Tastemaker in the RGV: Over Ten Years of Tiger’s Blood

Photography by: Stephanie Hauser

It’s a rare brisk night in downtown McAllen. A cool breeze blows over the held-together fence separating us from street traffic. Decorative blue lights dance over the patio as soft fusion jazz hangs in the air. Patrick Garcia is cheery and jovial as he discusses his early days in the DIY (do-it-yourself) scene of the Rio Grande Valley. 

We are sitting on the patio of The Gremlin, which along with the Historic Cine El Rey and The McAllen Performing Arts Center are just some of the many RGV venues he regularly books and promotes events. But right now, he’s thinking about his old days. “We would throw shows in houses and garages and in abandoned classrooms all we want,” he says, discussing the importance of local venues like the one we are sitting in. “But at some point, with shows like that, the resources are gonna get exhausted and it’s gonna be a liability. Those spaces are a blast. But it’s also spaces like this, with licenses and insurance and all that boring adult shit. We kind of need them, too. I call them home bases.”

Don’t mistake Garcia’s cavalier attitude towards professionalism as juvenile. He knows firsthand why insurance and licenses are important. “There’s nothing wrong with house shows or throwing shows in random spots, they are crucial parts of the scene,” he said. “You also want to be as efficient as possible. You want to be as careful with the resources of time and self-care, and have a space that is supportive of you and can sustain longevity.”

After 15 years of booking shows in the Valley, Garcia has made a name for himself as the preeminent promoter of punk and indie bands in the area. His production company

Tiger’s Blood, named after his favorite Raspa flavor, has distinguished him as a local promoter that can consistently attract touring artists to the regional scene, which helped contribute to its growth for over a decade.

Garcia was born in Brownsville, Texas, in the late ‘80s, where he fell in love with metal and indie music. He said the music inspired him to play guitar and start local bands around town. At 16, he moved to McAllen, Texas, where he attended Sci-Tech, a magnet school that attracted people from all over the Valley.

“You would befriend someone from McAllen, or Weslaco, or South Padre Island. It was a really eclectic group of students,” he remembers fondly. “They would do a battle of the bands every year. A lot of the bands that would play would drop originals (songs) and there was this really popular band called the December Drive. They were like gods. They opened it up for me.”

Following the band led Garcia to Trenton Point, a quinceanera hall that rented out space for local bands to throw shows. He said the crazy nights of punk and hardcore shows were life-changing for him and he soon became interested in the culture he was becoming part of.

Eventually, the hall was shut down after some shows got out of hand. But the seed had been planted in Garcia’s mind, and he wanted to be part of the scene.

Seeing the bands and the culture of the underground scene stayed in his mind until years later when a friend of his was promoting a show for the December Drive.

Garcia noticed the promoter was dealing with logistical fires, so he offered to help.

“The sound guy canceled the day of the show. It was a nightmare.” 

Hours before the show, Garcia offered to make some phone calls. He got in touch with a friend who had a sound system and could run the sound. Then he arranged for another friend to work the door. The show was a success and Garcia said this was when he acquired a taste for being part of event production. 

“That was the first time I felt like I was helping,” he says with a smile. “In my head it was like, ‘I helped make this happen.’ I don’t want to say the rest is history, but that was when I started getting more involved.”

It was around 2010 when Garcia saw bands, his own included, were not always treated fairly. Door numbers did not match up and promoters often left before paying bands. That was when it clicked in his head. “Why don’t I take throwing shows more seriously?”, he wondered. This was when Tiger’s Blood was born.

He started shooting off emails and designing flyers. He contacted venues to set up dates for his friends’ bands. Before long, he was booking touring bands from all over the country. He decided to start setting goals. He reached out to agents of bands he admired and asked them to book shows in the Valley. Soon, his efforts were paying off, and Tiger’s Blood was on the uptick.

