Combining elements of vintage soul, old-school r&b and 50’s-era doo wop, Old Tiger began playing together regularly in mid-2009. Reigning from different parts of California, guitarist/vocalist Dustin Lothspeich, bassist Matt Phillips, and drummer Eric Boone came together to channel their collective love of Stax Records and the Golden Era of Motown into their own original material.

Old Tiger has been sharing their mix of r&b and vintage sounding rock with Southern California since 2009. We at Three B Zine happened to catch one of their live shows at the Riviera Supper Club in San Diego CA. (La Mesa) and we were completely blown away by their talent, unique sound and soulful performance. Not only that, they are super nice awesome guys to boot. You can almost always find them playing somewhere around town – but they’ve got a couple of great shows coming up that you will definitely not want to miss: first, they play Bar Pink with Midnight Rivals & Amy Lavere on 9/9 as part of the 2011 San Diego Music Thing, and then on 9/14 – they’ll take the stage at the Belly Up with Nena Anderson and Dead Feather Moon. Three B Zine was lucky enough to sit down with Dustin Lothspeich to find out what makes Old Tiger roar.

After the interview please check out the EXCLUSIVE STUDIO TRACK Old Tiger – Tambourine Only available at Three B Zine!

1. Give me some background history about the band. When you were formed, members, where you are from ect.

We’re from all over. I traveled around a bit when I was younger but, basically grew up in SoCal. Eric (drummer) was born and raised in Jackson, TN. Matt (bassist) grew up in Durango, CO. Eventually, all 3 of us ended up here in San Diego years ago. We started playing together in mid-2009, even though I had met Eric about a year earlier at the day job we both work at. One day (randomly), I found out that he played drums in a band called The High Rolling Loners and ended up going to see them play a couple times. At one point, I was hanging out at their practice space with him – and I picked up a guitar that was layin’ around and played a few songs I had written, just to have some fun. Much to my surprise, he really liked them – so we started jamming together. Matt (who also played bass in Eric’s other band) overheard us a couple weeks later and wanted in on the spot. We started seriously writing and rehearsing more and more songs over the following 6 months until we all agreed: it was time to let the Tiger out.

2. Typical Question. What are some of your biggest musical influences?

That’s always kind of a difficult question to answer because like any other creative medium, you continue to grow as an artist and your influences change accordingly. That being said, I think one way to break down our influences is this: I grew up listening to The Supremes and a little later on, Marvin Gaye. Eric has always taken cues from guys like Al Jackson Jr. and ?uestlove. Matt knows The Kinks inside-and-out and honestly, he can pretty much play any song ever written by The Beatles too. He’s like a Beatles-savant. If you put those sounds together, I think that’s a pretty accurate microcosm of our music.

3. What is the motivation behind your classic sound? What was the idea behind putting your spin on a classic genre of music?

I think our sound just comes from what we like to hear, ourselves. I don’t know if we purposely try to make our music sound old or something – but certain chord progressions, tempos, etc do tend to lend themselves to a particular era. And we’re OK with that. But we also like having the freedom to play anything. You take a look at some of the biggest indie acts on the planet – The Black Keys, My Morning Jacket, Arcade Fire, Fleet Foxes – their songs could’ve all existed on turntables around the world 40 years ago. Bands like Best Coast, Cults, She & Him and Sonny & The Sunsets – they all sound straight out of the AM radio dial in 1965. Nothing has really changed, when you get right down to it. There’s no real master plan. We try to add our own spin to this stuff, of course, but in the end – we just play music that moves us. Hopefully it moves other people, as well.

4. With your old fashioned r&b/rock style have you guys considered releasing your next record on vinyl? or a possible 7″ EP?

Absolutely. That’s actually one of my goals, as a musician. Even though I’ve been playing and writing songs for 15 years, Old Tiger is really my first band. So I’ll be beaming like a proud father the moment I hold our first vinyl record in my hands. When I’m at home, I’ve always got the turntable on. I think it’s the best and only real way left to listen to music. Unfortunately, pressing an actual record is exponentially more expensive than CD’s. And even 7” EP’s are pretty pricey for a DIY band like ourselves (labels: please call). But once our first album is recorded, it will definitely be released on vinyl at some point. I’ve gotta make it happen. It might bankrupt me, but I’ll do it. Follow your dreams, kids.

5. What is the biggest misconception people have about Old Tiger?

That we play metal. I happen to play an all-white Gibson Flying V guitar at our shows. We’ll be loading in our gear at our shows, setting up amps and putting the drums together, etc – but the moment I open up that guitar case, and pull out the V, I always get the funniest reactions from the people there. Normally I hear someone say to their buddy: “Look at that V, bro. This is gonna be a Slayer riff-fest.” Then when we start playing, and they couldn’t be more wrong. I love it.

6. If you guys could open a show for any group/musician in history who would it be?

In history? Wow. That’s a tough call……but I gotta go with Otis Redding during his Stax European Tour. The other guys would probably say some other band/artist but – Otis is a legend for a reason. Arguably, the best soul singer ever. A pure showman. Imposing. Ruled the stage, effortlessly. And that particular tour had Booker T. & The M.G.’s as his backing band. The amount of god-given talent on that stage was just unbelievable. Y’all should look some of those performances up on YouTube when you feel like getting your mind blown.

