From dropping out of college to rap in one of Vermont’s most beloved bands to writing a book about DJing and creating Vermont’s 2022 Best Hip-Hop Album, it seems like Kyle Thompson would be satisfied with his artistic ventures.

Yet Thompson, better known as DJ Fattie B, hasn’t stopped creating new and innovative art. This time, he’s produced a board game and an app designed to connect people on a deeper level by talking about music and life stories.

Both the game, “Drop the Needle,” and app, “yovogo,” provide curated questions, from light-hearted to achingly personal, inviting people to sit down with friends, family and even strangers to chat about everything from the creepiest song they know to the last time they surprised themselves.

Kyle Thompson has been DJing professionally for over 25 years at a variety of venues and occasions, including at Club Metronome, where the inspiration for his book “I was a 400-pound DJ” came from. He started to learn DJing the summer after his seventh-grade year and has been making new mashups and tracks ever since.
Photo courtesy of Kyle Thompson.

Thompson, 56, a Vergennes resident who grew up in Bristol, has always been captivated by the power of storytelling through music and design. While attending Mt. Abe, he started DJing with his brother at drug-free parties for teens from Bristol, Vergennes and Middlebury. He loved the experience and a month into an accounting degree at Champlain College, was rapping over a beat at a party when he was invited to audition for a band. He got in as a rapper and the band Belizbeha was born. Dropping out of college, Thompson spent the next nine years on the road, performing around 250 gigs per year across the U.S. and overseas.

“We had no internet, no money, no GPS,” Thompson said. “We were just 20-year-olds in a van driving around the country, trying to find the next gig … the fact that our parents all trusted us to do it and that we did it, it’s pretty cool.”

The band dissolved around 2001, and Thompson went back to Champlain as a graphic design and media communications double major. He started DJing again, beginning a decades-long stint at Club Retronome (a regular Saturday night ’80s dance party at Burlington’s Club Metronome), where crazy events were the norm. When something salacious happened, Thompson would rip off a piece of paper, write a few words and shove it in his bag. Years later, when he opened the bag and spread the memories on his kitchen table, his wife at the time suggested he write a book about them. So he did, writing “I was a 400-pound ’80s DJ,” primarily on his couch with a headset that transcribed his words.

During a cardiac scare in 2021, Thompson was feeling extremely low when he received a Facebook message from a fan named Jada that turned everything around. Jada heard Thompson was sick and wrote that her son Reese was thinking of him and going through his own cardiac issues. Thompson saw the message from Reese as a sign from the universe and realized he wanted to make an album about signs like this one. So he did. His album “Gumbo” won Best Album at the 2022 Vermont Hip Hop awards and even featured Reese on the drums in the song “Good Heart Money,” about giving while expecting nothing in return.

Needless to say, when Thompson is inspired to do something, he’s determined to make it happen.

“I’ve always just had that kind of ‘why can’t I’ attitude.”

So, in 2024 he started a podcast called “3Some,” where he interviews people about why certain songs have such deep-seated connections to our memories.

And when Thompson’s sister Stephanie Larsen asked him eight months ago if he could create a game about music and memories, Thompson thought “why not?” Observing positive feedback to Thompson’s podcast 3Some, where guests discuss three songs that hold significant meaning in their lives, Larsen saw the potential for a game discussing music and memories. Perhaps a deck of questions, where the person with the best answer or story would win the round.

Thompson jumped on the idea, using his graphic design experience for the cards, box and questions. Now, the game “Drop the Needle” is finalized and available to pre-order at droptheneedlegame.com. The first 1,000 games are expected by August and by the third order Thompson hopes to have them in distribution in larger stores.

The questions, many submitted by his friends, range from “Name a song you love but from an artist you can’t stand” to “What song played at your first school dance?” The game is family friendly, but Thompson is excited to release expansion packs like the “spicy pack” every few months, to mix the game up.

After hosting two demo parties, Thompson feels confident the game brings people together and creates intriguing conversation, based on the crying and howling laughter he heard.

“For one of the groups, five minutes before I walked over, they were laughing and then hugging and crying to each other and it was not a sad thing, it was a beautiful thing,” Thompson said. “They were all saying to this one woman, thanks for sharing this and she said, ‘I didn’t intend to cry today,’ but that’s what these connection stories do. You open up and you let your soul out and people connect to that.”

Thompson wanted a portion of the profit to go toward charity, so a friend suggested Musicians on Call, a nonprofit that brings celebrities like Noah Kahan and Kelly Clarkson into hospitals to play for patients and staff. Thompson was hooked and decided 10% of each game will be donated to MOC.

“They’re angels on Earth,” Thompson said. “So I reached out to them, and the rep suggested we can have the games in the rooms of these families whose loved one is at the end of their life and they could be having these conversations.”

At the end of a call with the MOC representative, she suggested it would be great if conversations prompted by the game were recorded so family members could listen when their loved one was gone. Thompson thought of his own parents and grandparents and how he wished he could still listen to their stories. So in his typical “why not” attitude, Thomas started on an app, just after the call two months ago.

Yovogo, with “yovo” standing for your voice, was designed by Thompson and Mike Stolarz of Capacitor Design Network. On yovogo, users create “group pods” with whomever they want, from big groups to one-on-one. A user can select a category of questions, and a long list appears to choose from, or they can create a custom question. Users then send a question to their pod, and each records an answer.

After recording, pod members can listen to each answer one after the other, which Thompson calls “family brunch,” where everyone sits down to listen, feeling connected even when far away from others.

The app also records conversations in real time, with pre-selected or custom questions. When a custom question is entered, the user will be asked if they want to submit it as a potential game addition. Similarly, in Drop the Needle, users can submit their own question ideas, which if accepted, will display their name on the card.

One feature of yovogo that Thompson is excited about is recording stories and conversations over a photograph, so they are forever linked.

“If you had a picture of your grandfather in his uniform about to go to war, you could send it and say, grandpa, tell me where your mind and your heart was when this was taken. When he hits record, it attaches the audio to that picture, so anytime you open that after he’s gone, his voice is automatically talking to you.”

The app has many potential uses, Thompson said, especially for recording family stories. A father of his friend was recently diagnosed with early-onset dementia, and plans to use the app to record for his family as much as possible before he starts to decline.

“It’s crazy to think about, but it’s a really intense and beautiful way to tell people what this app is about,” Thompson said.

After two rounds of beta testing, the app will go on the market. If invited to join a group pod, users won’t have to pay, but to create their own, they will pay a small amount. Both the game and app will fill a need we have to connect deeply right now, Thompson said, and he’s confident both will take off quickly.

“The common theme of what I’ve tried to curate with the podcast, game and the app is human connectivity and sharing stories that matter,” he said. “I feel like it’s such a weird world right now where we don’t sit down and really speak to each other anymore. It’s a rare thing and these are all products that get us to do that.”