Kris Huseby is a local musician, chef, syndicated sports columnist, and thong-sandal model. But he's probably better known for having pounded the drums with Fireside Social and currently fronting Bulletproof Tiger.
The latter band recently got back to South Florida from a small tour in support of its The Starving Hearts EP, an awesome five-song, handmade EP of experimental and intricate punk rock.
Check the cut for Huseby's answers to Crossfade's five questions.
Who are you, where do you come from and what current wine would you pair with sausages and grits?
I'm Kris Huseby I'm from Miami FL, as are Keka (our drummer) and Miguel (our guitar player/heartthrob) I play bass and sing in Bulletproof Tiger. Currently my palate is more accustomed to Jameson Irish whiskey, but if I had to pair a wine with sausages and grits I would definitely go with Franzia boxed blush, bag out of box of course.
How did Bulletproof Tiger come to be? Any backlash from Showtime?
Miguel and I had become really close friends and played together at the tail end of a band I used to be in called Foosball Death Squad, it was short lived but we hit it off musically. We had been hanging out and talked about starting a band that was going to be a two piece called SCHMOHAWK. All of the lyrics were going to be lines from Curb Your Enthusiasm and the songs would be no longer than one minute; that ended quickly. From the ashes of SCHMOHAWK rose the song "Conversations in Prague" after a practice at my house, we were watching East Bound and Down and Kenny Powers declared that he was a "fuckin' bulletproof tiger" and we decided that was the name. A few weeks later Migs and I were at Fox's on a Tuesday and Keka was there and I asked her if she wanted to be in the band and she shoved me and asked if I was serious, I said yes and that's that. No backlash, but there are a couple different Bulletproof Tigers out there...
For the genre, you have long songs with intricate arrangements, how is your songwriting process?
Our songwriting process for the EP was a long and time consuming one. We spent the better part of a year writing 5 songs. After the EP was done we made a breakthrough I guess, songwriting became easier and took less time. We also have a pretty bizarre language when we write; different parts of songs are described with onomatopoeia and weird names like vorus.
You recently toured, what towns did you hit up? How was the experience? Cool places? People? Groupies? Herpes?
We went out for three weeks; we played Tampa, Tallahassee, Tuscaloosa not really, Murfreesboro, Bloomington, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Orlando, Fort Myers, and West Palm Beach. It was possibly the most fun I've ever had. We met a bunch of awesome new friends and got to see some old friends who moved away. Driving through Tennessee was beautiful. We watched Keka whoop our friend Cheddar's ass in drunk wrasslin'. We had leg wrestling showdowns on the streets of Philly. Philadelphia was especially amazing, our friends in this rad band called Criminal Culture drove 16 hours straight from Tampa to play with us and their friends Very Magic. It was an amazing two days! Our best shows were Tampa at the Hold Tight House (those kids in Tampa get down), Chicago at Drrty Drrty Sex, a crazy basement show with incredible bands Fleshbroker, Dad, and The Informant.
Needless to say Chicago knows how to fucking PARTY, also Bloomington was fucking rad, our friend EJ set us up with a basement show with a really fun costume party! We swam in an abandoned limestone quarry in Bloomington. We ate a bunch of awesome food. The last three days of tour we were joined by Furious Dudes! Holy hell that was fun, those dudes are gold medal party animals. Over the course of those three days I saw two different Furious Dudes' Furious dicks, watched Tom Dice ground and pound a box fan on stage in Fort Myers after a few Four Lokos, Rene standing on top of his kick drum chugging a beer and then smashing the glass and finishing the song, pretty sick. No groupies other than JP but all kinds of herpes.
What's been the run so far on the handmade CD's? Future plans? More handmade stuff?
We have had three batches, the first was 65, the second was about 45 and we had 13 or so that were made at the Hold Tight House. Hopefully sometime soon we'll have some limited edition Abel Folgar/Patti HER CD cases. We have four new songs written and two more in the works. We are going to release some vinyl on Livid Records early next year January or February which will definitely be supported by a tour; hopefully we can play more than 11 shows this time around. There will be a personal handmade touch on the record we put out with Livid. We have a show coming up that's a benefit for a new all ages venue called The Miami Chumbucket, it's happening November 19th at The Legion.
