Easy Tiger's stylized retro bar with warm orange backlighting, displaying shelves of liquor bottles next to a large built-in speaker. — Credit: Courtesy of Easy Tiger

After more than a decade shaping St. Petersburg’s nightlife, Matt Kaye and his partners are back with another project.

Easy Tiger, a hi-fi listening lounge and cocktail bar, opens next Thursday at 915 1st Avenue North, just a few doors down from the iconic dive bar The Bends, which Kaye opened in 2012.

The lounge is a marriage of mid-century modern style, good music, deep St. Pete roots and a thoughtful cocktail program curated by Chris Trull, who also designs drinks for Kaye’s other ventures, Wild Child and Slim Charmer.

Kaye’s long-time collaborator DJ Casper will program a mix of artists. Casper, who is moving on from Water Street’s Alter Ego to join Kaye at Easy Tiger, told CL that he’s excited to experiment with different music in St. Pete.

“St. Pete is a different animal than Tampa,” he said. “I feel like musically, we might be able to dive in a little more and just kind of take people on longer journeys.”

Specifically, Casper is looking forward to incorporating more vinyl record mixing into his DJ sets at Easy Tiger.

“We’re definitely not an all vinyl establishment, but we have a Hi-Fi system,” Casper said. “So I’d like to showcase that at first, really showcase beautiful music on a really amazing sound system.”

The musical experience, Casper said, has been pushed to the forefront of the planning process for Easy Tiger, rather than treated as an afterthought or finishing touch. He hopes the music will bring folks over from Tampa who don’t usually make the journey over the bridge, and bring out new listeners in St. Pete who might not be familiar with his music yet.

“Hopefully, at Easy Tiger, we can make this musical bridge to fill the gap,” Casper said.

Follow @easytigerhifi on Instagram for more updates.