7. Story time… Let readers in on something we may not know about Old Tiger. Funny story, Quirks.. anything!

I probably shouldn’t do this – some things are just best forgotten. But, here goes. The first time we played The Casbah last August – we were opening for The Sadies, and we were really excited. It was a big step for the band and pretty much everybody we knew showed up to support us. While I was at work with Eric earlier in the day, I came up with a dyn-O-mite plan to pull a Bono – and step offstage during one of our slow ballads “No, No, No”. What I was attempting to accomplish by doing this, you might ask? I have no clue now.

I suppose it should always be a band’s goal to tear down the divide between the performers and the people listening; get people more involved, etc. We talked about it and he laughed and said “Hell, go for it. Why not?”. So, during the show, we started playing the song. We get halfway through and then, I decided to make my move. I grabbed the mic off the stand, and jumped offstage. I take a step or two, and the mic cable gets stuck. I look back and it’s stuck on something but I can’t see what. So, I start pulling on the cable, hoping to God it comes loose – or else the whole thing was toast.

Thankfully, it released after a few tugs, so I start walking out towards the audience (who are snickering by now) – and right then, the mic starts feedbacking in the most horrific manner. I had, unbelievably, failed to realize that when you take a live mic in front of giant venue speakers that are pumping 10 million gigawatts of music into the place, the microphone will pick up the sound coming out of the speakers – creating a nasty cycle of vicious volume. Thank the Lord, my mic had an on/off switch, so I switched it off and kept the course. My plan, I had decided, would be to “serenade” my girlfriend, who was standing near the back. So, I walked right up to her and switched the mic on again so I could start singing, hoping that maybe the mic wouldn’t feedback anymore since we were towards the back. I was wrong. I turned it on and it went apeshit again. So, I quickly turned it off and thought ‘Well, shit – this whole mic deal isn’t working……but just keep going without it. You’ll be fine.‘

So I started singing to her without the mic. However, since everything had gone so very wrong and I was so out of sorts – I completely forgot the lyrics to the song. She’s standing there, looking at me, embarrassed as all hell at what I was doing to her. I mumbled a few things as best I could and hightailed it back to the stage, thinking ‘Well, at least I can just jam out on the end of the song with my guitar’ – WRONG. When I had jumped down offstage, I hit my guitar on something, and it had gone completely out of tune. So when I started playing it again, it sounded like shit. Anyway, I’ve never been more thankful for a song to end in my entire life. We finish the show with a couple more songs, and unload our gear offstage afterward. Later, we’re standing around, talking with various people and friends who were there – laughing about my horrific Bono moment – and it was then, at that exact moment, I found out that nearly every single person watching the train wreck of my epic fail seriously thought I was proposing to my girlfriend.

8. When you are not writing new material what do the Old Tigers like to do with their time?

We just do the normal stuff everyone else likes to do. We’ve all been through our hard-partying phase for the most part and we just like taking it easy now. We’ve all got wonderful, incredibly supportive girlfriends and heck, we like spending time with ‘em. Personally, I love record shopping and finding old unsent postcards in antique shops to send to friends. You could say I’m the octogenarian of the group. You’d never know it, but Matt heads up his own SD motorcycle chapter called The Village Green Preservation Society. He also likes golf, softball and long walks on the beach. Eric’s always busy brewing his own homemade moonshine. If you’re lucky enough to get some – as he only makes one batch a year – he names it: ‘It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Drinkin’)’. I’ll tell you one thing – that stuff makes a mean stocking stuffer.

But more often than not, we’re out supporting our friends in other bands. Because, when you get right down to it, a large part of the general public will go their whole lives without ever seeing a local band at a place like the Casbah or Soda Bar. And it’s such a shame because there are some seriously awesome bands coming out of our town. And it’s up to those of us that know about it, to spread the word. It’s almost like you have to reassure people that it will do no harm whatsoever to leave the Olive Gardens and the Best Buys behind every so often, and check out some local music at a locally-owned establishment. If the recession has taught us anything, it’s that people that pour their heart & soul into something they love should be rewarded patronage over those giant corporations that exist only to rape and pillage.

9. Whats next for Old Tiger?

Next up for us is always more and more shows. Some bands exist in the studio. And some bands exist on the stage. What little we’ve accomplished thus far, we’ve done without a proper record. We’re a live band and we love playin’ in a bar somewhere, doin’ our thing – sweatin’ the music out, gettin’ those toes a-tappin’. But we also know eventually, we’ll get our music recorded on tape at some point. We’ve talked about doing it in late-2011 or early next year. And maybe afterward, if I’m lucky – I’ll finally get to hold that record in my hands.

 

We would like to give a giant Thank You to Old Tiger for sitting with us and being such awesome guys. To learn more about Old Tiger and to see where they will playing next please visit their website www.oldtigermusic.com. To hear more music visit their bandcamp site where you can listen to more downloadable tracks. Old Tiger Bandcamp.