Long Island Sound: Betting it all on Gambit

Lyle Kamesaki has been an architect, a real estate developer and the front man for hard-rocking Cortez the Killer. But it wasn't until the Rocky Point native started working with his new band, Gambit, that all the pieces started to fit together.

"I always thought that my interest in music would wane," says Kamesaki, just hours after Gambit's biggest show yet, the opening slot for Ryan Star's Webster Hall show. "But the better I get, the more my hunger and desire for it grows."

It's a hunger that was on display onstage, as he warmed up the crowd with songs from the "Gambit" EP, including the anthemic "This Town," which combines Postal Service electro-pop with a massive indie-rock chorus, and a well-crafted cover of OutKast's "Ms. Jackson" that filters the hip-hop classic through grunge.

Kamesaki says he was inspired to go into music full-time by his friend Star, who would check in with him from various shows on the road. "That life just sounded so awesome," says Kamesaki, who was working as a real estate developer after graduating from Harvard. "I would have traded everything for that life."

And now he has.

Kamesaki is working full time on a full-length Gambit album with producer and collaborator Ido Zmishlany of Lion of Ido. "It can take three to four months for a song," he says. "I'll go through a whole legal pad for a song, getting the lyrics just right.

"I don't have a choice, though," he continues. "I may end up bankrupt and living in a box, but it'll be a box under a piano. . . . I'm doing what I can to stay inspired."

Download Gambit's EP for free at myspace.com/gambitofficial.

Contact The Long Island Sound at glenn.gamboa@newsday.com or follow @ndmusic on Twitter.