Vest brothers roaring ahead with Tiger High

Don Perry

The Vest brothers have combined the scope of their previous musical experiences into their current project, Tiger High.

In the last few years Jake Vest has turned up onstage in various guises: as a member of prog-pop band Augustine, roots-rock combo Bulletproof Vests, and backing a slew of local artists from Jake Rabinbach to Jack Oblivian. But more recently, Vest has been fronting a new venture, Tiger High.

Earlier this summer, the group put out Myth Is This, one of the more intriguing local albums of the year. Friday nigh , the band headlines a concert at the Hi-Tone Café.

For Jake and his brother and creative foil Toby Vest, Tiger High is the culmination of nearly a decade making music in Memphis.

The Marion, Ark., natives first gained notice in local circles with their expansive early 2000s pop outfit, Augustine, which later changed its name to The Third Man and released a pair of LPs before splitting up in 2007.

"Third Man was mainly Toby writing," says Jake. "I eventually started to write more, and it just didn't seem to fit with the band and I wanted to do other things," he says. "We were pulling in different directions. The band had become a completely different animal."

Shortly after the group's breakup, the Vests began playing and backing a wide range of musicians, working with the late Jim Dickinson in the one-off garage rock project Ten High and the Trashed Romeos, supporting Don Main of '70s power pop act The Late Show, and gigging with roots songstress Holly Cole and trash rocker Richard James, among others.

"With the Augustine/Third Man records, we were in a bubble when we made that stuff," says Jake. "We didn't know anybody in any music scene; we practiced every day and recorded all the time and were so focused on it. And then we suddenly met all these people who became our great friends, and it was like, 'Wow, I'd love to play with someone else. Well, then, let's play with everybody else.'"

That decision also timed with the launch of the Vest brothers Midtown studio, High/Low Recording.

"We've always been recording. We'd done a ton of home recordings in Marion, with really cheap crappy software on old computers," says Jake. "Even as kids we were recording into a two-cassette karaoke machine, learning how to overdub on that."

Today, High/Low is a flourishing studio, with Tobey handling most of the day-to-day engineering duties, and having recently finished albums for Memphis indie-poppers Bake Sale and Grifters-connected rock combo The New Mary Jane.

Following Augustine, Jake and Toby launched a new, more roots-pop oriented group, Bulletproof Vests. Though the band released an accomplished LP called Attack!, last summer Jake moved on to another new project with drummer Greg Faison.

With brother Toby soon joining as a multi-instrumentalist, veteran local drummer Greg Roberson coming on board and Faison moving over to bass, the band began working up material, and the newly christened Tiger High was born.

"We just started jamming and making up songs nonstop," says Jake.

Tiger High released its eight-song minialbum debut, Myth Is This, in June and added a recent summer single, "Riding the Wave" b/w "Hot Black Honda."

In a sense, the band seems to combine the scope of the Vests musical experience into one project.

"There's a '60s garage feel ... but even more contemporary influences like Animal Collective, Panda Bear," says Jake. "We wanted to bring that more ornate aspect back into the music like we had with The Third Man, but still keep the songs concise and tight like we had in Bulletproof Vests."

As the band prepares for its show at the Hi-Tone this evening, they've already finished work on a second Tiger High record, which will likely see release later this year.

"We're really focused hard on Tiger High: We're trying to stay focused on one thing for now, which is a rare decision for us," says Jake.

"I've learned from every single project I've been involved with, and that's been awesome. But we're having too much fun doing this right now."

Tiger High, Bake Sale, Data Drums

Friday night at the Hi-Tone Café, 1913 Poplar Ave. Doors open at 9 p.m. Cover is $5. For more information, go to hitonememphis.com or call (901) 278-8663.

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