Thought I would give you a quick update on things.... We have an artist endorsement deal with...... A big thank you to Bjorn Gladwell at Rossetti for Sorting it all out. We also have a full endorsement deal with Michalik Design Company. Petr the CEO makes the best Wah wah pedals I used! The depth of the Wah is phenomenal, and the construction is unbreakable!

Thursday the 26 of February see’s us fly out to Rome to start an Italian tour...

And February the 28th the ‘Tygers Sessions, The First Wave,’ will be released through Skol Records and available from our merchandise shop at all the shows.

On the new album front, one song finished and eleven to go! We are planning now, for studio time in the autumn. We are SO excited with the new material it’s going to be a MONSTER album!

The next blog will be a, ‘On the road with the Tygers,’ with all the usual inappropriate photos and stories!

See you at the shows..........x

Somebody’s ready........

Hi fantastic rock ‘n’ roar people, how the hell are you? I trust you all had a good Christmas and New Year? Well here at Tyger Central it’s all systems go again! Lots of shows, interviews, planes to catch, ferries to sail, tour buses to ride and recordings to release! It’s a BIG year once again. While we were having a few Jack Daniels beside the open fire, emails and phone calls were made to secure a few new endorsement deals. I am proud to now endorse and would like to introduce you to: This is a French company that only makes strings. They are American made and they are ‘Tygertastic!’ I use the 0.09 to 0.42 gauge, they last longer, stay brighter and feel very comfortable to play!

If you play guitar or bass, you’ve got to try these strings. Honestly they are great, I could use any make I wanted but I choose to use these because they are excellent. This is their web site address, have a look......
www.skullstrings.com 

Also in we have just secured an excellent endorsement deal with

Kirk the main man, who owns and runs this company, is a very old friend of mine. Having lost touch with him for some 15 plus years we were reunited via a mutual friend a few weeks ago. To my surprise, Kirk makes plectrums (amongst other things, check out his web site.) And what was I looking for.....you guessed it, personalised plectrums! So after a few phone calls and emails, very shortly these little beauties will be on sale.....

Keep checking back, lots more coming your way..........x

Dateline........Thursday the 20th of November 2014.

Venue...........The Cluny, 36 Lime Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
Sales Status...

So to the last show of the year, and what a way to finish, playing in front of a bunch of mad Geordies! Jack flew in that morning from Florence to London Stanstead, then caught the high speed East Coast train service up to Newcastle, where I picked him up from Central station at 15.45. The Cluny (tonight’s show) is an established venue on the rock circuit, and favoured by many bands as a first choice gig in Newcastle. I asked our friends Fist and Avenger to come and join the party as well. With both bands being around the same time as us (late seventies, early eighties) and also from Newcastle, everything seemed to fit together really well.

Fist were first up at 19.30, and delivered a brilliant set of blues/hard rock songs. Avenger followed at 20.15 and rocked hard as they always do.

And so at precisely 21.30.....The Tygers hit the stage!

“Night of the Crazies" Tour- The Logistics 1st December 2014 This is what I am thinking... So, load up and set off to Gav’s. I just know he’s gonna be jumping with joy at the timings! Saturday November 1st 23.00 Gav to Mick 23.30 Mick to Richieroo 00.15 Richieroo to Craig 01.45 Craig to Dover. 07.00 Arrive P&O Ferries..... 08.45 Dover to Calais In Europe, plus 1 hour 11.15 Calais to Verviers 14.30 Arrival at hotel, Verviers, Belgium 16.30 Route 66 (venue) Load in. Sunday November 2nd 12.00 Verviers to Beerse 13.45 Arrive at hotel 17.30 Beatnik Club (venue) Load in. Monday November 3rd Day Off 12.00 Beerse to Most CZ 19.00 Arrive at hotel Tuesday November 4th 17.30 Klub Voko (venue) Load in. Wednesday November 5th 12.00 Most to Prague 13.30 Arrive at hotel 17.30 Novachmelnice (venue) Load in. Thursday November 6th 10.00 Prague to Berlin 14.00 Arrive at hotel 17.30 K17 (venue) Load in. Friday November 7th Day Off 12.00 Berlin to Essen 21.00 Arrive at hotel Saturday November 8th 15.30 Turrock (venue) Load in. Sunday November 9th 12.00 Essen to Rotterdam 14.30 Arrive at hotel 17.00 Baroeg (venue) Load in. Monday November 10th 11.00 Rotterdam to Calais 14.30 Check in Calais Port In the UK loose 1 hour 15.25 Calais to Dover 16.00 Dover to Featherstone 21.00 Featherstone to Norton 23.00 Norton to Chester-le-St 00.00 Chester-le-St to South Shields 00.30 South Shields to Shiremoor 01.30 Big Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz’s!

