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The third album by Mortisha's Secret has a long title -- "Third Time's a Charm (to Get This Monkey Off My Back)."
It's not nearly as long as the wait between releases.
The husband-and-wife duo of Todd and Missy Shay will celebrate their first album in 22 years with a show Saturday at the Holiday Bar in Warren.
Missy Shay had a short answer for what took so long -- "Life happened."
They moved to California for a while. When they came back, they had a lot of songs they'd written there as well as others that predated the move.
New gear also made the album a reality.
"We got a recording program for the computer," Todd Shay said. "It's just so nice. Finally, I had everything that I always wanted.
"The technology is incredible. The effects are better, the guitar sounds are better, the drums are absolutely better. We program all the drums and everything, and the drum on the computer is so amazing. The samples are just light years beyond what we used to have available to us."
They liked the capabilities of the new equipment so much, the Shays decided to re-record a couple of previously released songs, "Now" and "It Hurts to Be a Browns Fan."
"We were able to make it sound like you're in a stadium," Missy Shay said of the latter, and her husband added, "We stacked the vocals. You listen to it, and it sounds like there's eight different tracks of backup vocals on it."
And the song still is timely since the Browns have the same number of Super Bowl appearances and wins as the team had when it was written more than 20 years ago (that would be zero).
Song inspirations come from a wide range of places. "Green Death" and "St. Patty's Night" are originals they play in their Irish set. "She Hates Pink" was inspired by a conversation among the women Missy Shay worked with complaining about being forced to wear pink by their mothers when they were growing up. "Freaks" was inspired by Todd Shay watching Tod Browning's 1932 horror movie of the same name.
"I've been waiting for, like, 30 years to record that song," he said. "I think that's my favorite song of the whole record. It was so fun to finally get that out of my mind and off the paper and record it. I was just thrilled with that."
The most recent song on the album is the rocking title track, and it was the album's title before it was a song.
"We came up with the title of the album, and then I said, Oh, well, we got to have a monkey song on there," Missy Shay said. "So I hurried up and started writing it, and it came together really quick."
The song and the cover aren't the only monkey appearances. Instead of a CD, Mortisha's Secret is releasing the album on vinyl and as a flash drive lodged inside a rubber cartoon monkey.
"I was so excited when we started ordering the vinyl and the USBs," she said. "'Oh we can make a shape? It has to be a monkey.' The product came out, and I was more than thrilled with it."
Because of the space limitations on an LP, the vinyl version includes 10 songs while the flash drive contains 12. The Shays just found out the vinyl won't arrive in time for Saturday's release show, but the flash drive version will be available and the band will take preorders for the vinyl at the concert.
And there should be opportunities to purchase the album at future shows. While Mortisha's Secret had scaled back performing live starting with the COVID-19 pandemic, the duo plans to start playing more live dates.
The Shays, who've been married for 31 years, became a couple both professionally and personally around the same time. They met at karaoke.
"I don't know if you remember Sir Bentley's (on Mahoning Avenue NW in Warren), but he was sitting on the edge of the stage and he was singing 'Roxanne,'" she said. "'Oh, he seems pretty good. I think I'm going to ask him to sing my favorite song with me,' which was then 'Endless Love.' We got up and we sang it great. We thought, 'Oh, wow, this is cool, you know?' Then we just started talking, and then everything kind of came together all at once."
If you go …
WHAT: Mortisha's Secret album release party for "Third Time's a Charm (to Get This Monkey Off My Back)."
WHEN: 9 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: Holiday Bar, 2124 Elm Road NE, Warren.
HOW MUCH: No cover charge.