Recipe For 100-Proof Tea Party

Jeff Martin is a Joy Division fan from way back.

That would be the same Jim Morrison-soundalike frontman for Canada's platinum-selling, Middle Eastern-influenced rock outfit The Tea Party.

Not Led Zeppelin. Not Deep Purple. Joy Division. Really.

"For me Joy Division was kind of where it was at. And early Cure," says Martin, who grew up in Windsor.

"I mean that's what you did when you were in high school. You rebelled against all the rockers, 'cause all the rocker kids were still wearing their Deep Purple T-shirts and Led Zeppelin stuff. And then there's a paradox too, because I was a closet Led Zeppelin fan because I wanted to play real guitar."

Which all helps to explain why The Tea Party's third album, Transmission, would be named after a Joy Division song and contain sampling and electronic sounds.

"It's always made me laugh really, when the band first began, the comparisions to Morrison, because The Doors were never something I was really into," says Martin.

"But (Joy Division frontman) Ian Curtis was actually compared to Morrison a lot, as well. And it was like, 'Oh, okay. I'll take it because of that.' "

Transmission is in stores today, which doesn't give fans much time to hear the new material prior to The Tea Party's appearance at Saturday's Edgefest at Molson Park in Barrie.

But Martin is just glad the album's coming out at all.

"Our last record, The Edges Of Twilight, didn't really even come out in the States," says Martin. "In America, they were used to breaking pop acts like Vanilla Ice and s--- like that." Needless to say, The Tea Party -- rounded out by bassist-keyboardist Stuart Chatwood and drummer Jeff Burrows -- have changed their management and are now signed up with Toronto-based SRO, home to Rush and Van Halen.

The band, which is on EMI in Canada, has also switched to Atlantic in the U.S.

So when it came time to record the songs for Transmission -- in Martin's loft in Montreal -- the music-making process had to be affected.

"It was a very complex time," says Martin. "It was very chaotic. Very dark, very frightening, because we were just really unsure of where the band was going, where our place was. And the one thing that we decided to do in order to keep our sanity was just to keep writing. So essentially, we just quit the scene for a year and a half. We just buried our heads in the sand."

Martin recently buried -- or rather submerged -- his entire body last week while filming the soon-to-be-released video for Transmission's first single, Temptation.

The Toronto location was the old molasses tank at the Gooderham & Worts Distillery, closed down in 1990.

"The second day, a lot of it was shooting my vocal performance," says Martin. "And what this director decided to do was put me way deep in these catacombs where the barrels used to be stored and he filled this thing with water and basically the funk of 1,000 years came off the walls."

To make matters worse, Martin had to perform a surprise show in Thorold the day after his long, mucky and wet video shoot.

"We had an unannounced rehearsal show just to start working the bugs out for the live show," says Martin with a laugh. "And literally I was working some bugs out of a lot of things."