After more than 20 years as a band, Kalamazoo’s Out of Favor Boys have honed their “contemporary blues” sound, melding elements of funk, soul and rock into their musical milieu.

But more than anything, songwriting has become the centerpiece of their approach. 

“The biggest change really has been our songwriting. Songwriting has become a real important thing to us,” said guitarist Dan Ouellette.

“There's a songwriting group called the Chili Pepper Songwriting Group, and we started going to their write nights and Rene Meave from Los Bandits was a real mentor to us and really pushed us to write. We sort of found our voices and that was really where a lot of our growth started.”

Consequently, the band’s upcoming new studio album, “Love & Sorrow” — which took two-and-a-half years to complete — brims with 11 original songs that captivate listeners with reflections on “our current times, some of what we all have learned or experienced in our lives in recent years.”

The five-piece group — Oullette, saxophonist Tony Sproul, guitarist-singer Joel Krauss, bassist Tim Brouhard and drummer Tommy Ufkus — officially releases the new collection with a full evening performance at Bell’s Brewery Eccentric Café on Friday, May 9, with several special guests joining the boys.

“We’re going to get as close as we can to reproducing what we recorded,” Oullette said.

Added Sproul: “Live shows, it’s absolutely our wheelhouse. I mean, that’s where this band was born, out of playing live in front of people and just doing it to the best of our ability. Even after 20-plus years, I think all of us still view it as just a big party for the night. … That’s kind of like the next-level rush to doing your own original music — to play it live in front of others is just kind of the ultimate gift.”

Formed in 2003, the band has experienced a few lineup changes, though the core group has remained intact through release of six albums over the years. 

Initially inspired by the likes of legendary bluesmen such as Muddy Waters, Albert Collins and B.B. King, band members also now “borrow a lot of our sound from Tommy Castro, Tab Benoit, Robert Cary, Sean Costello, Larry McCray, Eric Clapton, with the occasional horn band tossed in for good measure.”

“What’s important to us is that we’re not doing museum versions of the blues,” said Sproul. “We’re not trying to do what bands from the ’50s did better than we can do anyway. We want to grow, we want to move it forward. That’s an important part of this. We like to think we can contribute in some small way to that sort of growth.”

Recorded at La Luna Recording and Sound in Kalamazoo with sound engineer Sam Peters, the recording proved to be “a wonderful experience,” Oullette said. 

“I think that this released compared to earlier ones shows a greater depth to the songs that we can write, as well as a willingness to write some songs that aren’t strict blues and might bend the rules of being put in a box of a specific genre,” said Sproul, noting that the band’s first album was recorded in less than 24 hours back in 2004.

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The lengthier recording process for “Love & Sorrow,” he said, “gave us an opportunity to think deeper about some of the songs.” 

Beyond the album-release show, Out of Favor Boys have a “really full” summer of performances ahead, including O’Duffy’s Pub in Kalamazoo on May 21, the Bourbon, Bacon and Blues in Sturgis on May 23, Kalamazoo’s Beats on Bates series on June 4 and Rockford’s Rogue River Blues Series on July 15. View more shows and get more information online at outoffavorboys.com.

— Find more Michigan music news and concert listings at LocalSpins.com. Email John Sinkevics at john@localspins.com.