Issue date: 9/22/04 Section: Arts

There is a healthy community of songwriters here at Suffolk and one example is Daniel Striped Tiger, a four-piece group based right here in Boston.

Two of its members, or "legs," are students here at Suffolk: John Bogan, a Graphic Design major enrolled in the NESAD program and Jay St. Claire of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Its two other members, Sean Yeaton and Dan Madden, attend Salem State College and the Art Institute of Boston, respectively.

"We formed in Oct. of last year," said Bogan. "Jay and Sean started getting together, just playing guitar.

They came up with a song and asked me to play bass for it. Originally, Steve [the group's former drummer] was just going to sing, but he ended up playing drums also, because the other drummers we practiced with didn't work out. He also knew what sound we were going for, as far as what we wanted to sound like, so he worked out well."

The band's music can best be described as energetic. Bogan plays bass, with St. Claire and Yeaton on guitars. Dan Madden, the recently added drummer, also plays in a band called Pretty Faces, a Boston-based hardcore band.

Daniel Striped Tiger went on a tour of the East Coast this past summer. "The highlights were definitely Philadelphia and Washington D.C.," Bogan said. "Especially in D.C., because the music scene is so big but at the same time very accessible.

We got to meet Ian MacKaye [of Fugazi] and you could tell that even people involved in the bigger bands were still very much a part of the smaller scene."

For a relatively young band, Daniel Striped Tiger has a rather impressive recording history. They released a self-titled debut cd-ep, consisting of ten songs, as well as a four song seven-inch record entitled "The Desert Bird." Both releases were recorded at Dead Air Studios in Amherst, MA.

A new full-length release is in the works. "It's going to be a large, expansive project," says Bogan. We've been writing the songs differently.

We come up with little ideas and just get together and play through them. If we get stumped, we just stop and come back to it later."

The band's last show was on Sept. 15, in New Hampshire with Akimbo and Ampere. There are several tentative shows in the works for the upcoming months. John and Jay are also looking into possibly playing shows on-campus here at Suffolk.

To find out more about the band, visit them online at www.danielstripedtiger.com. There you can get information about upcoming shows, the members, and get a better feel for the band.

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