We sat down with Good TIger guitarist, Derya Nagle, formerly of The Safety Fire, about life in his new band, the unique challenges they faced when starting a new project and just why on earth 2016 has seen some of the most incredible political landscape changes in a very long time.

Good Tiger are a relatively young band so to speak. Being the brain child of former members of some pretty big bands such as Tesseract and The Faceless, they’ve had more than enough experience on the scene. Having come straight over from the states, they’ve just completed a run on the Dance Gavin Dance anniversary tour, which is only their second UK tour.

We catch Derya – or ‘Dez’ – in the Worlds End, Camden for a swift pint and a chat before they tear up The Underworld below us, and of course the first thing we want to know is how the tours going so far. “It’s going great!,” he tells us. “We’re playing to fans of a different era supporting Dance Gavin Dance,” which isn’t surprising as Dance Gavin Dance have been around for a decade now. He continues “It’s great to be hitting new audiences and playing some more intimate venues then we’ve maybe been used to with our old bands.”

Now if you’re not familiar with Good Tiger then you might be surprised to hear that the guys actually launched their debut album, ‘A Head Full of Moonlight’ following an incredibly successful crowdfunding scheme. We wanted to know just how nervous they were going ahead with it. “We weren’t confident to begin with,” Dez tells us. “We almost thought it was going to be the end before it began, we were so reluctant and nervous that when it launched I couldn’t even look at it.”

luckily, they smashed their target, raising nearly $45,000 in 18 hours. “I started to get calls from my buddies congratulating us all on how it was going, and that’s really the first I knew how great it was. It was a really good way to announce our band and we’re all still so grateful to everyone to this day.”

Following the release of their debut album, the band went out on tour playing some pretty special venues. We asked Dez what his personal favourite was. “There was this one crazy show in Manhattan, New York that was oversold but the atmosphere was just incredible,” he continues. “But there’s an aura around some cities like London, New York etc that others just can’t live up to. Even if the venue is entirely different, I’ve gone from playing Birthdays in Dalston to Koko in Camden but both have had incredible energy that you’d struggle to find in some other cities.”

Getting back to the venue we’re currently sat above, Dez says, “I haven’t played The Underworld in 5 years so it’s great to be back here.” We ask him if he has any pre-show rituals before playing a show. “Not me, sometimes I don’t even pick up a guitar until just before I go on stage. Our drummer has an hour long warm up he does before every show, though.”

Moving the topic along, Good Tiger are a band based half in the UK and half in the US, so we asked for Dez’ thoughts on the recent presidential election. “To be honest I just think it’s a shame that people feel he [President-elect, Donald Trump] is a better choice,” he continues. “For me the key to democracy is education, we need to be educating people in a way that enables them to make informed choices but I’m not in these peoples shoes so I certainly don’t judge them either way.”

One thing that’s certain is that 2016 has seen some of the biggest divides in opinion. “The left and the right are pushing further away from each other and it’s tough to second guess what might happen”

What we can try and second guess though is just what the future holds for Good Tiger following this tour. “Well we’re going back in to the studio for the whole of January,” he tells us. “We’re just finishing writing some bits and pieces, and then we’ll be recording our second album.” Sommething that is very exciting is when Dez tells us that he’ll be “striving for the most unique, refined riff.”

On that note we let Dez head downstairs to get set for the show. It’s been a wonderfully inciting look at the band labelled a ‘supergroup’, and we look forward to seeing just what they have in store for us in 2017.

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Head on over to the bands Facebook page for all things Good Tiger, and ‘Headful Of Moonlight’ is available now.