Updated 2026
The Bass as a Complete Language
Monique Ortiz arrived in Boston in 1996 already committed to an unusual center of gravity: singing while playing fretless bass. She had begun performing solo the year before, occasionally joined by a drummer, and carried that stripped-down approach into Bourbon Princess. Drummer Dave Millar joined the earliest version; cellist Jonah Sacks later expanded the low-register conversation.
Bourbon Princess became Ortiz’s first major recorded body of work. Stopline introduced the project in 1999, and later configurations brought her into the extended creative family surrounding Morphine. Original Morphine drummer Jerome Deupree and Either/Orchestra leader Russ Gershon contributed to the group, while Morphine saxophonist Dana Colley produced and performed on Black Feather Wings. Dark of Days and the solo album Reclining Female carried the work forward.
Ortiz then formed A.K.A.C.O.D. with Colley and drummer Larry Dersch. The album Happiness placed her songwriting and bass beside Colley’s baritone saxophone, extending Boston’s low-rock vocabulary without imitating Morphine. The project arrived during a collapsing record business, but the recording endured as a distinct document of three musicians building from tone, space and physical vibration.
After relocating from Boston to the Austin area, Ortiz created Alien Knife Fight with drummer and multi-instrumentalist Michael Howard. The duo pulled from progressive rock, blues, jazz, desert space and the accumulated language of her earlier bands. Slide bass, pedals, organ, percussion and voice made two people sound larger than the format suggested.
One Way preserved Ortiz in its artist roster as the story expanded from Bourbon Princess to A.K.A.C.O.D. and Alien Knife Fight. No separate One Way release page has been recovered, and this restoration does not invent one. Her importance to the site lies in the connection itself: an independent Boston artist whose projects crossed into the Morphine family and continued well beyond the original label-era page.
On April 10, 2026, Ortiz released Rise of Nones, her first full-length record in nearly twenty years. She composed, arranged and performed all ten tracks, with additional collaborators including Dana Colley on “Feels Like I’m Missing.” The album returns the focus to Ortiz under her own name while drawing every earlier chapter into the room: bass weight, electronic atmosphere, post-punk tension, art-making and a voice that never required a conventional band around it.
