Vocalist/songwriter/bassist Monique Ortiz is best known as the dark horse and front woman of the Boston modern rock quartet Bourbon Princess. A fine art graduate from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, she realized early on that she would rather create soundscapes than landscapes. In elementary school she began with woodwinds, drums, then bass by age twelve. The Ortiz household was always very musical, with her father singing along with Motown records and playing Latin percussion, her mother singing Patsy Cline, and her brother playing Pink Floyd and Rush in the next room.
Obsessed by the infectious grooves and moodiness of bands such as Roxy Music, Japan, Josef K, and Brian Eno, she took up playing bass in a string of local punk and new wave bands. On her sixteenth birthday she received her first fretless bass.
On June 10th, 1990, the weekend after Monique finished her Junior year of high school, her twenty-eight year old brother was found dead in a hotel room about 45 minutes from their home. Foul play was suspected but never proven. Monique was very close to her brother and his life and death play a huge part in many of her songs and her visual art. The loss of her brother, the lack of musical opportunities in Lancaster, and a fateful meeting with the late Morphine front man Mark Sandman, prompted her to pack her bags and move to Boston in 1996.
She began playing numerous solo performances (just vocals and fretless bass) at art galleries, basement and loft parties, coffee houses and other small venues. In 1997 she formed Bourbon Princess, performing with various drummers, as a duo for the first couple years. Her exceptional range, androgynous voice, along with her bleak, and surreal songwriting style has drawn comparisons to Nick Cave, Nico, Jim Morrison, P.J. Harvey, and Laurie Anderson to name a few. Her unconventional style of bass playing makes it challenging to categorize her. "I like the fretless bass to sound alive, to make it breathe the notes, chords, or percussion. Sometimes I make it sing with me. Other times, all I want is for it to be a pulse."
At live performances audiences are left smitten by her strength and sensuality, sharp wit, and her eerie and uncomfortably personal storytelling. Over the past eight years Monique has written, arranged, and produced three full-length Bourbon Princess records, played hundreds of shows, solo, and with a band (whose lineup includes original Morphine drummer Jerome Deupree, saxophonist and leader of Grammy-nominated jazz big band Either/Orchestra Russ Gershon, and guitarist /pianist Jim Moran), and was a guest vocalist in Orchestra Morphine and Twinemen. In 2004 and 2005 Monique was selected as a nominee for Best Female Vocalist in the Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll, and The Boston Music Awards. She performed in the prestigious Jeff Buckley Tribute show in Chicago, doing her own versions of "I Woke Up In A Strange Place", and "Moodswing Whiskey". Her songs have appeared in MTV's "Real World", and on various compilations, such as Respond 2 (along with Ani Defranco and Aimee Man), and Project Bread's "Get In Here And Eat". Monique has received much critical acclaim and has been featured in the magazines MIX, MAGNET, and GUITAR PLAYER among others. In October Monique released her debut solo cd "Reclining Female", on her own label OBSKUR VUDU, which was recorded in her home, without any other players, producers, or big studio gear. Currently she is in the studio, collaborating with Morphine saxophonist Dana Colley, and Concussion Ensemble / Binary System drummer Larry Dersch, in their new Low Rock trio A.K.A.C.O.D.
(Aside from music, Monique has always been very involved in animal welfare and has worked as a veterinary technician and shelter agent in animal shelters in Lancaster, PA and Boston, MA. She continues to paint and produce visual art.)