Tiger! Tiger!
By Deidre Dayre
Photo By Barb Hayes

At three years, Tiger! Tiger! is a relatively new band, but its roots date back to the Atlanta garage rock and punk scenes of the early 1990s. “One of Buffi’s [Aguero, singer] bands, The Subsonics, is the oldest band,” says guitarist Shane Pringle. “The Subsonics used to play with Go-Devils and Pineal Ventana [two of Pringle’s former bands]. Susanne’s [Gibboney, bassist] been in about 45 bands as well.”

Atlanta’s early ’90s music scene, though thriving, was not always accepting of women encroaching on its territory, something Aguero sought to remedy, finding “women’s perspective on music to be less clichéd. We’re not pressured to learn the same heavy metal songs that every guy learns how to play when they were 15.”
Aguero remembers being denied an audition while attending the Art Institute of Atlanta. “You’d think because they were punk they would be more accepting of women, but they wouldn’t even let me try out.”

In the late ‘90s, Gibboney and Aguero formed The Vendettas, a “spastic and juvenile — in a great way” garage act, corralling keyboardist Sam Leyja in the process.

After The Vendettas broke up, Leyja and Aguero formed art-rock conglomeration The White Lights. Pringle recounts, “The White Lights were a bit eclectic ... a lot of people in the garage music scene didn’t like them ... They’d say, “Why are you doing that art school bullshit?’”

Tiger! Tiger! rose from the ashes of The White Lights, incorporating some of The White Lights’ jazzy, art-rock elements, taking its name from a “DQE song about a circus tiger that will never see his home or catch his own food again,” explains Aguero.

After producing Collisions in 2005, Tiger! Tiger!’s line-up changed, with drummer Mike Poteet and cellist Deisha Oliver leaving the band to start a family. Aguero was thrilled to convince one of her “absolute most favorite people in the whole world,” bassist Gibboney, to join the band. Drummer Mario Colangelo (The Booze, J.J. and The Hustlers, Vito), the only member not entrenched in the garage scene, joined the band because, as he explains, he “enjoyed some of its more eclectic aspects [like] strings and sax.”

The change of their cast has led to a change in their sound. According to Pringle, the loss of Poteet and Oliver led to a “slightly less eclectic sound and approach.” The new album, A Kind of Goodnight, has less sax because, as Pringle quips, “It’s hard to stay punk rock with a sax so we tend not to overdo it.”

When describing Tiger! Tiger!’s sound, Pringle is guarded. “We don’t want to be pigeon-holed as a garage band, though ‘60s garage is a huge influence, as is ‘70s punk, ‘80s post-punk, and Motown girl groups. We’re more rock ‘n’ roll [than garage]. We try not to make every song a three chord song.”

When asked about their song-writing process, Aguero says “Usually, I’ll bring in the bare bones chords and some words, then the other Tigers will work their magic on it. More and more, we are working on new stuff together.”

Pringle’s take differs. “Buffi’s really the brains of the band, the major creative force ... she’d be pissed off if she heard me say it but it’s true. Buffi’s a really creative person. She writes 80 percent of the stuff that we do and is in all these other projects writing songs for them too. Me, I produce one song every six months. She could produce 200 in a month if she had to try.”

Great music aside, the main reason Tiger! Tiger! stays together is because they honestly enjoy playing together, a sentiment that is palpable on stage. “In other bands you have all kinds of drama, drug problems, fistfights,” says Pringle. “None of that in Tiger! Tiger! Everyone is mellow. We’re all responsible adults who have gotten all that bullshit worked out of our system... We’re more likely to go eat pancakes after the show and be in bed by one in the morning than staying up to party.”

www.tigertigerrocks.com