Garcia knew the kind of bands he wanted to book would not be a significant draw at local clubs, but he felt if he could make one person out of 30 stand back and say wow, he had done something special. Then he got the opportunity to book Of Montreal, one of the biggest indie bands of the 2010s and part of the Elephant 6 collective out of Athens, Ga. The show sold out at Cine El Rey with 500 tickets, and Tiger’s Blood had made a connection with the national indie scene.

Around 2011, Garcia decided to take a year off from booking to focus on his band. The break did not last long. “I felt a void,” he said. “There were plenty of pop-punk bands coming through, but this sound I enjoyed, I guess you would call it ‘indie, which is a weird term, this sound was just not popular in the area at this time. There was a band I had wanted to book for a while called Mr. Twin Sister. To me they are my favorite contemporary band. Eventually, they said yes to a show.” 

Working with bands at the national level became a routine for Garcia and Tiger’s Blood was gaining traction in the Valley. Soon he was booking nationally recognized artists like Mitski and Ted Leo; the scene was growing around him. He would see regulars at the shows and gained a reputation as an elder in the local scene.

In 2016, just after Trump was elected president, rising Japanese/American artist Mitski reached out to Garcia. All the political rhetoric about immigrants being criminals and drug dealers got under her skin, and she wanted to do something to help combat the political narratives. Garcia had friends working with a nonprofit called the South Texas Human Rights Project which provided water jugs in the Falfurrias, Texas, area where dozens of migrants seeking a better life were dying of dehydration. He set up a benefit show for the nonprofit with Mitski headlining. She flew down on her dime and played the show for free, raising thousands of dollars for the project. She left after the show telling Garcia, “Thank you for letting me do this.”

Things continued going well and shows were happening regularly. A new wave of younger artists were emerging and forming bands in the scene. Then, in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic reached a fever pitch and everything was shut down until further notice. Pending gigs were canceled and Garcia was forced to take time off. However, what could have been a major wrench in the gears of this machine he had been building for over 10 years ended up being a much needed break during which Garcia said he recharged himself. 

Today, he is cautiously thinking about the future. As Tiger’s Blood continues to gain momentum, he is constantly thinking about what makes the scene work and what his contribution can be. “Six to 10 years ago,” he says, “I was in this headspace where I wanted to keep events much smaller, more intimate. But three or four years ago, I said I wanted to do a show at the McAllen Performing Arts Center. It’s a beautiful room. Why am I limiting myself? I tend to book the artists before they get big, why can’t I book the artists when they are big now? Why not try for these larger, grander scale events?” he thought.

While the bigger venues can be more stressful, they also tend to have bigger payoffs. These allow Garcia to put more resources into his smaller passion projects. In July 2022, Garcia booked Chilean artist Mon Laferte to perform at the Performing Arts Center. The show was a massive success; since then, more and more opportunities have come to him. A few months after the Mon Laferte show. Tiger’s Blood booked Mexican indie artist Kevin Kaarl to perform at the center. The show sold out months in advance. “It felt great,” Garcia said.

Garcia now likes to mentor, and learn from, the next DIY promoter as he books bigger and bigger shows. Plenty of up-and-comers admire Tiger’s Blood and look to Garcia for advice, “Many of the young promoters reach out to me,” he said. Garcia is happy to help them review contracts and iron out details for their shows. “Somebody educated me, somebody took me under their wing. I want to be that for the younger folks. And maybe in a year, maybe in five years, who knows, maybe they’ll be doing shows at the Bert Ogden Arena because they are much smarter than me. But if I can help guide them in any way, talk about the mistakes I made, then I’m there for them.”

But for now, he still enjoys putting on events at local clubs and bars. With bigger shows, he cannot help but feel excited about the future. “The hardcore thing, the DIY thing, being independent is still a part of my ethos,” He says with a smile. “But there are younger people who are doing it better and they deserve their time. I’d rather not take up space in the scene. They deserve their time. The kids are alright. They’re killing it!”