On the first episode of “The Casino,” lounge singer Matt Dusk gets into an argument with Joe Leone, the head of entertainment at the Golden Nugget, over his set list. Leone suggests playing some Billy Joel. Dusk refuses.

Watching the show, Dusk is perceived as someone who sticks up for what he believes in. If he has something to say, he won’t stay quiet — not even to his bosses. He even threatens to quit if Leone wants him to compromise his style of music. But is this the creative editing of the show’s creator Mark Burnett or would Dusk really risk losing his cushy Vegas hotel job so he doesn’t have to play “Piano Man”?

“I will never compromise music for anybody or anything, regardless of the situation,” he tells andPOP, on the line from New York where he’s doing interviews to promote the show, as well as his album, “Two Shots.” “I definitely thought I came across as being myself.”

Burnett, the man behind “Survivor” and the “Apprentice,” records about 300 hours of material and shortens it to 42 minutes per episode without commercials. “They definitely got the most dramatic parts out of me for sure,” Dusk says.

His “balls to the wall” attitude, as he describes it, was learned through hours of trying to get booked in small clubs in Toronto, where he grew up. For eight years, he played in such clubs as Alleycatz, the Reservoir Lounge, and the du Maurier Theatre.

“Toronto was a mountain of failure for us, but also a lot of success came from that,” he says (”us” refers to Dusk and his band). “I took the position of calling up every single club and we’d end up playing about 20 dates every month before I got signed. It just basically came to, if you don’t like us, don’t hire us. There are many other places we can play.”

Another factor to his policy of not compromising his music is legendary jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, who was one of Dusk’s teachers at York University in Toronto, where he studied music.

Dusk recalls Peterson telling him, “Don?t get involved with the fame and the money because the music is the primary thing.” Clearly that lesson has stuck.

Growing up, Dusk listened to pop and rock music, and only started listening to crooning when he was 18 and a friend gave him a tape of music by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dean Martin. After getting signed about six years later to Decca Universal, Dusk was ready to release his album in November of last year, but held off when he heard about “The Casino,” a show chronicling the purchase of the Golden Nugget by two internet millionaires. Burnett heard the CD and suggested he perform at a club in Vegas where he could play in front of the two casino owners. They loved him and no further impromptu auditions were needed.

At the time, performing at the Golden Nugget everyday was his biggest accomplishment. Dusk now has many bigger goals, and becoming the resident lounge singer isn’t one of them.

“It was an excellent opportunity to get my foot into Vegas so that we can not only promote the record but promote a career. I’d love to be in Vegas, but to actually be performing in lounges for the rest of my life is not in my plans.”

And soon, his stint on “The Casino” will just be a mere mention on his growing resume.

“Music is where my heart’s at. The business around it is just to maintain the ability to do what I love to do, which is sing.”

Dusk, Bono, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, all have something in common: they all share writing credits on his album. Bono of U2 actually wrote “Two Shots,” the theme to “The Casino,” for Frank Sinatra to sing, but Ol’ Blue Eyes passed away before it could be recorded.

Dusk took the risky move of covering The Beatles’ “Please, Please Me.” Instead of doing an exact cover, he recorded it the way McCartney and Lennon intended it to be sung.

“They had written it as a ballad, however [producer] George Martin decided that if they’re going to make this a hit, it’s got to be up-tempo. So that’s what we did; we took it back to its original tempo.”

Dusk wrote 18 songs, but just four were included on his debut, released last month, because he wanted to include the best 12 songs that his team could generate. Unlike fellow young crooner Michael Buble, Dusk also decided to include a lot of original material.

“Those old cats, they really carried the songs. There’s nothing more a young punk like me can add to it.”

Since Dusk and Buble are the only two 20-something crooners to make an impact on the mainstream market in the past year, it’s natural that a rivalry could arise, with influence from the media, of course. “Great! I don?t care,” Dusk declares. “I don’t buy into the bullshit of the industry. I’m all about music.”

And that he makes abundantly obvious.

Make sure you enter to win Matt’s debut album.






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