King Tuff

My friends always had bands, and we would play together.

Both labels are super awesome, with super awesome people who want to get stuff done. The biggest difference is that Sub Pop is already established, but working with Burger seems like we're part of something. They're growing, and I'm growing with them. They're my friends, and we're doing it together.

I don't like science because I don't think it makes sense to put a definition on everything. It's a lot more exciting to think of things as mysterious.

My best moments are when I write songs out of nowhere.

I think the first person who kind of broke my mind was probably Jimi Hendrix. Listening to him opened my mind up to where you can take music and how far you can take rock n' roll.

I never took any guitar lessons or anything; I never really learned to play covers. I'm actually happy that I never took lessons as a kid. Now, I'd like to take lessons to kind of go deeper. But I think sometimes lessons can steal a person's personality away, because they're trying to do things so technically.

I love the sound of '70s glam records. I love that snare sound. The recordings I like, it's all based on if the snare sounds good. The drums have to sound great.

I've got the best parents you could ever ask for. My parents are from New Jersey, and they met in Vermont in college. My Dad grew up listening to heavy, psychedelic music. He's my biggest fan.

I played with the Lust-Cats once in Denver. I've seen Happy Jawbone a bunch of times, but I can't remember if I played those shows or not.

Brattleboro is a very small town, but it's pretty liberal.

Vermont will always be my home in my heart, but I really love L.A.

It's hard to talk about it without sounding like a hippie. But trees are really inspiring to me. They're like the masters of the earth.

Rock and roll music - people want records. For me, it's the whole thing - the package. I don't get satisfaction from buying an MP3.

I listen to top 40, old country, blues... I'm really into Roger Miller.

I saw Frances Bean at a Blink 182 show. And she was with a guy who looked just like Kurt Cobain.

I always tell people there's some kind of wall that you have to break through to see the beauty of L.A. The first few times I came here, I was like, 'I don't know about this place.' Then one day, it just totally flipped for me. It was crazy.

It involved a lot of trust, but I love Bobby Harlow, and I loved the albums that he made.

The very first music I recorded by myself, when I was 17, I said it was by King Tuff.

I ended up doing these other diverse things, but King Tuff is the thing I always wanted to come back to - just good, straightforward rock n' roll. That music is the most me, you know?

My friends ask me what it's like moving from Vermont to L.A., but no matter where I am, I pretty much just end up sitting in coffee shops, thinking about songs.

I find it harder to write the lyrics afterwards because then you're just trying to fit them into something that's already there.

My dad took me and my brother to see Corrosion of Conformity. All I remember was that there was a dude swinging a chain in the mosh pit, and the bouncers were dragging him out.

I used to play video games all the time, but now I don't because I don't have an attention span.

I love Hanukkah because it's so weird. You just sit there and light candles and say spells.

Bob Saget is the bear from the Golden Crisp box.