Sharing airspace with someone while they listen to your music is among the most mortifying things a working musician can experience. It often happens at the most unsuspecting moments, and it never gets any less embarrassing.
During our call, Kyle Thomas – aka King Tuff – recounted an example of this humiliation ritual during an Uber ride. The former L.A. but now Vermont-based singer/guitarist is one of those insanely prolific rock ’n’ roll lifers who always seems to be recording or touring in one of his bands: King Tuff, Witch or Ty Segall’s backing band, the Muggers. Naturally, Thomas had his guitar in tow. It’s a late-’90s Gibson SG that Thomas painted with metallic blue craft paint.
“I don’t tour with this guitar anymore,” Thomas says. “It has a broken headstock that was fixed with this Frankenstein bolt. I snapped the headstock while trying to do a throw-it-over-my-shoulder move. I brought it to an idiot who tried to fix it with epoxy.
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“Within weeks it peeled away and ruined the joint so you couldn’t even use wood glue. I brought it to Reuben Cox at Old Style Guitar Shop in L.A. He’s a genius. He just drilled a bolt through it and put it on either side and it stayed ever since. A lot of people might think it was ruined, but I think it’s like 10 times cooler because of that.”
The Uber driver, noticing his guitar case, probed Thomas about its contents. Rather than let the driver imagine some Antonio Banderas-in-Desperado gunslinger fantasy, Thomas told the truth.
“I told him the name of my band and he wanted to listen to it. I’m like, ‘Oh, God… here we go,’” Thomas says.
It gets worse.
“He turns it down and says, ‘Okay, here’s my review: the band is good. It’s got a good groove, but you’ve got to get a new singer,’” he says with a laugh. Thomas agreed completely.
“I sound kind of like a demented child, but there are people out there that relate to it or like it,” he says.
“There are some songs where I do think I sound great. A lot of the singers that I love don’t have technically great voices, but I love them because they’re unique. You’ve got to embrace it all. You’re not gonna win over every Uber driver, and you’re not gonna win over everybody on the planet.”
