King Tuff w/ special guest Gabriel Bernini

After Smalltown Stardust I was a bit lost. To be honest, I had been a bit lost since 2016. Both Smalltown Stardust and The Other had been departures from my “sound”, and while they were both new sonic places that I needed to explore, neither album was really all that fun when it came to performing them live. Every show I would just be looking forward to playing my older, wilder material. It was just more enjoyable to play! Loudly! So when I decided to make a new record, it only seemed right to go back to what brings me the most joy, which is, Rock & Roll music.

 

I got my Tascam 388 fixed, the same tape machine I had used to record my first album, King Tuff Was Dead. It had been sitting in my parent’s house in Vermont for the past 14 years, but I had finally dragged it out to LA. The first song I recorded on it was “Twisted On A Train”, and I was shocked by how instantly I sounded, and felt, like myself again. In fact, I wrote and recorded the whole dang song in the span of a few hours, which was basically the opposite of how I had been working in the computer. Spending hours moving waveforms around like a zombie, comping vocals, second guessing, trying to make things sound not lifeless, trying to make anything sound good at all, took months. But here on the tape it was so much more alive. More like painting or collaging. More like making actual music. Every move I made stuck like super glue. It was effortless. It was pure joy.

 

I stopped caring if there were mistakes. 

There’s not enough mistakes. 

I played my old, blue, Gibson SG, Jazijoo, and she spewed mangled electrified gold.  

For once, I sang and I didn’t hate my voice. 

I played the drums badly and bounced them in mono to one track and it sounded like glorious shit. 

I wish it sounded even worse. 

 

Rock & Roll is the music of rodents and bugs. It should sound like it crept from a decrepit trashcan or a crypt or a toilet. It is not chill or vibey, autotuned or on the grid. It is not perfect, which is why it’s perfect. And I don’t care if it’s dead or alive, cool or uncool: when I hear it, and when I play it, as a chubby and balding 43 year old punk weirdo, I FEEL ENERGIZED. 

 

MOO would turn out to be the last music I made as a resident of LA. I had been thinking of leaving for awhile, and a number of things finally sent me on my way. I moved back to Vermont and it’s been wonderful. The lyrics, and obviously the title, started to make a lot more sense once I got back east. It was like the world had been shouting “MOO” at me for years, and I finally listened.

 

All in all, MOO is a full circle moment. A return to form. A return to rock. A return to Vermont. A return to myself. 

 

Reconnecting the dots. Restarting the engine. Plugging in the stack. Finally letting King Tuff be King. Fucking. Tuff.