Even though he does around 200 shows per year and has dates booked months in advance, Tim Sigler keeps his focus on what is immediately in front of him and his band.
“It’s kind of crazy when you look back over at how many shows we do every year, so I try not to look at it that way,” Sigler said before his Ramble Jam 2012 performance. “I just look at one week at a time.”
He said if you ask his band members where the next show is, they may not even know.
“The nice thing about what we do is we’re always pretty close to the Twin Cities,” he said. “We don’t venture out too far, so we don’t have to worry about traveling and routing and things like that. We go home at night.”
Sigler admits it can be hard to keep up with a full schedule, and said the weekend of Ramble Jam was one of the band’s busiest weekends of the year with four shows booked within 24 hours.
A show in northern Minnesota was Friday night, then they headed back to a show in Bloomington Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m., then on to Ramble Jam at 7 p.m., and then of course the after party show at 10:30 p.m. at Celts Pub in Farmington.
“The key is, just don’t think about it, and just plow away – and have a couple five-hour energy drinks ready just in case,” Sigler said with a laugh.
Before forming the band that does around 200 shows a year, the Owatonna native was in several bands during his high school years, and also did some talent shows.
“I started playing guitar when I was 14,” Sigler said. “I caught the bug early on.”
He moved an hour north from Owatonna to the Twin Cities area and had a country band, but said the country scene at that time wasn’t what it has become today.
“I did a little more with rock and roll when I started,” he said. “But, my heart was in country music. I was able to get back into that pretty quick.”
He said his band mates have been with the Tim Sigler Band now for about five years.
“We’ve been playing a long time now together,” Sigler said. “I tell people bands age like dog years. It’s like five years is really more like 35. It’s an eternity. I feel like I’ve known these guys forever. They’re great and we look forward to playing on the weekends and we do have a good time. We don’t take our job too seriously, which helps.”
Sigler said the band just likes to have a good time with their music and their live shows.
“As long as people keep coming out, drinking beers, and singing along with us, we’ll keep doing it,” he said.
Sigler said, hands down, George Strait has been his biggest influence in country music. Sigler said he enjoyed the Garth Brooks movement of the early 1990s, and said it was just a phenomenal time for the genre.
“That got me listening to it, then I delved back into the deeper stuff – Waylon and Willie, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams. I have such an appreciation for the history of country music.”
He also cited Bruce Springsteen on the rock side as another musical influence.
Despite some of his biggest influences also being top songwriters, Sigler said he has stopped doing his original music in his shows – at least right now.
“Maybe I’m just too big of a critic on myself,” Sigler admitted. “I get too anxious about doing anything of my own right now.
Maybe someday I’ll do that again, but for right now, we’re just all about having a good time and playing songs people know and want to hear.”
He said one thing people will notice at a Tim Sigler show is that the set list is never the same.
“We probably have one of the biggest song lists in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest,” he said.
“We play around 300 songs, so each night, you’re going to hear different songs, and that’s key.”
He stressed how important it is to keep current with all the great new music that keeps coming out of Nashville.
“We’ve got great country fans here in Minnesota. Some of the guys and gals come out every weekend, and they don’t want to see the same show,” Sigler said.
One of the most recent songs the band learned was Ramble Jam headliner Lee Brice’s “Hard To Love.”
“We love the fact that we’re here with Lee Brice tonight,” Sigler said. “That’s the great thing about country music. As long as they keep coming out with great songs, we’re going to keep learning the new hits that people want to hear.
“Things are always fresh. It never gets stale.”
Sigler said a universal theme with country music is that it’s true.
“It’s true to life. It’s speaking to people in a way that hits home,” he said. “It’s part of our core, and I think we identify with the lyrics that are out there. That’s why I think it’s become such a big thing everywhere.”
More on Tim Sigler can be found HERE.
Ryan Gueningsman is at ryan.gueningsman@minnesotacountry.com or can be found on Facebook.