Tiger Army - Biography
By Scott Feemster
Tiger Army is one of the newer standard-bearers of the punk-meets-rockabilly hybrid sound known as psychobilly. Over its career, the band has managed to expand the sound of psychobilly to include elements of goth and British new wave. Tiger Army’s willingness to mix-up the genre has garnered a large and devoted following, especially in their home base of Southern California.
Singer and guitarist Nick 13 (born Kearney Nick Jones) grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area listening to his father's collection of 50's rock-and-roll records. In his teenage years, he was introduced to punk rock through his involvement in skateboarding and the local straight edge scene. After graduating high school, 13 attended University of California, Berkeley before starting his first band Influence 13 in 1991 with his high school friend Geoff Kresge on bass and drummer Jade Puget (before he was the guitarist for AFI). In 1995, after Influence 13 fell apart, 13 started Tiger Army with stand-up bassist Joel Day and drummer Adam Carlson (a founding member of AFI). The group played their first gig in March of 1996 at Berkeley’s infamous 924 Gilman Street venue, an all-ages, non-profit, collectively-organized punk club. “Gilman Street” is credited with fostering a scene that spawned bands the likes of AFI, NOFX, Operation Ivy, Rancid, and Green Day. Tiger Army went on to play numerous shows around California with AFI, but also played shows with English psychobilly pioneers The Meteors. The group recorded a series of demos that were later collected on a six-song EP called Early Years (2002 – Hellcat/Epitaph).
Soon after their creation, the band was signed to the small, independent label Chapter Eleven Records and recorded a self-titled vinyl-only EP (later referred to as Temptation) in the summer of 1996. The EP’s mix of punk and rockabilly with a darker sensibility caught the attention of Tim Armstrong of Hellcat Records, a side label affiliated with Epitaph Records. Armstrong is also the singer and guitarist of Rancid and former member of Operation Ivy. The band signed with Hellcat, but Day left the band before they could record. Day was replaced by bassist Rob Peltier from The Quakes just to record the band's debut album Tiger Army (1999 – Hellcat/Epitaph), released in 1999.
The album served notice that there was a rising American psychobilly scene, building upon a sound that was started in the early 80's by such bands as The Meteors, King Kurt, the Guana Batz, and Batmobile. Tiger Army set out on a California tour to promote the album and 13 asked his old Influence 13 bandmate Kresge to step in as the bassist. Originally intending to be a temporary member of the band while they toured, Kresge ended up joining the band permanently a few months later. In 2000, the group was asked to be the opening band for a tour with Danzig and Samhain, and during the tour the band members befriended Samhain drummer London May. That same year, 13 decided to relocate himself and his band to Southern California, leaving behind drummer Adam Carson. May was asked to join the group and recorded their second album Tiger Army II: Power Of Moonlite (2001 – Hellcat/Epitaph) with them, but left soon after the recording. May was replaced by drummer Fred Hell. Following the release of the album, the group embarked on a period of relentless touring across the United States, Europe, and Japan, playing with the likes of the Dropkick Murphys, The Damned, and Reverend Horton Heat. The tours united the band and built up their fan base worldwide.
In 2003, while the group was rehearsing and preparing material for their next album, Hell was the victim of a home-invasion robbery at a friend’s house in Chino, California and was shot four times during the altercation. One of the bullets became lodged in his brain and he had to undergo months of physical therapy. The band was in the process of recording what would become their third album, Tiger Army III: Ghost Tigers Rise (2004 – Hellcat/Epitaph), but they put recording plans on hold to see if Hell could recover sufficiently enough to finish the album. Hell's recovery took longer than expected, so Tiger Army drafted their drum tech Mike Fasano (who also teched for Rancid) to cover for Hell on the album. Once the album was competed, Hell seemed to be in good enough shape and rejoined the band for a tour with Rancid. Unfortunately, Hell’s health issues worsened and he had to quit in 2004.
Tiger Army again drafted Fasano and, after playing two sold-out shows at the House of Blues in West Hollywood to mark the release of the album, the group embarked on the second leg of the Vans Warped Tour, playing 28 straight dates on the main stage as a headliner. Once the band returned home after the tour, bassist Kresge announced that he was leaving the band. He went on to focus his energies on his new label Dead Body Records and new band Viva Hate. He later joined his go-go dancer wife, Kamilla Vanilla, in the band HorrorPops as a guitarist.
With Kresge out and Fasano not committed as a full-time replacement, Nick 13 was faced again with building a new line up. He recruited stand-up bassist Jeff Roffredo, a long-time acquaintance of 13's who had played in the bands Cosmic Voodoo and Rezurex, and was a founding member of Calavera. 13 also added drummer James Meza, another friend of 13's who had played with Roffredo in Rezurex and had been the touring drummer for Danish psychobilly band the Nekromantix. The two new members of Tiger Army jumped right into the fire, embarking on a nine-and-a-half week, 46 show American tour with Social Distortion. The tour showcased the chemistry of the band’s new line up, which proved to be as tight and formidable a live presence as ever before. In 2005, the band toured the U.K. and Ireland, and taped a live show on the BBC for broadcast on Radio One. The group toured Australia for the first time, and then returned to the U.S. to embark on the two-month long headlining “Dark Romance Tour,” which ended with five sold out shows at the West Hollywood House of Blues.
The group took the latter part of 2005 and 2006 to record their fourth album, Music From Regions Beyond (2007 – Hellcat/Epitaph), released in June of 2007 with veteran punk producer Jerry Finn (Morrissey, AFI, Bad Religion, Blink-182, Rancid, Green Day). During that time, the group also opened several dates for Morrissey in the U.S. and U.K., opened for Social Distortion at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, and performed at the annual Hootenanny Festival in Orange County, California. In early 2008, Roffredo left the band and was replaced by former member Kresge. The band has continued touring, playing shows in the U.S., Australia, and Japan, and has plans to tour in Canada and Europe in 2009.