonard Cohen songs and these old guys would say, “Why do you only sing Leonard Cohen songs?” and I’m like, “I just really love them and no one does that.” So what happened was, I don’t know, we all have our heroes and Dylan was one of mine for a long time and he said something in an interview like you just take stuff in and think about it and that’s what all those kinds of singers would do; they’d learn these old songs and when it came time for Dylan to write his own songs, he took those forms and put his words over them. It wasn’t that premeditated for me, but I think by learning all his songs—a song like “Safe Side” or whatever, I don’t think I would’ve written that song had I not learned these songs.

People say “Why folk music, why acoustic guitar?” but with anything I like I want it to be as simple as possible at the start. I want to just be like, “This is a song and a thing that actually means something to me.” It might not be your thing—It’s just a guy and a guitar and that can be challenging in a room of loud people talking, and you have to fight with them. I could have a band and it would be cool and it would sound great and maybe I will, but right now I love that it’s harder to do that, and I love that I only have two or three “hits” because you just have to write words and play guitar. That’s it.

It’s funny that we planned on meeting at the Pink Pony which turned out to be closed in February. You’re from New York, right?
I’m born and raised here, like Upper East Side and all that stuff. The thing is I don’t really go out that much anymore. Honestly, since—I call it my last life, where I was in a serious relationship and we’d go out a lot, and it was kind of a lot of stuff I didn’t want to do—I’ve been doing Gambles I realize I have a reason to stay inside all of the time now. That sounds a little weird and kind of whatever, but I love my house—a place where I could go into and everything I’ve ever done could be in this room. I feel like I have nothing to prove, opposed to when I was 18 or 19. The Pink Pony, I used to hang out there all the time and I didn’t even know it closed. “Max Fish?” “No, it closed too.” I didn’t even know anymore; I was just trying to find a place to hang out.

Alright, so: I did my Google research and found out that you’re also Beyoncé’s online creative director. I have to ask you what’s going on with that.
I still work with her. We have a really cool thing where she has an idea for things, I have ideas for things and we do them on the Internet and it’s that simple. beyonce.com is a collaboration between her and other people and now it’s grown, so we launched it a year ago and since then it’s become this little world. I do a lot of design stuff and a lot of art stuff and all kinds of stuff; I just make stuff, so I do a lot of work with her and other people. It’s a great way to not have a real job while also having a real job.

How did you get in touch with her? I imagine that’s not something you just apply for off a job board.
It’s a weird thing. When I was in bands a long time ago, I was designing websites for like $500; I’d do two websites and pay my rent. If I did three websites, shit, I’ve got drinking money and can do whatever I want. So it sounds really kind of silly but that was just my—I didn’t want to work with an agency, I couldn’t imagine myself working for anyone or having a normal existence, ever, and that’s my dad’s fault because my dad is a shoe designer and I’d see him working in the bathroom or at his desk, with a ponytail, being happy and I’d think, “That’s what I want. I want to do that.” It was a slow progression over years to get to the point where someone like Beyonce, I’d get on her radar somehow and end up doing something cool with her. And that’s ongoing—it’s definitely a double life, which can be a little intense, because the more Gambles is doing the more touring I’m doing. I work remotely but I’ll see her when she’s in New York and we’ll do stuff. It’s a juggling act, but I love it—the schizophrenic aspect of wondering, “Who are you today? Are you Gambles or are you Matthew Daniel Siskin?” And then they became the same things.

Right, because you don’t want that to be the leading hook. [NOTE: Sorry!]
I knew there was nothing I could do to prevent people from making associations because of Google and because there’s press and her fans are very avid supporters of what I’ve made—they’re like an army and they know the work I’ve done and they like it and talk about it and websites like Global Grind will talk about it, but nobody’s connected Gambles too much. I knew I couldn’t prevent it, but I didn’t want to ride it—I would never ever want that, and that’s almost why I want to say—say whatever you want, but Beyonce gets Google Alerts. [laughs]

It’s easier for the moment because you don’t have a Wikipedia page. What would you put on it, if you did?
I’d probably just put nothing on it. Just a bunch of my favorite quotes and stuff. I think Wikipedia’s great when it’s purely factual—I was born, this is where I live, this is the year it came out, this is a website. That would probably be my Wikipedia page. I don’t want to give away too much—the thing is I’m on Twitter, I’m on all these things, and I told myself early on that I didn’t want to do all this stuff and then I get paid to help people navigate all this social media. But what happens a lot of times is that I’ll love a band and read their Twitter feed and you kind of lose… not to be crass, but you get kind of soft. You’re not supposed to see certain things. But I do think there’s a way to do it—I mostly just retweet people saying nice things about me, or if something’s happening I’ll mention it, or if it’s a weird abstract thing I wrote I’ll put it. But I’m not like, “here I am today, here’s my commentary on what’s happening today.” It’s all megaphones, I don’t know. I like mystery and I want mystery. To say you want mystery is kind of bullshit because then you’re making this decision to be mysterious, but it’s all decisions. The real me is on stage; the real me is on record.

You also tweeted something about not being able to empathize with Harry Potter.
I don’t know why I said that! I think it might’ve been a dig at someone who looks like Harry Potter. I don’t remember why I said that… why would I say that? Oh, wait, yes, here’s the thing: I might’ve written that drunk.

And because I do my research via tweeting: What emoticons do you feel like you’re missing?
I feel a little limited sometimes when I have to choose emoticons. I’m not winking; I’m not smiling; my tongue’s not out and I’m not making a kissy face. There’s only so many and I feel like, I don’t know… you know what it was? Back it up. I don’t think I literally meant emoticons; I think I meant people trying to tell you how they feel with emoticons and only communicate with them. I get texts and people will try to communicate with them, and it’s like someone giving you an alphabet with only 12 letters. I’m just like, “You know what? There’s words and I have to use them.”

Well, Aziz Ansari did a pretty great emoji version of a Kanye song.
There are four emoticons on that record. It’s really just an angry face, a sunglasses face, a broken heart, and—is there an erection one? A racial one? Maybe a high heel to represent Alexander Wang. So yes, you could definitely do it with Yeezus.

Jeremy Gordon's favorite emoji is the mischevious-looking purple devil. He's on Twitter - @jeremypgordon