Joel Ford, bassist, keyboard player and vocalist for Brooklyn-based Tigercity, has good reason to be excited about his band’s trip to the West Coast. The band is making the trip with Ima Robot, by no means an unknown, and Tigercity makes the trip fresh off a winter and spring full of good press. But Ford is equally excited for purely personal reasons.
“Actually, myself and, I think, a couple of the other guys have never been to California at all. We’re psyched about it. Anywhere on the West Coast, we’re psyched about going up,” Ford said. The band began its trip on Tuesday, with plans to stop in Eugene on the 11th.
Tigercity, born of relationships formed in exceptionally musical pick-up basketball games, finds success with the help of a close friend, some good fortune and a well received first release.
That first, self-titled EP gave listeners what has proven to be just a glimpse of the Tigercity sound, which came about through a serendipitous blending of traditional rock instrumentation and Ford’s affinity for the electronic.
“I had an MPC – it’s, like, this hip-hop machine – and I used it to do my own electronic music projects and sound art stuff. I was really into that kind of thing at the time, and making beats,” Ford said. “It wasn’t really our intention to be making electronic music at the time, but we couldn’t find a drummer so we just started making beats to write songs and then were like, ‘Oh, well. Why don’t we just do it?’”
These humble, almost accidental beginnings gave rise to Tigercity’s unique, funky style of danceable pop music. The band expanded on that sound with the addition of two members in early 2006.
“We realized that we were only pushing our live show so far with just the electronic drums, and so that was part of the reason we made that change, got Aynsley (Powell) and Andrew (Brady) to play with us,” Ford said. The results, according to Ford, are most apparent on stage as part of a live show that Tigercity continues to improve.
“Getting out of New York really helped us, I’m not exactly sure why, but really helped us tighten up our live show and start moving around the stage more and just having a lot of fun with it,” Ford said, “It’s definitely an uptempo, fun rock show. People will be dancing for sure.”
Off stage, Tigercity has recently been recording and mixing a follow-up to its first EP. In the process, the band is becoming a more polished studio band, which Ford attributed in part to Tigercity’s good friend and producer Al Carlson.
“Everything’s more hi-fi sounding, and that’s a testament to Al learning with us and just really making it happen in the studio. ‘Are You Sensation’ is slowed down a little bit, it’s super dancey,” Ford said. “We want it to be a real dance track, something that DJs can throw in a super dancey set. We definitely want to get a bunch of remixes out.”
Given the reaction to the original version of “Are You Sensation,” Tigercity should have little trouble finding people interested in remixing the new version. The track, which is, even in its earlier incarnation, a booty mover, is just one example of why Tigercity fits into the New York dance scene. Tigercity’s sound is indicative of the trend toward dancing, even, according to Ford, with a less likely audience.
“There’s this place called Studio B that opened up in Brooklyn maybe six months ago or so that’s a really cool club; it has really, really good sound, and I mean they pack people. It was actually really surprising the first I went there; it was like people were dancing to straight up techno, and people who looked like they were rock kids,” Ford said. “I could definitely see Tigercity in Studio B doing a show there with just DJs or whatever and it would work.”
Tigercity will bring the music to the WOW Hall just before Ima Robot on Tuesday night.
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Tigercity

What: Opening band for Ima Robot
Where: WOW Hall
When: Tuesday, June 12 at 8 p.m.; tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door