Steve Marriner is excited to bring a little MonkeyJunk and a whole lot of blues back to Lethbridge for two shows at the Geomatic Attic, Oct. 3 and 4.
“We’ve been doing a lot of touring, same as usual. We played the Calgary blues festival, which was the closest we got to Lethbridge,” Marriner said from the road just outside of Regina.
Since their last visit to Lethbridge, 
the Juno award winning Ottawa based blues/rock trio released a CD “Moon Turn Red,” and recorded their fifth album “It’s Time To Roll” for Stony Plain Records, which will be released, Nov. 4.
“It‘s technically our Cd release tour even though it doesn’t come out until Nov.4. But we’ll be playing all the songs from it and we’ll have some copies of it,” he said.
The Alberta tour includes a lot of dates in the same city, including three in Calgary including the NineSix for Even Strength music festival and at Park 96 Community Centre and two at the Ironwood and the two in Lethbridge at the Geomatic Attic.
“It’s nice because we don’t have to move around so much. We do enough of that. And on our day off we’re going to Banff because our drummer Matt Sobb’s birthday is then and he loves the mountains,” Marriner said, noting he is driving across Canada with his dad on this tour.
“He’s never driven across the country before. I spend so much time away from home and away from family, it’s nice to be able to have some father -son time. The other guys are flying. Matt has some family business back home and Tony (Dietodoro, lead guitarist) has been in Edmonton for a week. His partner is there, so he likes to spend as much time as he can with her,” he said.
They are taking some time for themselves in preparation for an extremely busy year in support of the new CD.
“We’re really proud of it. We did it a little differently. We wrote, recorded and mixed it in two weeks. We’ve taken a year to do the other CDs,” he said.
“We wanted a little more spontaneity and we wanted it to be a little more raw,” he said adding the music goes back to some of the band more blues and rock and roll influences.
And the trio, which has always been adamantly against having a bass in the band, decided to add some to the new music.
“And I’m even playing some bass guitar on it. Looking back, we have a different perspective. A lot of our songs could have benefitted from having bass on them. But the band’s identity used to be the band without a bass. But the band‘s identity is strong enough to be changed,” he said, adding they still aren’t using a bass on tour.
“We’re just adapting the new music to the three -piece,” he said.
“He’s a long time friend . what we’ve done as worked, so we decided why change it. Though we had Gordie H Johnson and David Wilcox on the last Cd, which was amazing., this is just us. Except we got kelly Prescott to sing an a couple of songs,” he said.
They are pleased to be with Stony Plain with the new CD.
“They also picked up our first album and re-released it. They’re like a family,” he said.
“And Holger Peterson is just fantastic. He’s probably one of the most helpful people of all. He grew us and has supported us. Without telling us we need to do this or that. It’s great to have a guy like that in your corner,” he said.
He is excited about the next year.
“We’re going back to Europe and we’re playing more in the United States. We were just in las Vegas to play the Big Blues Bender . So we’re getting some momentum there.”
The past year has had a few other highlight for Marriner.
“I got tapped to be the host for the Maple Blues Awards. So I’ll be the Billy Crystal of the Maple Blues,” he chuckled.
“And I played harmonica on Coin James’ new album. I grew up listening to him. He’s super generous about letting people step out. He gives lots of solos,” he said.
He is looking forward to being back in Lethbridge.
“We‘ll be playing a lot of the new record. and probably have a slightly different set each night to keep it fresh for us. Or we may just read the crowd and go from there. It will be nice to be back in Lethbridge. last time I went walking in the valley by the train bridge and it was beautiful,” he said.
MonkeyJunk plays the Geomatic attic Oct. 3 and 4 at 8 p.m. each night. Tickets cost $37.50
