Chris Reali

I started writing the lyric for “Luck of the Draw” on July 14, 2019. We were in Columbia, South Carolina while my wife attended a workshop. She was gone for most of the day and into the night, so I spent my time taking our son to places like the Richland Library in downtown (which is amazing!), local parks, and a nearby lake. On this particular Sunday afternoon, I remember playing with our son in the apartment we were staying at when a lyric just came to me: “I like to drink on Sunday, it helps to start my week.” I ran to get my notebook, and quickly jotted down the line because I’ve learned that I often forget lyrics if they don’t get put into writing. Now you might have also noticed that this particular line doesn’t appear in “Luck of the Draw.” Throughout the afternoon as I played with our son, I kept revising and developing the lyric in my head, and had to run back to my notebook to scribble lines down every now and again, which annoyed James. After he had gone to bed that night, I was able to finish the lyrics that would become the chorus. Working mostly at night over the next few days, the verses and final chorus took shape. The line about “my first wife” taking all my money but getting my freedom back was inspired by something a member of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (aka “the Swampers”) said to me in an interview I conducted a few weeks earlier. One of the best parts about being a songwriter is making stuff up. I don’t have an ex-wife. And I don’t get drunk on Sunday’s, well…
I recorded several demos on my phone at the time, some of which had different chord changes, but by July 20 everything but the guitar riff was in place. I probably debuted “Luck of the Draw” sometime that summer at an open mic. The song’s overall arrangement took shape in January 2020 when I started to do some pre-production at home for the recording sessions (done in March 2020) that resulted in the master.