Peyote Rock

ISSUE #164

Las Vegas spills before me like lightning threaded to the floor. I’m south of town, ten miles from the Strip, which is framed like a still life by my eleventh-floor view, neon glowing lurid on my hotel floor. It’s the day job that sent me to bat country (long have they gambled with life for profit) so I’ve spent my nights in front of that window—drawn baths, canned wine, Fear and Loathing in the glow.

The West is the setting to America’s Arthurian myth—even plants out here are filled with potions. Songs written here come from lonesome journeys. The towns are scattered like life’s great loves, pockets of respite for weary bones. Existence here is far too fragile to refuse a second chance.

The Great Basin had me craving a certain type of sound, at the intersection of country, blues, and punk. I scraped a genre from the dust: I’m calling it Peyote Rock. Country’s a better partner for emo or soul than one might think, and Peyote Rock is about the knowledge that life and love are gambles. Only in the desert do we admit the power that luck has over life.