There’s nothing primitive about a rock band whose lead singer struts onto the stage wearing a bowler hat.
When you watch Kassidy Hritzuk sing into Dylan Losell’s face, hardly catch Josh Evans eye from behind this hair as he whirls his drumstick the for the last song of the set and Ryan Zeleznik shreds the guitar like all six strings might snap simultaneously, you have Lucky Monkey.
The band is made up of five very different people who are bonded by their love for each other, rock-n-roll and a tattoo on Hritzuk’s butt.
“I thought of (the name) Lucky Monkey as a comment on us as humans, how lucky we are to live these awesome lives when we seemed to evolve out of nothing,” said Losell.
“The beauty of our songs is that there is no (defined) sound. There is no generic defined genre. We are all pretty different and I think that helps portray us as people because we are very different as individuals,” said Evans.
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Their differences only become clear when they are off stage—Hritzuk, lead singer they call the diva, Zeleznik lead guitar, the boss, Losell bass, the grandpa and Evans on drums, the wild child.
The combination of their contrasting personalities flows together seamlessly when they bring together their compositions during rehearsal and then create a song that has teeth.
“We are always like, ‘I like when you do this or that,’ it’s influenced by all of us. So we basically jam the songs. Dylan will come up with a cool bass line and and Josh will mesh with that. Then Ryan will come up with something and sometimes it only takes an hour and we have a song. So it’s really organic,” said Hritzuk.
Although the band has serious goals about becoming full-time working musicians, they are not afraid to have fun.
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“Some of the lyrics are just a joke and we are intending them to be funny. We know what they are and we will wink at each other while we are playing them,” said Hritzuk.
Gearing up to release their sophomore album, the band looks to elevate its sound.
“We learned a lot from our first album. That really helped us going into our second,” said Evans. “We were able to put out a better product based on that knowledge.”
Lucky Monkey’s sophomore album, Nothing to Lose is available for pre-order now on its website www.luckymonkeymusic.com , and will debut at Doc Willoughby’s Pub March 29 with special guests Ancient Engines.
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