So the hard work starts....Now you may not think what I am telling you is hard work, you probably think quite the reverse, and it’s all glamorous. Meeting people, sightseeing, wining and dining, but a working hard rock band finds little time for the niceties in life. We see the inside of a tour bus, the inside of a dressing room, a venue, a hotel room and the occasional bar! Well in the Tygers case, a lot of bars! But do we complain, NO, because it’s a choice we all make and we wouldn’t swap it for the world! As you can see from the itinerary we set of from my place and arrived at Gav’s for 23.00. Then after all the pickup’s we drove nonstop through the night, to make the ferry from Dover to Calais, to start our adventure!

Onward towards our opening night in Verviers, Belgium at the fantastic Route 66 venue. There’s always a warm welcome from the owner and his team, and it was straight down to business loading in and setting up the stage and lights to our requirements. Bearing in mind we had just driven from the North East of England with only the ferry ride as down time tonight’s show was always going to be about our true Tyger family determination and grit to get things right no matter what! And guess what? It was one of the best nights of the tour! Nearly a sell out, with one Tyger crazy audience in attendance. Thank you 66, we’ll be back....

On to the Beatnik Club in Beerse, Belgium. We played here last year to a capacity crowd on a Sunday night. The club is only small, maybe a 150 max, but what a bunch of crazy cats they are!
Our overnight stay for this one was on a farm nearby, and the accommodation is truly 5 stars. How cool is this, we even had our own donkey and horse! Of course you don’t have to believe me so here is the proof!

Then we had a long drive to the Czech Republic. Up through the clouds to the border and into a land time has almost forgotten! What a fantastic place and the people are amazing, kind, friendly and courteous.

Some of the tour posters....

Germany next, and the long drive to Berlin to the famous K17 venue in the city centre. Berlin is such a vibrant, hussle bussel city we all love it!

Berlin to Essen and another sold out show, sharing the event with Threshold our friends from the UK.

And the final show was in Rotterdam with Kissing Dynamite. A co-headliner and another great night....Can we say a MASSIVE thank you to EVERYONE who came to the shows. We love you and salute you, roll on next year’s show’s........xx
Here are a few random shots from the tour!

 Till the next time..............

Hi again people, another show, another blog! This time our journey takes us to Great Yarmouth, where the Legends of Rock festival took place. It was a four day event and we were playing on the last day, Sunday the 19th of November with the festival headliner, Black Star Riders. I love these kind of festivals, they attract such a wide verity of musical tastes!

To get to Vauxhall Park, Great Yarmouth from Newcastle upon Tyne is a good 6 hour drive in anybody’s Reliant Robin! Three hours of that was on ‘A’ roads with a speed limit of 40 mile an hour or less! On arrival we were greeted with a very warm and friendly welcome, and handed far too many (not really!) drink passes, do they know us that well?

GORIZIA
22nd October 2014

Ok, where to start? This was indeed a whirlwind trip to say the least! First things first though, before you even board a plane to jet off anywhere you need a rehearsal!

Here we are in one of our modest rehearsal rooms, we have two, how flash is that! Putting together the live set for Go4Rock. This photo is one of Mick’s famous “selfie’s.” Ok the next thing to do is to agree the final set list. I’m usually on the ball with these and print off set lists for every show but with a really busy schedule leading up to the festival I forgot! So back to the old fashioned method before computers and printers....the felt tip pen! There is an intro CD which precedes the opening number of the set. We all love this piece of music, it really sets the mood. If you are coming to one of our shows this year I would be really interested to know what you think? The set on the left is in my best hand scribble, and was done about half an hour before show time! So let me tell you the travel arrangements...these are only for the brave hearted, (or stupid!) Friday afternoon, travel to Craig’s near Doncaster to stay the night. Up at 01.30 to be on the road for 02.00am to drive to London Stanstead airport for a 05.00am check in. Flight time was 07.10am to Bologna, Italy. The flight was late and we landed at 10.50am. Jack was there to meet us. We crammed all our guitars and bags into the car and then drove three and a half hours north east to Gorizia, arriving at the hotel around 15.00. The sound check was penned in for 16.00. Our cars duly arrived on time and we were whisked off to the festival site. Wow, what a beautiful setting. It was an old town square which had been transformed into an amazing festival site.

Thanks to Daniele for the photos. A thunderstorm was forecast, and although it rained for 10 minutes while we sound checked that’s the last we saw of the wet weather. The air temperature was in the high twenties! After the sound check it was back to the hotel by 18.00 for a brief... (SSS) Shit, Shower, and Shave! Our pickup was arranged for 22.00. Back at the festival the evening had been filled with some great bands, particularly the band on stage when we arrived called “Fake Idols” I genuinely thought they were tremendous and hope to see them out on the circuit very soon. After a half an hour change over it was “Tygertime!” 23.15, and all systems go......Cue the intro CD.

The 2000+ strong crowd were truly fantastic, how do they know the words to all the songs? Even I don’t!

1 hr and 35 minutes later the final thank you and bow

We give you our fantastic audience....

Afterwards, meet the fans.

