Kenny Rogers will be following the advice given in the lyrics to his popular hit The Gambler when he hangs up his touring spurs for good after his farewell world tour ends in 2017.
“I always said I’d be doing this until I embarrassed myself,” explains Rogers. “I have 11-year-old twin boys, and I decided now is the time to take them places while I can still travel. I’m really excited that someday they can say, ‘My dad took me there.’ That’s more important to me now than anything else.”
Rogers brings “The Gambler’s Last Deal” tour to Fantasy Springs Resort Casino July 2.
In a recent conference call, Rogers, 77, spoke fondly about the times he spent in Palm Springs, how the tour will highlight his entire career, and how he feels the music business has changed since he started recording in the late 1950s. The man also swore he never once counted his money when he was sitting at the table.
PHOTO COURTESY OF KENNY ROGERS
Kenny Rogers” “The journey is what makes the career so exciting. It’s not the songs — the songs are how we remember the journey.”
PSL: What are your memories of visiting the Palm Springs area?
KR: Well, you don’t go to Palm Springs without having memories! It’s a spectacular place, and I’ve had some good friends who still live down there. The great thing about performing and traveling is you eventually get to the place where your friends are, and you get to enjoy them as well.
I can’t wait to come back. I love the sunshine in the Palm Springs area, and the people have always been particularly nice to me there. I don’t know why, but they have.
Q: What was your impression of Southern California on your first visit?
KR: I think I was with The First Edition … [in 1967 or 1968]. That was before I got into photography. When I got into photography, I remember thinking, ‘I’ve got to go back and take some pictures!’
One time … I got stuck in the sand. I remember that specifically, because it was a desert shot I was shooting. My wife at the time and my road manager were with me. We pulled off the road to take a picture, and we got stuck in the sand. We thought we were going to have to wait until the next day to get out.
My wife drank all of the water that we had — she didn’t realize we were stuck! It was an experience. And that’s the thing about going on the road like that — you have experiences that you can’t have anywhere else.
Q: Why is the tour called “The Gambler’s Last Deal”?
KR: I love the song, and I love Don Schlitz for writing it, and Larry Butler for producing it. [But] I wanted to call the tour “The End of the Rainbow,” because so few people get to see the end of the rainbow. Hopefully, I’m going to be able to do that. And they said, ‘Well, you can’t have a farewell tour without insinuating farewell. People will think this is just another tour.’ So I was talked out of that.
Q: How could you fit all the music you’ve done over the years into just one set list?
KR: We can’t do all of them, but we picked the highlights — the songs that people will remember, or the ones where something happened while I was on tour that I have film of and can talk about during the show.
The journey is what makes the career so exciting. It’s not the songs — the songs are how we remember the journey. It’s a chance for me to relive those moments in my mind, and do some of those songs I haven’t done in 30 years and explain how they came about, where they came from, what we did to them, and what made them, I think, unique.
PHOTO COURTESY OF KENNY ROGERS
Rogers says he originally was not slated to sing in the GEICO commercial he is featured in.
Q: What were some challenges of such a massive farewell celebration?
KR: I’ve been doing this for 50 years, so I have a lot of history, and the show will be a linear look at my history. It’s really fascinating — some of the things I did with The First Edition, and before that I was with the New Christy Minstrels, and when I started, I was with a jazz group [the Bobby Doyle Trio]. We’re going to touch on all these eras.
Some of the guys from my management company said, ‘I didn’t know you did that!’ That’s the whole idea — for people to find out something they didn’t know, and for me to talk about it. I will tell you this — it is a totally different show than anything I have ever done. I’m excited about it, and a little frightened by it. I have always been high-energy, if you will, and this show has got some great things going on in it. People tend to do their hits, and that’s it. I’ll do my hits, but we’re also using a lot of film from the past when I was younger to lay the groundwork for my career.
Q: How do you like the response to your Geico “Gambler” commercial?
KR: [laughs] “It’s funny — originally, I wasn’t supposed to sing in that commercial. I went out there and sat down with the guys at the table. They had us talking and saying things from the record, and it just didn’t grab hold. Someone said, ‘Why don’t you sing one?’ I only sang it one time, and that’s the time that made it to the commercial.
I thought it was amazing and funny, and truly unique. It’s typical of the things that were done in relation to The Gambler. … When I go in to get my breakfast at McDonald’s, the people I meet there say, ‘Oh, I saw your commercial!’ So it must have done something.
Q: Over the course of your career, what changes in the music business have been most significant?
KR: It used to be you went out to do concerts to promote your albums; now you do albums to promote your concerts. It’s a totally different feel. The reason is people download singles, and they don’t get the whole album anymore. That’s very tragic. The more music you hear by an artist, the more you know that person. That’s how you build up a clientele.
I believe that music is the great memory-maker of all time. You remember where you first heard the songs that you love, but I don’t know that that happens anymore. It’s kind of an American Idol mentality now: ‘OK, this guy is going to be a star; I’ll support him. Who’s the next star coming up? I want to support him.’
It gives a lot more chances to a lot of different people, but the longer it takes you to reach your pinnacle, the longer your glide ratio is on the way down. If you look at the people who have been around, like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson — it took those guys 20 or 30 years like it did me to get to my pinnacle. Consequently, I made a lot of friends over that time, and having done that, you get to last longer. People want you to last longer.
Q: What was it like to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame (2013)?
KR: The hall of fame is an interesting thing for me. I felt that I had all the credentials a loooong time ago, but I think I was resented because I took some of the glory away from the older country artists.
I was raised on country music. When my mom was ironing clothes, she’d have a pitcher of iced tea on the ironing board, and she’d be listening to Little Jimmy Dickens, Hank Locklin, and Hank Williams. That’s what I was raised up on. Then I got sidetracked, and I got into jazz. I kind of lost that country flavor until I had a chance to get back into it with Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town [1969] and Lucille [1977].
I’m doing a song in the new show that Jimmy Webb wrote — he wrote all of those Glen Campbell songs [Wichita Lineman, Galveston] — and it’s called They Just Don’t Make ’Em Like You Anymore. I’m doing it with all the pictures of the old artists projected behind me, to show my respect.
You can really only compete in one of two ways. You can either do something nobody else is doing, or do something everybody else is doing, but do it better. And I always liked my chances at doing something different.
Kenny Rogers, 8 p.m., July 2 at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino Special Events Center, 84245 Indio Springs Parkway, Indio, 800-827-2946, www.fantasyspringsresort.com