ION INDIE MAGAZINE March 2015, Volume 10 | Page 64

because I was in Mississippi, and in Mississippi you can't get away from blues, it's in my core. It's the basis of my guitar
playing, for sure.
MU: I love hearing about that stuff. I've always wanted to make one of those "blues pilgrimages" down to the Delta.
TT: It was a wonderful place to grow up. It was a place that was flourishing, musically, when I was growing up. The 60's and
early 70's was when I was learning to play, those were my formative years. I graduated high school in '79. There was so much
exposure to good stuff in the Jackson area where I grew up. There was a really good, influential radio station that used to be
one of the biggest rock stations in the entire South--WZZQ. They always brought in everybody you wanted to see. When I was
a kid, they always brought them to Jackson to do shows. I remember in high school, at the time, that station was so popular
that when you’d get to school (in Mississippi you could get your license when you're 15--I got mine the day I turned 15 so
there are a lot of kids in Mississippi that drive themselves to school), you’d pull into the parking lot, and basically open up the
doors and turn on ZZQ wide open, because everybody else in the lot had it on. Every morning was like a rock fest at my high
school. ZZQ was like this unifying factor to my while high school experience, a huge part of our culture, a huge part of our
upbringing. A little time after I left Jackson and moved up to Missouri, the station sold out and became country and it's been
gone ever since. But, there was a time in the 70's when it was legendary, and I was lucky to be able to be brought up there.
Every night there was a different DJ that had different styles of what they like to play. It was a situation so unlike today, where
you only hear the same rotation in every city, every station. One night, there'd be trippy stuff like PINK FLOYD, another night
would be hard rock, then another night it'd be folky stuff. We'd call in all the time to request stuff, and they'd play it. There
was just a real connection with the local station. It's hard to explain how cool it was. It was just so encouraging to be a musician
in Mississippi at that time.
MU: You've always been known as a "musician's musician”. I'm wondering if knowing that tag is applied to you, has that
grounded you at all throughout your career during all the years of MTV success, big tours and major-label deals? Has it helped
you see through the music industry pitfalls?
TT: I don't think so. I don’t' think I've ever really thought of it like that. I am so hesitant to accept being a "musician's band".
I think all three of us in KING’S X all feel that way, because we know how limited we really are, and we know that we're not
technically superior to most people in the room listening to us play. I don’t' have phenomenal chops; DUG (PINNICK, King’s x
bassist) doesn’t either. We just feel what we feel, and try to play that feeling. Somehow, in some way, that has resonated with
musicians. I really don't think that KING’S X is playing anything super difficult; maybe JERRY (GASKILL, KING’S X drummer)
does. Jerry probably does the most technically proficient things of all three of us. I swear, we think of ourselves as pretty
"hacky" musicians, so the idea that musicians love us is just baffling to me, it always has been. I'm very thankful for it, but
I'll never understand why. I never practice guitar--I hardly play unless I'm writing songs or recording, or going out to play live.
I struggle on guitar trying to do the things I hear in my head because I don’t practice enough--I don't really work at it. The fact
that musicians show up makes me intimidated, if anything (laughs).
MU: The first KING’S X album (Out of The Silent Planet, 1988) came out at a time when the whole "Sunset Strip" era of hard
rock ruled. Did KING’S X ever feel pressure to try and conform to that musical model in any way, seeing the chart success those
bands had?
TT: On the first several albums, I didn't feel any pressure at all. I think all of us felt we were so different than everything else
that we couldn't think of it in terms of "how do we be like everybody else?" It was more like, we had been doing that for years.
When we stopped doing that is when we got a record deal. We were more encouraged to just be ourselves in the middle of all
that, because I think we realized that it was our originality that caused us to be noticed in the first place--not being like
everything else. It was more like, “Let's just find out who we are and do that”--period. I was very staunchly in that mindset. I
don't think I really even cared what else was going on, to be honest (laughs).
MU: As a band, KING’S X was very prolific throughout the years, with an album just about every two years. How did that timeline
segue into you releasing your solo debut when you did? How did you sort of break the KING’S X "cycle" a bit?