Photo courtesy of Chango Malo Local favorites Chango Malo celebrate the release of their latest CD, Alas Poor Lucy with a release party Friday at Club Congress.

Chango Malo, Tucson's premier local rock band, are to officially release their first, proper album at an all-ages CD release party Friday night at Club Congress.

Although the band has released two previous EPs, The Business Of Fancy Dancing, and Septic Style, this will be their first full-length album.

Alas Poor Lucy was recorded in April and June of this year and features six new songs and six augmented tunes that were included on Septic.

The band is composed of guitarists Ian Philabaum and UA student Ryan Couch, bassist Justin Lillie, vocalist/UA student Quin Davis, drummer Jericho Davidson, and saxophonist David Clark.

Lillie said that the band has been chasing Lucy since their inception in August of 2000.

"This is kind of our goal culminated in this," Lillie said. "We've always wanted to do a full-length record and put everything that we could into it. This is the first time we ever got a chance to do that. We spent a couple thousand dollars to get it done and it felt good."

Chango Malo, which means "bad monkey" in Spanish, sees this album as a new day for the band.

"We're kind of looking at this like, 'This is where it all starts right now, because this is our first full length record.'"

Studio sessions for Lucy were done in Tucson, but like a Chango live show, were not all stone-faced seriousness.

"We had a whole lot of fun," Lillie said. "One of my favorite things about the studio time was that all our friends would come and visit us. And so we'd have maybe five, six, seven other people in there. And then we'd say, "Hey let's do a background vocal track." And you'd have six or seven of us up there singing with all our friends, you know? Which was real cool."

Lillie said that although things were fun, there was a greater purpose emerging.

"We were all having a great time," he said. "It was business, but I think we all were in the same mindset that, 'we're actually doing what we've always wanted to do here.'"

The band wants Alas Poor Lucy to stand separate from their live shows.

"I want people to listen to the CD," Lillie said. "I want people to really listen to it. I would love people to get into it and e-mail us and let us know what they think of it because I'm real curious. I really love criticism. I don't care if people tell me it sucks. I just want to know that people are listening to it."

Tomorrow night the band will get help on both indoor and outdoor stages from local Tucson music staples Good Talk Russ, The Jons, The Solace Brothers, Gat Rot, Scratching the Surface, The Retainers, Lloyd Dobler, and Is To Feel.

"Bottom line: every one of those bands are our friends," Lillie said. "And we've been friends with them for a while now. We kind of just wanted to put together a big show and have it be pretty diverse and different from other shows that we've put on other shows that we've played."

He also said getting so many local bands come together to play another band's CD release party wasn't as hard as it sounds.

"Nobody had any problem at all," Lillie said. "Everybody was down, no questions asked. They didn't want to know what they were going to get paid or anything. They're just happy to be playing the show and that's one thing that I love about this scene- is that it's like that. Everybody's cool with one another and it's really just about playing a fun show. It's not about all the politics that go along with it."

Chango Malo and friends play the all-ages CD release party tomorrow night at Club Congress, 311 E. Congress at 9 p.m. Tickets are $5