Jim Gillespie, Eric Gottula, Reed Shaw, Frank Skowronski, and Jason Steans
Influences
The list of people who haven't influenced us might be shorter than the list of artists who have, but I'll give it a brief stab and list a few bands that most of us agree on.......
Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, The Tragically Hip, The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, Neil Young, King Crimson, Rush, The Police, Phish, Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Elvis Costello, The Talking Heads, The Who, Ween, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, AC/DC, and, sadly enough, Van Halen. I'm sure there are a thousand others, but I've got less important stuff to do...
Sounds Like
Our origianl material (and our covers) have ranged from folk to funk to free form jazz (and I think we cover these areas fairly comfortably). All of the guys in the band just love music, so we really do tend to play in all different genres. Our primary direction is rock-based and kind of loud, but we are pretty much drawn to any kind of music that has strong energy.
The Mono Ensemble was born out of the transmorgification of Mother's Monkey, a band which was formed in the early nineties in College Station, Texas, by members Eric Gottula (vocals and guitar), Jim Gillespie (bass), Frank Skowronski (guitar), and Reed Shaw (drums). They moved to Austin in the mid nineties and played gigs until the late nineties before going on a short hiatus. When the band got rolling again, new members Ted Reck and Jason Steans joined the band, and the band started making some new recordings and coming up with some new material under the name The Mono Ensemble. Ted played trombone and keyboards, and Jason played bass with Jim moving to saxophone (although Jason soon started playing more guitar, with Jim and Jason sharing bass guitar duties in almost equal parts).
Ted eventually left the band, and everyone misses him.
Everyone in the band plays multiple instruments except Reed (who is awfully stubborn). Eric plays keyboards, guitar, bass, vocals, and percussion with the band. Jim plays bass and alto and soprano saxophone. Frank plays guitar, trumpet, and he used to play some congas (althoug not lately). Jason plays bass, guitar, some vocals, and occasionally some banjo. The songwriting for the band is a collaborative process, but Eric writes the majority of the lyrics and the underlying melodies.
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