Songfacts®:

• Richmond Fontaine songwriter Willy Vlautin lived in Reno in his twenties and many of his songs were inspired by his time in the Nevada city. This song is one of them. He told Uncut magazine: "I guess a lot of time I take a real life story and then make it much more dramatic. Like 'The Warehouse Life.' I used to work at a warehouse and me and this guy would get drunk on lunch break and he had a huge gambling problem. He had a bookie in Reno. If you have a bookie in Reno you're in a mess. But he didn't get beat up. He was threatened an awful lot, but his folks got him out of it."
• Vlautin added regarding how this song framed the album: "I really wanted it to be based around the lyrics and not the other way around. Most times I change around the lyrics to fit the music. I did that a lot on Post To Wire. On this record I didn't want to do this. I just wanted to tell the story and have the music follow it. I wanted the whole thing to feel like the first song "The Warehouse Life." That feeling that there's mistakes and death and darkness all around and you're trying hard not to run into any of it. You might see it and it might scar you that way, but the hope that you don't run into it. That you don't become it. That you're not the guy paying the price for gambling in The Warehouse Life. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  DeeTheWriter - Saint Petersburg, Russia Federation, for above 2