Great to get to know Justin, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and lead singer with Garden Tigers and hear more of the music. It’s varied and interesting. I like it.
Please tell us about Garden Tigers and how you came to music.
I moved to MN from Chicago about 10 years ago, before that I played in a couple Chicago bands (Tower, Prairie Fires). I would write songs and then other people would sing them and I would be in the background playing all the fun interesting bits (I play guitar, pedal steel guitar, piano, mandolin, some bass), I love that part of music, finding ways to add interesting textures and sounds to songs. But I never wanted to be the frontman, I have never been super confident in my singing ability (I’ve been taking voice lessons and years doing solo music has made me more confident, but I’m still my own worst critic), but I have always been pretty confident in my songwriting skills. So working with my good friends in Chicago (my dear friend Chris Hoss is a huge reason why I do what I do now, he was the singer/guitar player in Tower) I got to put my songs out there, while also getting to utilize my instrumental skills in ways I really love.
Then my wife and I moved to MN and I began looking for a similar situation, I found lots of bands that wanted me to join, pedal steel guitar is not a common instrument but a very in demand one. But none of them were willing to bring on another songwriter. So I turned them down because I needed an outlet for my songs as well, I didn’t want someone elses musical vision to be my whole thing, I wanted a partnership. So I started slowly doing it on my own, finding ways to turn my songs into what I wanted in a live setting. I’ve always been terrible at naming songs and bands but came up with Garden Tigers once and didn’t hate it, so I stuck with it. So slowly I developed my sound on my own, which has been really fulfilling.
I came to music later in life, I didn’t pick up a guitar until I was 19. All my high school friends went off to 4 year colleges but I stayed back in community college to get some basic classes out of the way cheaper. So I was bored in my hometown and bought an electric guitar and a delay pedal on a whim. and I discovered very quickly that I could use that delay pedal to smear and mess with sound in fun and unusual ways, So I did that for a few years before even trying to figure out how to play guitar normally. Then I started trying other instruments and found I could pretty quickly get sounds out of them that I wanted. I’m no virtuoso but I can get the sounds I hear out of an instrument, more a jack of all trades type player. Then I progressed to writing songs and found a real relaxing beauty in just the craft of songwriting.
Your songs are so diverse from the almost metal core to The Black Pyramid, to the mellow psychedelia of Skies of Copenhagen, where do you get your inspiration?
I have always been a big music fan, but never a what’s popular music fan. I remember in middle school someone trying to get me to like the song Peaches by The Presidents of the United States of America and I was way more interested in 1950’s doo wop. I got big into metal during high school and used to read metal magazines. One article about fuzz pedals mentioned a band My Bloody Valentine, and I had no idea who they were or what to expect but I had our record store order a copy before I ever heard a note. That record really changed my whole outlook on music, it wasn’t metal, it had soft woozy unintelligible vocals and this wall of guitars smeared and warped all over. From there I started branching out to jazz, punk, country, ambient, slowcore, hardcore, indie, britpop, hiphop and everything. I really got into the sound of music, how all the parts worked together, how the different instruments came together and weaved in and out. I was a drama/speech kid in high school so I always had a strong love of language and words so when I started writing songs it was important that they tell a story, and that it be interesting. So I kinda just started weaving those two things together. The strong storytelling tradition of country/americana music and the instrumental sounds of bands like Pink Floyds, or Low, or Spiritualized. I was drawn to those big spaces in music, songs that took their time and took you on a journey.
So when I write now I’m looking for those things, I’m looking for the way the words weave with the instruments and tell a story. But I’ve also always been drawn to music that is off the beaten path a bit, the sandpaper voiced carnival nightmare of Tom Waits or the glacial pace of Duster, the atonal jazz of Eric Dolphy. So I am often trying to bring unusual sounds or pieces into a more accessible sound of my own. I don’t always succeed but I try.
What is your process for creating the music? I remember seeing the progressive works if Picasso where he painted a women in a chair and worked on derivatives until he came up with the cubist/abstract Woman in a Red Chair. I have an image of you writing a country classic and then stretching it.
Most musicians I know and talk with tend to write melodies or chord progressions, humming something out and fitting the words in. I write the complete opposite way. I get an idea or a clever couplet and I write the words first, then I start messing with the guitar, returning strings and strumming until something feels right, then I just try singing the word to it and slowly land on a melody.
I participate in an online Singer Songwriter challenge with other MN artists and that has been a wonderful way to get initial ideas (we write songs off of prompts, a word or a picture).
During Lockdown times I started trying to do more with my music. I started calling it “Cosmic Country” because of how the songs usually start off as a country/americana song and then I slowly start breaking it into something a bit weirder. So what you imagined is pretty spot on. After I started branding my music as “Cosmic Country” I came up with a silly idea of making “Cosmic Horror Country” because I do have a love of horror stories and things like that. The I wrote a song like that, and came up with another and another pretty quickly, so I decided to roll with it and am now close to releasing my collection of “Cosmic Horror Country.”
How did you manage to tour Spain this summer? And what was their response?
So, my wife and I were fortunate enough to get our two kids enrolled in our public schools Spanish Immersion program, and I honestly cannot say enough good things about Spanish Immersion. We always said that we wanted our youngest to have at least a year and then we wanted to take them somewhere they could use their skills and experience a different culture. So we saved up for a family trip to Spain. It was amazing, we had the best time, my kids were absolute rockstars, people were really impressed with their Spanish skills, we had amazing food and saw a bunch of really awesome things and experiences ( I got to see my favorite painting “The Garden or Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch which was pretty cool for me).
But I decided that since we were going to be in Spain I should try and book a few shows. Spain has a busking culture that I wasn’t really prepared for but I managed to play a couple times at a few places and it was really wonderful. I borrowed guitars and did a very stripped down show when I was there so I didn’t have to haul all my gear overseas and the people were really accommodating and really truly seemed to enjoy the music. There was a general appreciation for the arts over there that I was really impressed with. I’m hoping to do something similar anytime we do a trip because it was a really special experience
Tell us about your upcoming album and places where fans can see you play.
My upcoming album is completed and will hopefully be coming out this fall. I am currently getting artwork and logo stuff finalized. I’m already about a third of the way finished with the follow up album which will be less “horror” themed. Just a good collection of songs.
This record will be pretty awesome, the tracks are very varied from the noir Jazz of “The Howler” to the tight power pop of “Tidal Wave” to the psychedelia trip of”Skies of Copenhagen” or the country/Metal mashup of “The Black Pyramid”. They all have their interesting sonic fingerprints but with a familiar level of ambience and sound woven in so everything feels connected despite the breadth of genres explored. I’m really proud of how its come together and I look forward to getting it out into the world.
I am currently working on booking shows for this fall/winter but currently people can catch Garden Tigers at
- Beetles bar and Grill, Rochester MN – 9/2
- The Spirit Room, Menomonie WI – 9/15
- Porchfest, Rochester MN – 9/16
and I always make sure to post about upcoming shows at
https://www.facebook.com/gardentigers/
Mostly Minnesota 