Of course it would be terribly rude not to have some Gorizia style Italian pizza, wine and a glass or two of beer to finish off the night!

We arrived back at the Gorizia Palace Hotel at 02.40am with a wakeup call set for 04.30am to drive three and a half hours back to Bologna airport for a 10.00am flight back to London Stanstead. Then up the long road to Newcastle upon Tyne, finally arriving home at 18.00. You do the sums, I’ve got it to 8 hours rest/sleep in 48 hours! Why do we do it....?
‘Cause its ROCK ‘n’ ROLL don’t ya know!”.........xx
We would especially like to thank Sara Piciulin and her crew for a Tygertastic time while we were in Gorizia and for treating us like kings of their jungle! We salute you! Grazie, Grazie.

As our tour bus slowly rolled out of my home town with just me at the helm, my mind was trying to figure out just what kind of a trip laid ahead. 06.30am on a warm, sunny morning, to be honest things were looking pretty ok! The Road Trip. Friday 25th 07.00 Robb to Gav. 07.30 Gav to Mickey 08.10 Mickey to RichieRoo 08.50 RichieRoo to Craig 10.30 Craig to Simon 12.00 Simon to Dover (Ferry Port) 15.30 Arrive Dover 16.40 Dover to Calais 19.10 Calais to Essen (247 miles) 23.30. Arrive at Hotel (Hotel Essen) Saturday 26th 08.30 Essen to Brande-Hornerkirchen (250 miles) 12.15 Head Bangers Open Air The Hell Trip. Sunday 27th 09.10 Brande-Hornerkirchen to Calais 17.10 Calais to Dover 18.00 Dover to Grantham 21.00 Grantham to Featherstone 22.30 Featherstone to Norton 00.00 Norton to Chester-le-street 00.40 Chester-le-street to South Shields 01.20 South Shields to Shiremoor 01.50 Home! And all was going swimmingly until we missed the bloody ferry from Dover to Calais by 2 minutes! Oh well time for a few beers....

A quick ‘selfie’ courtesy of Gav. Taken in the tour bus as we were gathering our Ambush on the way to the ferry terminal. When we arrived in Calais, Craig and Gav forgot which deck we were parked on and we had to wait till the whole ferry emptied, (even the old ship’s rat got off before us!)

So on to Essen, where we were staying for the night, to break the long journey. After four and a half hours sleep we were up and off on the road again as we still had a four hour drive to the festival site and had to check in by twelve.

Once we arrived in the backstage area we unloaded and ....you guessed it had a beer! What a fantastic atmosphere, even better than when we played this festival back in 2010. We met up with our friends from Anvil, Lips and Rob who were playing the day before.

Showtime was fast approaching and we were all getting ready to ROAR at Headbangers Open Air once again. All lined up at the bottom of the stage stairs waiting for the intro to start, when Mickey appears from the dressing room shouting, “Who’s got the bus keys, my stage clothes are still in there!” I blame myself of course, we should have hired a butler to dress the bairn!

And then this.....what a fantastic sight to greet us as we walked out on stage, even a Union Jack! Near enough 3000 fans greeted us ready to rock! We of course would like to say a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who watched, sang, clapped and head banged with us. You are the reason that makes us the Tygers! Another fantastic festival over and back to the apartments we were staying. Fantastic breakfast the next morning....

Freshly made farmhouse bread and butter! Nothing went to waste, I can tell you! And then homeward bound, just another 900 miles between us and home! Thank you HOA for your hospitality....See you soon!

In October we have shows in Great Yarmouth at the Legends of Rock Festival, with the Black Star Riders head lining. BSR front-man Ricky Warwick and our bass player, Gav, were members of the Almighty. They toured and record together extensively. Check out the other bands on the bill - this is THE festival to come to! November’s European dates: These following are confirmed to date, with more shows to be added…

November 2nd.........The Beatnik Club...........Beerse, Belgium
November 4th..........Club Voko.....................Host, CZ.
November 5th..........Novachmelnice............. Prague, CZ.
November 6th..........K17..............................Berlin, Germany.
November 8th..........Turock.........................Essen, Germany.
November 9th..........Baroeg.........................Rotterdam, Holland.
November 12th........Reithalle........................Rastatt, Germany.
November 13th........Legends of Rock..............Olching, Germany.
November 14th........Star Club........................Uster, Switzerland.

Soon to be confirmed/announced is:
November 20th - The Cluny - Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
And… sometime in March/April 2015: 10 shows across South America.

“Roar for me Brazil!”

Also in the pipeline is the recording of the third in the ‘Sessions’ series with, ‘Crazy Night Sessions.’ More details to follow.

Even more exciting news ….. our next album is underway! E-mail us with your album title suggestions and you may be given a VIP package to one of the shows!

So are we going to see you at some point this year? I very much hope so .... Remember our ROAR is bigger than our bite and we ALWAYS like to socialize. Come and be part of the ever-growing AMBUSH!