05/29/2026
🎶 NEW MUSIC 🎶
After the up-tempo, good time groove of “Take a Drink on Me,” Jesse Smathers Music reveals his mastery of another, more lonesome facet of string band music on his latest release, “Gambler’s Last Game.”
“‘Gambler’s Last Game’ was written by my talented pal Mason Via and myself,” says Smathers, who delivers a laconic, yet mournful vocal that sits squarely in the old performance tradition. “The modern day ballad tells of a traveling gambler who’s true love won’t settle down with him, so he heartbreakingly stays on the go. This tune was stripped down to the instrumental accompaniment of only Hunter Berry’s fiddle and Corbin Hayslett’s banjo. They did a tremendous job, weaving in and out of each other’s waltzing rhythm with their note selections.”
Indeed, though the track backing hearkens back to the days when, in the words of bluegrass pioneer Lester Flatt, “a fiddle and a five-string was kindly a whole band,” the simplicity of the arrangement makes the performance all the more compelling, while Smathers and Via unfurl the story through a set of verses that make good use of materials from the ballad canon, as in its opening verse:
Well I played cards in England and I gambled over Spain
Going back to the country for to play my last game
I’m going back to the country where the fruit is on the vine
Gonna see my little darling, the only one I call mine
“Ballad singing, and fiddle and banjo interplay is such an important part of Stringband music tradition,” Smathers notes. “Though this is a new song, its story, form and melody was approached the same way I tackle learning songs that are two hundred years old. It truly transports me to another time. I hope everyone is similarly transported hearing ‘Gambler’s Last Game.’"
Listen to it here 👉 https://clg.lnk.to/js-GLG
