There are times in our life when we feel magic in the air. When new love arrives, or we find ourselves lost in a moment of creation with others who share our vision. A sense that: this is who I want to be. This is what I want to share. It’s a fleeting feeling and one that Kyle Thomas, the singer – songwriter who records and performs as King Tuff, found himself longing for in the spring of 2020. But knowing he couldn’t simply recreate this time in his life at will, Thomas — who hails from Brattleboro, Vermont — set out to write a love letter to those cherished moments of inspiration and to the small town that formed him. The one where he first nurtured his songwriting impulses, bouncing ideas off other like – minded artists. The kind of place wh ere the changing of the seasons always delivered a sense of perspective and fresh artistic inspiration. Where he felt a deeper connection with nature and sense of community that had once been so close at hand. “I wanted to make an album to remind myself that life is magical,” he reflects. And so, Thomas seized upon his memories, creating what he calls “an album about love and nature and youth.” The result is Smalltown Stardust , a spiritual, tender and ultimately joyous record that might come as a shoc k to those with only a passing knowledge of the artist’s back catalog. On Smalltown Stardust , Thomas takes us on his journey to a place where past and present collide, where he can be a dreamer in love with all that he sees. Images of his youth abound: fro m Route 91 which runs through his hometown (in “Smalltown Stardust”); to Redtooth, a spectre who used to roam the streets (“Bandits Of Blue Sky”); to old friends, old haunts and old dreams (“Always Find Me”); to Vermont’s Rock River, which gave its name to a song of a torch still burning for past love: “Those days are gone and we can’t rewind/ Cuz people grow and places change/ But my love for you will never fade away.” But at the core of Smalltown Stardust is Thomas’s desire to commune with nature on a s piritual level. Images of the natural world, from blizzards to green mountains to cloudy days, fill the songs and create a setting unmistakably far away from Los Angeles. “I consider nature to be my religion,” he explains, and Smalltown Stardust is nothing if not a spiritual exploration. Thomas’s identification as a sort of eternal spiritual seeker is underscored in one of the album’s sweetest moments, “A Meditation,” which features a home audio recording of Thomas as an eight year old, trying his hand at l eading a meditation. It’s a journey that he continues to this day, as he intones on “Portrait of God”: “Walking in the woods, wading in the river” and “breathing in the mountain air” before heading back to a place where he finds himself “ Oil painting in my garage/ Let my colors flow/ I’m working on my portrait of God.” While so much of Smalltown Stardust invokes idealized traces and places of Thomas’s past, the album’s recording process made his communal vision a reality. Thomas’s Los Angeles home in 2020 formed a micro – scene of sorts, with housemates Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and Sasami Ashworth recording their own heralded albums (2021’s Fun House and 2022’s Squeeze, respectively) at the same time. A shared spirit dominated an era spent largely on the prem ises, with Thomas serving as engineer and contributor to both records, and Ashworth working as co – producer on Smalltown Stardust. Thomas describes the time with a fitting metaphor: “ I’ve always thrived around other people making things. You want to bloom with each other.”
