Prick Magazine - Tiger Army Feature

TIGER ARMY
PRICK PICKS THE BRAIN OF NICK 13

by Lisa Sharer
Photos courtesy of Tiger Army
From the November 2007 issue of PRICK Magazine.

Tiger Army played their first show with AFI in 1996, and made an impression across the board with all psychobilly/punk fanatics.They have taken quite the bumpy road to get where they are today; with several line-up changes, Nick 13 is the only remaining original member of the band. More cohesive than ever though, the current Tiger Army members seem to be quite the happy bunch. Recently, PRICK had a chance to pick the brain of Nick 13. While his first passion seems to be music, he has quite the affinity for tattoos as well.

How do you feel about your current lineup?

I’m really happy with the current lineup. This lineup's been together for about three years now, and we've done at least two hundred shows. I think we sound the best we ever have live right now—playing is definitely at its highest level. Everyone in the band is a good player and they play well off of each other.

With all the disruptions, was there ever a time when you really just wanted to quit?

There were definitely times where things just seemed like they were too hard to keep going. At the same time, music is what I love, and it didn’t seem like...as hard as things were, there didn't seem to be anything else to do except pick up the pieces and move forward. Luckily everything's really worked out in the last couple years and we're in a good place now.

How would you say your newest album is different from past ones?

I think the newest album is the best representation of what Tiger Army is about as a whole. It has the fast, aggressive stuff like the song "Hotprowl," fast and melodic like "Afterworld." It kind of covers everywhere we've been musically, and then it pushes forward in certain ways as well. We definitely try to do things musically on this record. There was a little bit of an '80s dark wave influence. It kind of popped up on the last record and we took that farther in some places with this record. There were things that we tried to do that we haven’t done before, but at the same time it still kind of stays true to what our sound is musically and where we're from musically.

What's your favorite song to play and why?

Hmm, I don't know if I could pick just one. Definitely in our live set there are a lot of different moods, we like to take the audience on a journey, and pacing is very important. There'll be a certain point in the night—there'll definitely be a really fast, aggressive song where the pit’s going crazy. And at a certain point we'll slow it down and do a song that might be more of a country ballad. I like all the different moments, picking one would be tough for me.

Do you have any general thoughts on tattoos?

Tattooing has been a pretty big part of my life. I'm pretty well covered at this point. I don’t have any room left except for my ribs and some space on my legs. It was just something that appealed to me at a young age, and went hand in hand with the music subcultures I was into.

Any particular style that you enjoy over others?

I've always been a fan of traditional stuff. I've been getting traditional for a long time, and definitely before it was really being done on a very large scale. I'd go to Tattoo City in the early '90s, and Ed Hardy had all the Sailor Jerry flash on the walls before the books had been published. I really dug that stuff. I've always been into the mid century aesthetic stuff from the '40s and the '50s, and traditional appealed to me when people thought it was weird. I think the tattooists appreciated it, but as anyone who's into tattoos remembers there was always a movement to try to fix traditional or make it more modern. You don't fix it. It was killer exactly the way it was. That's definitely what ninety percent of the stuff I have is.

Neo-traditional has gotten much cooler. There’s definitely a style of line work and shading that’s associated with traditional, and I think in the mid '90s neo-traditional was kind of a bad word. It meant taking traditional subject matter, subject matter you’d find on the traditional flash, and doing it in fora new school way. Which, I thought was really lame. You know, to take a rose and make it chromed out, or something like that. Now, there's a lot of really cool newer tattoo work and newer flash work that I appreciate. It's neo-traditional, but it's the opposite—taking subject matter that probably wouldn’t have been tattooed in the '40s, and the '50s, and the '60s, but drawing it and shading it the way that Sailor Jerry or Bert Grimm or whoever else would have shaded it (if they were going to draw a blue dead girl's head with a rose coming out of her). That stuff, even though it is neo-traditional in a sense, I dig that stuff as well. Because to me, it's true to the roots of where traditional tattooing came from, but it looks forward as well.

Do you think that has to do with your rockabilly influence?

It's all connected, because I was always drawn to all of that. When I was really into rockabilly, I was really into traditional tattoos as well. But like I said, I've always had an affinity for that era in general, the design of that era, whether it’s a toaster or whether it’s a tattoo, or whether it’s a guitar, or whether it's a song on a record. I was always drawn to all that, so I couldn't say I was drawn to traditional tattoos because I was into rockabilly. I think I was just drawn to both just because that's what I was into. Actually, at that time there were always a few people like Brian Setzer, or Smutty Smith that were fairly heavily covered, but the average person into rockabilly in say '95 didn't have a lot of tattoos. They had a few maybe, but you didn't see a lot of people that were sleeved, and had backpieces, and traditional and that kind of thing.

Do you have any favorite tattoo artists?

I grew up in northern California and Tiger Army originally started in the Bay area, and I've moved out Los Angeles now, but I am still a fan of a lot of people in the Bay area tattoo scene. Scott Sylvia is one of my favorites, I've got a lot of work by him. I've always been a fan of Dan Higgs, I think he was really instrumental in starting that kind of new school, neo-traditional where it’s bold line traditional shading but really out there subject matter. A lot of the guys at Temple Tattoo in Oakland — Freddy Corbin...Jason McAfee...Juan Puente in Southern Cali. I like his stuff a lot.

How do you feel about the commercialism of tattoos?

I don't think it getting more attention, in general, is a bad thing. There are certain aspects of it that I'm not into. A lot of the clothes are really gross, and I'm definitely not into that side of it. I'm not saying tattoo art can't be utilized in a cool way in clothing, it's just that there is a lot of clothing that's not utilizing it in a cool way at all. I think it's the same as with anything. Anything that's cool will eventually be recognized by the public (it might be decades after it's time), but people will get it eventually. I'm definitely happier with society, the way it is now, versus the way it was when I first started getting tattooed. There's not as much of a stigma attached to it, and there shouldn't be, so that's a good thing.

What is the future of Tiger Army?

We're kind of just right in the middle of coming out with this record right now. The record is about three months old, and this big six week long US tour is the main thing we're focusing on right now. We'll definitely be touring into next year, there's some foreign touring that we have lined up. We're going to be playing a big psychobilly festival in Germany and some other shows in Europe next spring. I think we’ll keep touring right on through next summer. I feel like I just got done writing and recording this record that we did, so we'll take some time on the road and wait until the creative juices start flowing, and I feel like it’s time to start writing again for another record. It's hard to say when...you just kind of know it when it strikes you, it’s really hard to say when that will happen.

Anything else you’d like PRICK readers to know?

People should definitely check out this tour in the fall. Sometimes we're doing a support tour or a festival tour like Warped, and I think this is people's best chance to see what we're about and get the whole picture. It's definitely been too long since we've done headlining shows in places like the south and the east coast. Definitely don't miss this tour, and we're really happy with the new record, Music from Regions Beyond, so people should check that out as well.

For more information, go to www.tigerarmy.com.

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