FREAK-ROCKER REVEALS HIS INNER HIPPIE
King Tuff has reached the pinnacle of off-beat indie stardom with the re-release of his highly sought-after Was Dead LP.
Kyle Thomas a.k.a. King Tuff paired up with California-based label Burger Records for the reissue this spring. The album Was Dead was originally released in 2008 and began being passed around the indie circuit on burned CD-Rs. With each subsequent pressing the album’s infectious tracks leaked their way through the underground neo-psychedelic scene and slowly Was Dead became an enviable installment in any cutting edge record collection. After the release of Thomas’ 2012 self-titled success, fans were searching for more and getting a solid piece of the raw early side of King Tuff was exactly what they needed.
Thomas will be embarking on a Pacific North West tour that will consume the first few weeks of August. The tour will include a stop at Vancouver’s Electric Owl on August 6th. Thomas claims to big a fan of trees so B.C.’s famous forests should make for an exciting trip.
“Did I sound like a hippie when you read that?” He responded when asked about the love affair with what he calls “the masters of the earth,” and continues, “I am a raging hippie!”
So does King Tuff have anything special planned for the famous BC forests. A pagan ritual of sorts?
“I just want to be in their company, they know how to live. They’ve conquered the earth so they must know something,” says Thomas when asked if nature is where he gets his inspiration from. “I get it from every where, I mean everything is nature if you think about it. Wow, that was fucking profound! Did I sound like a hippie again?” Thomas says with a laugh.
The recording of Was Dead took place at a Brattleboro studio called Vegetable Street. The space was part of a complex of art studios shared with others in the local scene called The Tinderbox.
“It was like our clubhouse and we painted huge vegetable faces on the wall. It was a wild space and wild times.”
King Tuff has been described as everything from country psychedelic to freak folk, something Thomas says “wasn’t cool at the time to be labeled that.” He continues, “It’s funny how a genre type can have such gross continuation, there’s that whole conversation of genre naming and we could go down that road but who cares really. Listen to albums,” he laughs.
Starting with teenage punk bands and recently dabbling with different projects, one of which included jamming with Dinosaur Jr’s J. Mascis, the King Tuff “sound” is something that really only came into its own over the past few years.
“Finally it just made sense, it came most naturally,” he says of the King Tuff project, “I decided to just do it to the fullest.”
Thomas is now starting to plan and write for the new album, something he hasn’t done in quite a while.
“I’ve almost forgotten how, since I’ve been on tour for so long, it’s two different worlds of self-expression; the touring and writing… you sit down to do write and it’s like, ‘How does this go again?’”
Despite that fact, Thomas has been writing and now it’s just a matter of figuring out how it’s all going to fit together.
“There is something growing in my mind, there’s something definitely there and I’m just letting it evolve.”
Catch King Tuff at the Electric Owl on August 6th.
By Meighan Donaldson
Photo: Jeffrey Sauger