Wild Love Tigress Is the Funk Band You Need in Your Life

Lost Lake Lounge is about to overflow with funk.

Wild Love Tigress will blow the club's lid off with its signature classic funk on Saturday, January 18, when the Denver band takes the stage to celebrate the simultaneous release of its sophomore album, On the Prowl. After teasing the album with singles "If I Can't Run" and "I Plead the Fifth," this will be Wild Love Tigress's first release since its self-titled debut in 2022. But in the meantime, the group has regularly played several shows a month, bringing its raucous energy to venues around Denver and the Midwest.

That energy is potent throughout On the Prowl, too, which is sure to catch new fans who dig the sounds of the ’70s. The album kicks off with a bombastic opening track, "Don't Tread on Me," which hits listeners like a freight train and swoops them up for the funky trip to come. With the song expertly crafted to fill every second with dynamic bass lines, horns, vocals, drums and guitar, it's surprising to learn it was written while the band's founders, Sam Miller (lead vocals/rhythm guitar), Keaton Baker (bass) and Anthony Felts (vocals/lead guitar), were still in their senior year of high school at Denver School of the Arts in 2012.
It isn't surprising that the band's moniker was chosen by some teenage guys, though, since it came from the top-tier comedy of millennial youth: Anchorman — specifically, the scene after Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) and Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) finally get together and he calls her his "wild love tigress."

"Sam hit me up and was like, 'Hey, do you want to make a band?' We went up to his cabin and drank a bunch and watched Anchorman as eighteen-year-olds. ... And us, in our infinite wisdom, were like, 'If we ever start a band, we should call it Wild Love Tigress,'" Felts recalls, laughing at the memory.

"When we got a show, we were like, 'Okay, well, we'll do this and then we'll think of another name later," he adds. "But it stuck."

Thank goodness it did, because Wild Love Tigress is the perfect moniker for a group that takes the stage wearing tiger stripes.

Despite the outfits, Wild Love Tigress has really grown since 2021, when it revved up live performances after Felts returned from college. "We weren't really active the first five years, technically," Miller says. The band now includes the three founders alongside vocalist Kat Clark and drummer Jake Fernstrum, as well as a brass section with Nicolas Kileen on tenor sax, Isaac Rey-Pederson on trumpet and Andrew Gomez on baritone sax.
Before that, Miller, Baker and Felts had been leaning more toward blues music. Then, after they'd been playing house shows, a woman approached them and suggested they move toward funk. "She was starting a record label — or she said she was starting a record label," Miller recalls. "She said, 'I really think it's time for a funk-music revival, and if you write some funk songs, we'll sign you to our label.' So we wrote a bunch of stuff.

"But I don't know if she knew what she was doing," he continues, "because the record label 'fizzled out.' But then we had a bunch of songs written, so we're like, 'We might as well roll with this.'"

Now Wild Love Tigress is prowling all around the Denver area, stretching its stripes across the city at venues including Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom, the Fox Theatre in Boulder and Lost Lake; it's also hitting up festivals, and toured through the Midwest last summer. And since the band started, it has played Edgewater's BBQ & Blues festival every year. "We're trying to push out a little further," Miller says. "People seem to like it!"
Since its self-titled debut, the band has taken pride in doing everything independently, "partly because no one will do it for us," Felts jokes. "It's nice to be totally in control of what we're doing. We have no one to answer to creatively except ourselves."

"None of us are really social media people, so learning the promotion stuff has been kind of a challenge," Miller adds. "But I do think it's nice that now all our marketing stuff has genuine personality."

Wild Love Tigress carries a big personality on stage, too, with Miller's expressive vocals carried by waves from the brass section before Felts breaks out a masterful solo. Each member shines as much as the other, concocting a cohesive and streamlined quality that underscores the collaborative talent. Backing vocalist Kat Clark notes that the band is often put on the same bill as jam bands, making Wild Love Tigress a "pleasant surprise" for those in the crowd who haven't heard it before.

"It's unique — it's not like your typical jam-band stuff, and I think that's what people are expecting to see a lot of the time," she says. "And it's a lot more complex than your typical jam-band stuff, but people like it. They like to dance to it and start nodding their heads. It looks like a pleasant surprise a lot of the time: We start playing, and they're like, 'Oh, shit, these guys are tight.'"
"For some reason now, when bands say they're funk, they're usually jam bands," Miller adds. "And we're not. We're really straight, 1970s funk."

That's clear throughout On the Prowl, which the band will perform from at Lost Lake Lounge. You won't want to miss "Mark It With an X," which includes a duet between Miller and Clark, or "Milk & Honey," which is heavy on the blues, charged up with searing saxophone and guitar solos. It's impossible not to tap your toes to the songs, much less headbang. And it's impossible to choose the standout tune; they're each swelling with soul and grit, original writing and sheer visceral talent. However, Felts can explain why "If I Can't Run" and "I Plead the Fifth" were chosen as singles — because they give the best feel for how Wild Love Tigress sounds live. "They really killed it on stage," he says. "Definitely highlights of the live show."
And Wild Love Tigress has even more songs on the docket. The band is already looking to record and expand its body of work, as well as bring in more musicians to make a five-piece horn section for live shows.

"I think the biggest thing is that our arrangement and the collaborative nature of the band has just continued to increase, retaking songs that Sam, Keaton and I have been playing for a decade, but they sound nothing like the horrible recordings we made back when we were eighteen," Felts says with a laugh.

For a band as tight as Wild Love Tigress, the future looks bright. The members hope to play some larger local theater shows this year, and then go even bigger.

"One of my goals for this band is to do Film on the Rocks," Baker says. "Maybe for Anchorman," he adds, as his bandmates laugh. "I think that'd be perfect."

Wild Love Tigress, 8 p.m. Saturday, January 18, Lost Lake Lounge, 3602 East Colfax Avenue; tickets are $20.55. Polysanto and the Ephinjis are also on the bill.