tiger trap!

Interviewed June 1993
by Mike Appelstein
for Caught In Flux #2

tiger trap circa 1993

 If Sacramento's Tiger Trap aren't the finest practitioners of blissful crashpop in the U.S. today, I'll eat my copy of Archer Come Sparrow. They came to the East Coast on their first tour last summer; we saw them twice in three days. Both shows were a real sugar rush in a way few bands are anymore. Even as appealing as their self-titled album and Sour Grass EP are, they take on entirely new dimensions when you see drummer Heather Dunn pounding hell from her kit, or when they do the instrument-switching routine like almost any good K band.

Tiger Trap are Rose Melberg plays guitar and sings most of the lead vocals; Jen Braun plays bass and sang one particularly intense song — an as-yet-unrecorded ode to an unnamed person, teeth clenched, eyes shut. Angela Loy provides the echoey, surfish guitar lines, and Heather, as I've already said, plays a mean drumkit. We interviewed Jen and (briefly) Angela after their gig at NYC's Under Acme. Well, Jen Matson and Chin-a Panaccione asked most of the questions; Mike just kind of held the tape recorder and threw in the occasional non-sequitur...

OK, I guess our first question is what was your inspiration for starting a band?
Angela: We've always wanted to be in bands, I guess. All of us.
Jen: My parents were musicians, and they tried very hard to discourage me because they thought it was horrible and everybody does drugs and awful stuff...
Angela: And they were right!
Jen: But I think they're kind of impressed by what I've done, I think, now that we've gone so far.

What kind of music did your parents play?
Jen: Bar-band-type stuff, cover tunes...but my dad was the only one who was really in a rock band. My mom just sort of played piano.

Angela, what's the secret to your guitar sound?
Angela: Lots of reverb. I play it on 10. I like that sort of surfy sound a lot?

How did you end up on K?
Jen: Rose was pen pals with Allison from Bratmobile, and then she heard that Rose was starting a band. So Rose got invited to the International Pop Underground Convention and she went under "Tiger Trap," but we hadn't formed yet. She just went up and played a song by herself, came back, and then we started the band. Calvin (Johnson) had seen the name "Tiger Trap." That's how he got the title of the song on You Turn Me On — he thought it was null and void, so he was just gonna use the name. Our first show was supposed to be with Bratmobile; they wanted us to set up a show in Sacramento so they could come and play. Well, Slim Moon from Witchypoo heard about us, so actually almost the first show we played was with them. Slim went back and raved about us, which was totally cool. Then Bratmobile came down, played with them, they said some good things about us, and then Calvin came to see us play. During the summer we do these Renegade shows — it's like, you go to a parking garage, plug in, and play until someone tells you to shut up. He actually saw us at one of those and invited us up to Olympia.  The first time we went up, we recorded with Pat Maley. That was just a get-to-know-each-other practice recording — we didn't really do anything with the recordings except for one song, "Sweetheart," which is on Sour Grass.

Did the Four Letter Words single come from any of those sessions?
Jen: The split single with Bratmobile? That came from a really small recording with this guy Jason Dezember. We recorded like three songs in his basement. We didn't really plan on using it for anything, but we got invited to be on the single and those were the only recordings we had.

Did you know one another before the band?
Jen: It's funny: Individually we all knew each other in different ways. I went to school with Angela, worked with Rose and met Heather at a party. Rose and Angela also knew each other; they've been friends for a long time, used to play together.
Angela: Rose and I played in high school together.
Jen: There's a small group in Sacramento that's broadening, luckily. Right now there are some bands in Sacramento that are really cool. of which I'd like to name one: Pivot. They're not actually from Sacramento, they're from Vacaville. They have an EP out that's excellent, kind of Fugaziish. There's also a band called Moist and the girl, the guitar player, was at the show tonight. (to Angela) Can you think of any others?
Angela: Degas Fly (OK, I know I'm butchering this—ed.)
Jen: Oh, they're excellent! They just made a tape and if anyone can get a hold of that, it's great.
Angela: I'm going to play clarinet on their next recording.
Jen: Our friend Tatiana is in the band; it's like old jazz, but really good. As far as all-girl bands, there's not that many. You'd have to go to the more suburban areas, like the band I was in, which I don't want to mention (she says while making a satanic hand symbol). It was totally a metal band. I didn't enjoy playing the type of music they were into. They were into Metallica.
Does that experience lead to any tension within Tiger Trap?
Jen: Rose is definitely more poppy; she brings out the poppiness of the band. I like to think I'm more of a harder player...'cause I like to play faster.

Plus Heather's a hard drummer.
Jen: Her main influence is Aerosmith. There's nothing like watching her. Angie and I like to rock sometimes, too.

All of you are pretty versatile on your instruments; did you teach yourselves to play?
Jen: Before I even knew Angela, we took bass lessons from the same teacher. He was rad. When I first started out I wanted to play with guys, just 'cause I thought I had something to prove. When I started, girls weren't even "cool." Now it's a little more acceptable, maybe a girl bass player or...but when I first started it was kind of hard being accepted.

Did you see the Sassy review?
Jen: "Predominantly female?" I was wondering what they were getting at. I mean, "predominantly" means "mostly." So there's somethin' in the band that's not quite right! We know our genders, so...
Angela: The one cool thing they did say was "boy-free," which was great.

Any good tour stories?
Jen: Well today, driving here, we were going through the Holland Tunnel. As we came out of it, it was stormy, it was pouring! And we were totally lost, we couldn't get correct directions here and we'd been driving four hours already. The van is not in good shape. We were about ready to go through a red light...then the brakes went out and we swerved and almost crashed right into this Lincoln Continental. So by the time we got here, we were shaken.

Are you on your way home after this?
Jen: Yeah. It'll probably take us another 3 1/2 weeks to get home. I look at my itinerary every day and I can only remember where I'm supposed to be the next day.

Anything else you'd like to add?
Jen: I'd just have to get all sappy and talk about missing my friends and stuff.

Is that what the song you sang tonight is directed at: friends?
Jen: See...see, tonight during "Chester," I all of a sudden started to cry. It's because all my friends back home, mostly the guys in Pivot — because my boyfriend's in that band — they totally psych us out and hype us up. I looked out and I wished they were here to give me some support right now. Because I just didn't feel like the show was going too well, even thought it might have been. I'd like to be able to connect with the audience a little more, but I couldn't see anyone, the lights were so bright. So I actually began to cry during the song. The song I sang is called "Mummy." I wrote it about someone in Sacramento, but it was someone who doesn't even deserve to have a song written about him. So every night I think of something different that makes me upset, and it just makes me upset that I was crying in the middle of a song!