If you’ve been on the internet finding things out about music recently, you might have noticed that it’s a big worldwide mini-trend to interview King Tuff. It makes some sense. Kyle Thomas, the guy who calls himself “King Tuff” when he makes some of the music he makes, is a good guy to talk to. He’s funny. He makes good music too. Not just when he calls himself King Tuff, but also when he calls himself “the guy from Witch” and “Happy Birthday.” He still makes good music those times too.
Kyle Thomas made a music album in 2008 called “Was Dead.” A lot of people liked it a lot. In fact, more people like it a lot probably like once a day. It’s the kind of album, in terms of being good, that you’d have to be pretty crazy not to like at least a little bit if you also claim to like rock and roll music. Musically, it sounds like a good example of that kind of a thing. Have you heard of the King Tuff rock and roll album “Was Dead” from 2008? I bet you have if you’re reading this. If not, I bet you would like it if you listened to it. That’s kind of what happened with it. Not a lot of people had heard of it until slowly a lot of people did because most of the people who heard it liked it.
But then: guess what. This guy, Kyle Thomas, what did he do? He made ANOTHER whole album. It JUST came out. And you know what? It’s also pretty good, maybe not as good, but maybe instead of good/bad it’s just different. This guy. Can you believe it? He made this new album and called himself King Tuff right on the cover of this new album! Like “hey everybody, this is the same guy who made that other old album that most people like!” But it sounds kind of different even though it’s the same guy! Can you wrap your head around that?
I kind of almost couldn’t, you guys. I thought that was weird. Actually, I didn’t really think that. What I really thought was “this guy seems like a cool guy, I hope nobody thinks it’s weird that he made two different music albums that sound different.” I thought “if I could just talk to this guy and get him to tell me that he is a cool guy and that it’s not weird for these two albums to be different, I could tell that to the world!” That seemed like a good idea to me, because I don’t want to live in a world where people think it’s a great idea to live their lives not being a cool guy or being okay with it when somebody makes two different albums that are different. Also: maybe somebody will give me money from this.
And so I decided: I am going to interview King Tuff.
You guys. It’s so easy to interview King Tuff. All you have to do is call or email the record label his new album is on and tell them you want to interview him. Then: they will tell you when to call, and you can ask him questions. What questions? All kinds of questions about his life and how he decides what kind of music to make! I should know about this: I did it!
But then guess what. Then you will be done and you’ll start writing down all the questions you asked King Tuff and all the answers King Tuff gave to your questions, and you will think to yourself “wait a minute.” And then you will have a very hard time convincing yourself that you did a good thing. Maybe that’s because you didn’t ask any of the right questions. Maybe that’s because King Tuff is good at talking to you like you’re having a good time talking and then you realize that you just had a regular conversation with a dude and there’s not really anything more interesting about it than there is about having a conversation with any dude. Maybe that’s what interviews are, no matter what, unless somebody wants to get all crazy with it, and maybe you don’t want to get all crazy with it if the guy is just a cool guy who happened to make two albums that are different from each other and that’s pretty much the whole story on the guy.
You’d better be careful when you’re thinking all this stuff, because if you got all excited about interviewing King Tuff, it might bum you out a lot if you just spent $60 on devices that record phone calls and it turns out you didn’t learn anything you didn’t already know, namely: cool guy, made two different albums. You might get further bummed out about it if you asked Henry from Chunklet who has some content-distribution deal with Vice Magazine Online to see if anybody else from Vice might also be currently interviewing King Tuff and getting money from it, and he said “just go for it” and you did and it turns out somebody else from Vice also DID do an interview with King Tuff, and in THAT interview it is revealed that King Tuff is a cool guy who made two records that sound different. These are all things that will bum you out a lot if you’re the type of person who gets bummed out whenever you do something that results in you feeling like you kind of just didn’t do anything.
Anyhow, you know what I think about King Tuff? I mean, Kyle Thomas, the guy who calls himself King Tuff when he makes two albums that sound different? I think he is a cool guy, and I think he made two albums that sound different, and I think that’s great. I think everybody should be a cool guy and, if they want to, make two albums of music that sound different from each other. And I think it’s nice to talk to people when they ask if they can talk to you, even if they are kind of just wasting everybody’s time, and that means that Kyle Thomas is a nice guy, too. Man, this guy is cool and nice, and he makes good music that sounds different from each other.
Here’s the best part of my interview with King Tuff:
ME: What does J. Mascis smell like?
KING TUFF: Guitars.