Toronto jazz crooner Matt Dusk was all set to hit the big-time in 2004 when he was co-starring in the Mark Burnett-produced FOX-TV reality series, The Casino, set in The Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas.
But then the show fizzled out, and the hotel owners had sold the casino within the year.
Dusk's 2004 debut disc, Two Shots, still reached gold status on the success of the hit single, Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad (written by Bono and The Edge of U2), and he continued to play gigs on and off in Sin City over the next three years until he released a follow-up album, 2006's Back In Town.
He eventually sold his Las Vegas condo and only returned home full-time earlier this year when he bought a west-end home with his girlfriend, Julita, just down the street from his parent's house.
"I'm glad to be back here," said Dusk, 30, an admitted gambler who liked to play craps.
"It's fun (in Vegas) but it gets tiring. It's like being at a party all the time. It's a blur because when you're thrown into it, it's blinding.
"It's like you're travelling at hyper-speed or something and you don't realize the opportunities that are given to you at that moment. I was on an international television show. Mark Burnett was involved. I was in Vegas. I never thought I'd be in Las Vegas before I was 40. But looking back it was probably one of the most stressful times that I've been through because you're on camera all the time. It's like being ON because reality is boring."
Two albums later -- Back In Town's title track also became a No. 1 pop hit in Japan -- Dusk has decided to mix things up a bit on his third studio album, Good News (in stores Tues, Oct. 27 with a CD release party the same night at the Rivoli).
The new disc features a more contemporary take on the production, Dusk's involvement as co-writer of three songs, and about half of the tunes are previous No. 1 hits from other countries.
Dusk said he was motivated to make the overall change, the bonus track is still the standard, One For My Baby, after getting more positive feedback on the original songs as opposed to the jazz standards from his previous albums.
"I always wanted to make a whole record of that," said Dusk, whose upcoming Canadian tour next month includes a Nov. 28 stop at Nathan Phillips Square for the Calvacade of Lights.
"It's like when you sing standards to an audience you get a certain reaction. When you sing something that's original and uptempo and big and epic, you get more like a floored kind of reaction; where with the old songs you're kind of building upon people's references to their memories. It's like, 'Oh, I remember that song when my father used to sing it to me.' I'm 30; this is kind of the right time to find if I'm going to grow this way and see where it lands."
As for any comparisons to fellow Canadian crooner Michael Buble, who currently has a No. 1 new album, Crazy Love, on the Canadian and U.S. charts, Dusk says they're simply in different leagues.
"There is no competition," said Dusk, who recently attended Buble's Live At The Rehearsal Hall taping for Bravo in Toronto and found himself unable to remember the lyrics when Buble playfully put the microphone in his face.
"He does what he does and I do what I do. They're completely separate. He's in the stratosphere of a Canadian pop idol and you've got myself who is doing well but it's always at the level where things may always be here or things may grow to another level. I'm not expecting anything. But he's beyond the beyond. He got on Oprah; he's kind of made it."
