Local Juno-award winning band MonkeyJunk launched its new album Sept. 24 after a productive season of jamming and songwriting, including creative sessions at the Centretown home of chief tune-smith and multi-instrumentalist Steve Marriner.
The new album, titled All Frequencies, aims to build on the success of MonkeyJunk’s first two records, the second of which landed the group a 2012 Juno Award for Blues Album of the Year.
But Marriner says the group has branched out from its blues roots since starting out in 2008, and this album is a reflection of that.
“Blues is a big part of our influence but what we play is not traditional blues at this point,” says Marriner, 28.
“Our first record had a lot more of those influences, but with this new record it’s much more rock and roll. Over time you just get creative with music and explore and it just comes out that way.”
The album contains 10 songs, nine of which were written by members of the group itself.
wwwwMarriner says he and the band’s other two members – guitarist Tony Diteodoro and drummer Matt Sobb – strived to create a truly “original sound” in this new album.
“We took more time writing the songs and crafting them a little bit differently,” he says.
“There was more emphasis on making songs have choruses that you can sing along to rather than just having a whole bunch of instrumental breaks.”
All Frequencies includes a soft-sounding track called Once Had Wings, composed by the group in the living room of Marriner’s Centretown apartment, near the Rideau Canal.
Following the album’s release, MonkeyJunk performed some of its new songs during a Sept. 28 launch party at Mavericks bar in the Byward Market.
Marriner, who grew up in the Glebe, says he enjoys playing at home in front of many people who supported him and the band from the start.
One of those people is Liz Sykes, president of the Ottawa Blues Society, who says seeing MonkeyJunk perform is a personal point of pride for her.
When the group was just six months old, the band members competed in and won the OBS’s “Road to Memphis” competition, where they then placed third out of close to 100 blues bands internationally, says Sykes.
“They have very close ties to the (OBS) because we feel we helped them get on the road to where they are now,” she says. “They’re my guys. They’re my favourite Canadian band and probably my favourite blues band.”
MonkeyJunk also performed in Ottawa this past July during Bluesfest, to which the group has been invited many times in the past, according to the festival’s executive and artistic director Mark Monahan.
He says the band excels in live performances.
“It’s always great when you see an artist from the community who is continuing to grow and improve,” Monahan says.
“Not only are they getting better but you start to see an audience finally starting to take notice of them.”
Linda Longchamps, who runs an Ottawa music listings website called The Hubbub, called MonkeyJunk “the most well-known blues band in Ottawa.”
She says the band’s new album reflects its own style of blues, which leans toward the rock and soul genres.