Kiss the Tiger, Dan Tedesco

media release: While we know winter still has a ways to go, we’re looking forward to a great season back at The Barn. The booking team has been working hard to curate another stellar mix of musical magic to bring you a spectacular summer.

So first up, we thought we’d make this St. Patrick’s Day extra-lucky by hosting our Season Announce Show featuring Minneapolis’s Kiss the Tiger. They gave us a great session last summer, so we’re positive they’re going to light up the Slowpoke Lounge with their straight-up rock ’n roll.

Tickets for this bash are on sale RIGHT NOW, so get yours and be the first to know what’s in store for the coming season. We know you’re gonna dig it the most!

Cheers!

The Sh*tty Barn Crew

P.S. For those that may not know, The Slowpoke Lounge is in the heart of Spring Green, at 137 W. Jefferson Street, and features a full bar, tasty cocktails and great live music. Do yourself a favor, and check them out!

more on the bands:

At a time when the world seems intent on pushing us further inward and further apart, Kiss the Tiger are here to rattle our bones and bust us out of our cocoons with some good old fashioned rock and roll.

Fronted by the magnetic and disarming Meghan Kreidler, who draws on her background in theater to break the fourth wall between audience and band with her righteous fist pumps and high kicks, this is a band that doesn’t just play. They combust. And watching them set the stage ablaze, it’s hard not to feel that tension that’s been built up in all of us these past few years slowly release, too, like a collective exhale set to ratcheting guitars, buoyant bass lines and Kreidler’s perfectly pitched screams. Theirs is a clean-burning fire. Hell, you might even call it healing.

“We want to give the audience an experience that is visceral and jolts them awake—creating community in that moment,” Kreidler notes. “I think that’s a really nice gift you can give people: Just let go.” 

Over the past few years Kiss the Tiger have set the Twin Cities ablaze, and there’s nary a club, block party, park amphitheater or backyard that they haven’t transformed with their commanding live shows. And their rigorous performance schedule has paid off: The band has never sounded tighter or more certain of its mission. Kreidler is backed on stage by her longtime partner and creative foil, Michael Anderson, on rhythm guitar, plus lead guitarist Bridger Fruth, bassist Paul DeLong, and drummer Jay DeHut.

Their sets are often accompanied by sing-alongs to regional hits like the hard-knocking “Motel Room,” their ode to pandemic loneliness, “I Miss You,” or their pleading anthem “Hold On to Love,” all of which have become instantly recognizable to locals thanks to regular airplay on the tastemaking public radio station 89.3 The Current. (“Hold On to Love,” specifically, spent a whopping nine weeks at No. 1 on The Current’s Chart Show and was inducted into the Chart Show Hall of Fame.) 

Their latest album, Vicious Kid, is a tour de force through the band’s increasingly sophisticated songwriting, which is handled jointly by Kreidler and her longtime partner and the band’s guitarist, Michael Anderson. There are plenty of moments where they embody the spirit of late ‘70s new wave punk, like in the ridiculously fun “Who Does Her Hair?” But they have started weaving in softer textures, too, like the crooning and feminist alt-country ballad “Grown Ass Woman” or the skeletal and simmering “Out of My Mind.” Unsurprisingly, Vicious Kid was named one of the Best Minnesota Albums of 2021 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune and highlighted as their longtime critic Chris Riemenschneider’s personal favorite that year.

In addition to exploring a wider variety of sounds and genres, Vicious Kid also features some of Kiss the Tiger’s most thought-provoking lyrics to date. In “Grown Ass Woman,” Kreidler pleads, and then demands, that she be allowed to cut her own path in this world—a message that me to draw another breath/But angel won’t you leave me alone,” she sings and sighs. “Even near the end not a foe or a friend/Is gonna tell me what to do.”

In addition to headlining their own barn-burning shows, Kiss the Tiger have also been tapped to open for prominent acts like Lake Street Dive, The Suburbs, Ike Reilly, Jackie Venson, Black Joe Lewis, and Daughtry. They have also brought their act on the road to open for Philly’s Low Cut Connie, Austin’s Emily Wolfe, and fellow Minneapolis indie favorites Bad Bad Hats. Given how quickly they’ve won over the Twin Cities, Kiss the Tiger are poised to roar into more markets soon. Their transcendent, heart-forward rock and roll is right on time. -Andrea Swensson

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Dan Tedesco

My story is…..that I have no story, per se. I come from a solid family. It’s a point of pride. I grew up in the far west suburbs of Chicago.  The only serious addiction in my life, if you’d like to call it that, has been with music. Let me bring you up to speed.

Piano at age 5.

Violin at age 9.

Guitar at age 11 after hearing Eddie Van Halen.

And that, as they say, is all she wrote.

I’ve been madly in love with it ever since.Growing up my ears were fortunate enough to be treated to a fairly eclectic musical mix: The Beatles, Dylan, Paul Simon, James Taylor, The Band, The Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, CCR, Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty. Even a healthy dose of Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. A friend in my neighborhood used to make cassette mixes for me: The Who, They Might Be Giants, The Police, The Clash. I missed the grunge period, and it wouldn’t be until nearly a decade later that I’d discover the power of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Once I found the guitar, things focused in a touch. It wasn’t unusual for me to fall asleep at night to the sounds of guitar wizards like Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson. And the random Van Halen record was never far away.

Then there was the jazz period. Wes Montgomery. Joe Pass. George Benson. Charlie Christian. John Coltrane. Elvin Jones. McCoy Tyner. The things I learned from those guys. Man. It’s everything really. The spirit of jazz. The freedom of it. That’s been it’s great influence on me.

But I was always a rock ’n roll kid. Pete Townsend more than Pat Metheny. And, ultimately, I craved power chords over the complex harmonies of jazz.

High school was a weird time. I straddled the jock world, playing baseball, and the music world, as a member of the high school jazz band. Most mornings, after being dropped off by the bus, everyone would hang out in the lunchroom before first period. Not me. I’d head straight to a room adjacent to the school’s band rehearsal hall, writing music on the computer. Like I said, it was an addiction. Outside of school, I jammed in a duo with one of my best friend’s, who happened to be a fantastic drummer. We wrote all kinds of stuff. Lots of instrumental music (queue the Satriani). Recorded various demos. But neither of us sang. That made it hard to play out. And most of the other kids were interested in the classics: Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Stones. They weren’t interested in what we had going on.

So, like many of my heroes, I was a bit of a social outcast. That, if anything, was and has always been my struggle. Everyone has at least one. And I found my comfort, security and confidence in the world out on the fringe, populated by the misfits. The world of rock ’n roll.

Let Me Play My Old Guitar, and sing for you my song

Let Me Play My Old Guitar, and sing for you my song

I promise you my friend

I Will Not Do You Wrong

– DT