Starring Matt Ferranti. Photo by @jasonmyersphoto

WANT THE PERFECT BLOODY MARY EVERY TIME? MATT FERRANTI CREATED A BUSINESS AROUND HIS OWN MIX, TIGER BLOOD

NASHVILLE SINCE 2013

When musician Matt Ferranti isn’t performing his own music or on the road playing guitar for rising superstar Brett Young, he’s running a pretty sweet business called Tiger Blood, his own bloody mary mix.

“I moved to Nashville and started bar backing downtown,” he says. “After working downtown with all the drinking, bloody marys the next morning became my thing,” he continues, recalling the arduous shifts working until 5 in the morning. “I remember this place called Past Perfect downtown and they had the best bloody mary and I was so pissed when it closed. I was like, ‘Well dammit, I’m just gonna do my own thing now.’”

For Matt, the transition was almost deceptively easy. He already had numerous bartender and bar owner relationships from his work, and soon was supplying 15 establishments with the Tiger Blood mix.

“It’s a base off my mom’s chili recipe,” he says of the beverage. “It’s all natural high end product.” Matt is a Michigan native and a loyal Detroit Tigers fan, his collaborator is a Bengals fan, and they now live in the home of the Predators. In homage, began to call it Tiger Blood, and the name stuck.

“It’s kind of how if you write a song, you start to have a little baby product, and then it’s seeing those become successful is what validates you as a creative.”

Around the same time that the brand was gaining traction, a new artist Matt was playing guitar for named Brett Young began to take off. Matt hit the road hard, and continued to grow Tiger Blood along the way. “We were on tour with Lady Antebellum all year and I was just like well, I’m gonna bring a case of bloody mary mix each weekend just to give it out,” he says. “There were a couple times where they had it out at their Club LaBellum bar for people to drink during the day, which was awesome.”

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Though running a blossoming business while on tour with one of the hottest artists in country music sounds like the dream, it was constant persistence and determination in the face of music industry uncertainties that brought Tiger Blood to fruition. “I remember playing shows at the Listening Room having a panic attack thinking how I was going to pay for that beer that I ordered at the bar,” he says. “That taught me a reflective lesson of persistence. The last thing you can do is quit. You have to dig deeper in yourself, even when you don’t necessarily believe in yourself, to keep going, and that’s defining.”

Matt grew up instilled with the belief in multiple revenue streams as a source of security, especially in the gig-to-gig model of the music industry. “To maintain that is a tricky thing, but it’s definitely been a big thing that’s helped me,” he says. “It’s kind of how if you write a song, you start to have a little baby product, and then it’s seeing those become successful is what validates you as a creative.”

Connect with Tiger Blood on their website here, and look out for their soon-to-launch web store.

Follow them @tigerblood615