Heath McNease: New Album "The House Always Wins"

Heath McNease knows the short shelf life of the pop star. “There’s something alluring about being an artist known by millions,” he admits. “But it takes one trip to rehab, one mistake in an interview, one wardrobe malfunction for people to hate you. Because all you are is a 99-cent single to them, your album means nothing.

“I’m more intrigued by the idea of connecting with a hundred thousand rabid fans, who will always be down for the cause.”

There’s a price to be paid to avoid the cookie cutter mold, and build a career from the ground up. It’s a grind that Heath has been on for three and a half years. Over the course of hundreds of shows, he’s transformed from an unknown artist whose only performance experience was in musical theater, to a multi-faceted songwriter, dropping a double album, ranging from jazz-influenced acoustic songs to gritty hip-hop.

Only eight months after releasing 28 songs over two discs, Heath is back with The House Always Wins.  There’s no rapping to be found across the album’s ten acoustic songs, but the content still owes much to hip-hop, since the stories woven around upbeat tempo are infused with struggle and pain. But even when Heath tells hard tales, he shares them with a smile, and his signature wit infused into the carefully penned lyrics.

There’s no doubt that this project is another leap forward for Heath. No track showcases his deepening maturity better than “Waiting for Godot,” with the cutting line “I don’t know if I’m right/but God forbid I’m wrong.”

“It’s based on a play where two guys are waiting for God, and God never shows up,” Heath says. “I wanted to take a play that was very godless in its approach, but had so much to say from the author’s heart, and build a song off that platform. Struggling with what you believe is a dark place to go, but it’s something both Christians and non-believers relate to.”

Releasing in late February, The House Always Wins deals as much with the coming spring as it does with the fading winter. “Too Much Love” is one of a handful of songs on the album that sound best with the windows down on a spring break road trip.

There’s a joy found in the songs that can only be kept by a boy who became a man on the roads between shows, who had his heart handed back to him, and found the courage to tell the tale. Who took one look at what it means to be another carbon copy artist, and chose to blaze his own path.

“In the end, what my mom told me about casinos is right,” he says, “the house does always win.” In love. In careers. In life. We fall down. We lose. But we can rise again. We can continue, often only to fall again."

Heath’s latest album hits home because the songs remind us that, either way, there’s still meaning in the journey.