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Tiger Lewis Is Learning That Being Enough Doesn’t Mean Becoming Someone Else
- Vaneza Gutiérrez Wyckoff
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
On Mr. Right Now, the Southern California singer-songwriter Tiger Lewis turns insecurity, vulnerability, and grunge-groove into an honest portrait of finding yourself.
Article Contributed by Vaneza Gutiérrez Wyckoff
There’s something wonderfully contradictory about Tiger Lewis. His music draws from the warmth of classic soul, the grit of grunge, and the groove of R&B, yet beneath that genre-bending sound is an artist deeply interested in one of the most human contradictions of all: wanting to be enough while constantly questioning whether you are.
For Lewis, that tension became the backbone of his latest EP, Mr. Right Now. In a recent conversation with Sound Check Mag, the Southern California-based singer-songwriter opened up about the insecurities, influences, and unexpected self-discoveries woven throughout the project.
If Mr. Right Now were a film soundtrack, Lewis knows exactly which movie it belongs to: Swingers.
The late-'90s Los Angeles comedy follows characters stumbling through vulnerability, reinvention, and the pursuit of something bigger than themselves, themes Lewis says resonate deeply with the EP. “I pull so much from that movie, in terms of the character itself,” he explains. “There’s this humor in the vulnerability that it explores so well.” That vulnerability runs throughout Mr. Right Now. On “Mrs. Kisses,” Lewis tackles the feeling of being unworthy of love, while the title track explores contorting yourself into something you think someone else wants.
“Leaving Me Lonely” continues that thread, while “Runaway” offers an escape from it all.
“‘Runaway’ to us is the culmination of the whole project,” Lewis says. “It’s almost laughable [seeing] the ways you’ve contorted yourself, and you’re like, ‘Okay, I have to get up and leave these ideas that I had about myself in order to feel accepted.’” The songs weren’t always as psychologically deliberate as they might appear in retrospect. Lewis wrote “Mrs. Kisses” last summer without fully understanding what he was processing until after the song was finished.
“I don’t know if I truly understood what I was writing until after it was written,” he admits. “A lot of the narrative writing can be intentional, but a lot of it is so deeply ingrained in my psyche that I don’t even really think about how it’s coming out.”
That realization ultimately became part of the EP’s larger lesson.
Lewis believes self-doubt can have value when it is kept in perspective and surrounded by people who understand the artist’s vision. “I think self-doubt in doses is healthy,” he says. “I teeter on the side of self-doubt as opposed to being a huge ego.” For Lewis, that uncertainty can actually make the music better. It leaves him open to the best melody, lyric, production idea, or creative choice rather than becoming attached to his own ideas simply because they came from him.
That philosophy extends into the sound itself. Lewis describes the EP’s songs as occupying different points along a spectrum of sensitivity and masculinity. “Too Easy,” for example, leans heavily into grunge-groove with its three-chord foundation and guitar-driven production, while “Mr. Right Now” takes on a sleazier, classic soul-inspired character. “I think the contradiction is where I make the decision,” he explains. “If there’s a certain kind of narrative, the sound has to be completely different.”
His influences stretch accordingly, from Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Al Green, and Bobby Womack to Jimi Hendrix, Sly & The Family Stone, and Anderson .Paak. Lewis says he developed his voice by emulating the singers he loved, particularly the soul artists of the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Before recording, he takes that same intentionality into the studio. He warms up his voice for an hour and listens to a playlist of singers he admires before stepping behind the microphone. Once he starts recording, however, analysis has to disappear. “If I’m in the middle of the booth and I get goosebumps by how everything is coming out, I know I’m doing a good job,” he says.
“Things have to move me.”
That search for feeling also defines Lewis’ approach to performing live. His formative experiences at San Diego’s Che Café and Queen Bee’s taught him that the stage is ultimately about creating a shared experience, not showcasing virtuosity. “Simplicity is more impactful than virtuosity, a lot of the time,” he says. “Serving the audience is the way every single time.” It’s fitting, then, that the lesson Lewis ultimately took from making Mr. Right Now is also about letting go of performance: there is no achievement that suddenly makes you worthy.
“You are what you are every day, and it is enough,” he says.
For his next chapter, Lewis plans to push further into the grunge side of his sound, with heavier, more distorted tones. But whatever shape that evolution takes, the core remains the same: music that allows vulnerability to exist alongside confidence, without forcing either one into a box.
After all, maybe finding yourself isn’t about finally becoming the person you thought you needed to be. Maybe it’s about realizing you never had to become them in the first place.
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