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Denver funk band Wild Love Tigress formed when the world was about to end…or so people thought. It was 2012, and many were grappling with how the Mayan Long Count calendar ended on December 21; in other words, the apocalypse was nigh. Did it matter that experts in Mayan culture pointed out that it didn’t mean that at all? It did not. It was the end of the world, and everyone was feeling fine.
So fine, in fact, that a student from Denver School of the Arts was planning an epic bash to go out on a high note — an End of the World house party — and asked fellow DSA seniors Sam Miller and Anthony Felts to perform, alongside bass player Keaton Baker. “That was the first gig we ever played, at that party,” Miller says, laughing. “That was where it all started.”
What they played at that debut — and the name of the band, too — actually comes from the Will Ferrell movie Anchorman. “Sam and I were definitely not super-drunk at his parent’s cabin when we were like seventeen,” Felts says with a grin. “There’s this scene where Will Ferrell and Christina Applegate get together, and he calls her his wild love tigress, and we paused the movie and agreed that if we ever started a band, we’d call it Wild Love Tigress. So when we did form a band and call ourselves that, we were an Anchorman-themed band. We did, like, a Jazz Odyssey, we played “Afternoon Delight. At that point, we’d written, like, one song.”
“Yeah, and we did a jazz instrumental cover of a Jay-Z song,” adds Miller. “And Led Zeppelin’s ‘Hot Dog.’ We were all over the place.”
Their funk-focus came about through an opportunity Miller had fr0k a woman his father knew. “She had this big idea that America was on the verge of a massive funk music resurgence,” he recalls, “and she wanted to sign a bunch of funk bands. She asked us if we wanted to sign with her new record label — she made it sound pretty legit.”
“But then their high-tech recording studio turned out to be in a tiny storage unit in a parking lot,” adds Felts, shaking his head and laughing, too.
“We figured out pretty quickly that they had no idea what they were doing,” says Miller, who says the project had pretty much fizzled out by the end of 2013. “But by the time we realized it wasn’t a real record label, we’d written a bunch of songs that we really liked. So we felt like we had some momentum. I don’t think any of us envisioned becoming funk musicians, really, but we’ve come to really enjoy it.”
But there were interruptions: First, Felts went to college at Chicago’s Columbia College studying Jazz, and Miller went to flight school (he’s a pilot in his day job), and the band didn’t play together much even though they never really disbanded. By the time Felts returned to Denver and Wild Love Tigress was getting back to steady gigs, it was just a few months before COVID hit and everything shut down. “So while we’ve been together since 2012,” Miller says, “we’ve really only been together and active and touring since 2021.”
That slow build has earned the band a strong local following, and a place on the more significant small venues in Denver, including the beloved Bluebird Theater. Wild Love Tigress has a headlining show there with Graham Good & the Painters on Friday, January 9.
“Wild Love Tigress was one of the main reasons I moved back after college, to make this work,” admits Felts, who in July 2019 moved in with Miller and one other bandmate in a house right off Willis Case Golf Course, a place Miller still shares with other members of the band. Felts has since moved out, in part to tutor aspiring musicians with his company, Full Measure Music. “We were able to hit the ground running pretty quick,” he says. “It was definitely worth it.”
That’s not to say it was easy. “For at least a year in COVID, there was little to no market for live music at all,” recalls Miller, “and then when things started opening up again, venues got hit up by every artist in town.”
Not only that, but Wild Love Tigress’ funk sound made it tough to pair up with other local bands who might have a complementary sound. “A lot of bands that call themselves funk are really jam bands. But we’re really a true funk band — horns and slapping bass and backup singers funk, you know?” Miller and Felts name a few bands that are local up-and-coming standouts — not only Graham Good & the Painters, but also Hand Turkey out of North Denver, and Greeley’s The Burroughs.
“And there aren’t really any venues in Denver that you’d really call funk venues,” explains Felts, though he quickly talks up the twin venues at Cervantes‘ on Welton. “But once we show up, and we do what we do, we almost always get invited back. And for some reason, we do great in the mountain towns too.”
“Funk music is just capital-F fun, you know? One thing we’ve always been pretty confident about,” grins Miller, with Felts nodding along, “is that if we can get up in front of a group of people? We can get them dancing.”
Wild Love Tigress will play the Bluebird Theater with Graham Good & the Painters on Friday, January 9. Doors open at 7 for the 8 p.m. 16+ show. Tickets are $32.54 including all taxes and fees, and are still available through AXS.
