ROGUE TRADER

Recording almost everything on his latest album himself and putting it out on his own label, Tuk Smith followed the adage that if you want something doing properly, do it yourself.

- Dave Everley

When Joshua Smith was a kid in the small town of Griffin, Georgia, his dad ran the local gym, Tuck's Powerdome. Josh's dad, Tucker Smith, was an ace softball player and a local celebrity who everybody called Big Tuck.

His son inherited his nickname: Little Tuck. Somewhere along the way, the 'c' was lost and Little Tuck became Tuk. Tuk Smith.

Anyway, the gym. It was the kind of place guys would hit straight after work, deadlifting in their blue jeans and work boots. His dad had a thing for tigers, and its logo was a big cat that looked like it had munched down on a handful of steroids. The young Tuk practically grew up in that gym.

"Five years old and swinging off the equipment," he says now. He worked there part-time, too, years later. "When I was at school I was strong as fuck. I looked crazy: big punk hair, Exploited T-shirt.

I definitely stood out in a small town like that."

Whatever fortitude he learned in that gym as a young punk-rock kid has stood him in good stead since. His former outfit, power-pop-punk scrappers Biters, were done in by a combination of record business boneheadedness and a level of public apathy that was in inverse proportion to the band's brilliance. His solo career, which began in the wake of that band's split in 2018, was plagued by more music-industry fuckery that saw a finished debut album being shelved and a gig opening for Kiss and Def Leppard on their joint stadium tour falling through.