As the sun disappeared Saturday night under the distant horizon in Carbondale, the king of the jungle took up residence at Tres Hombres Mexican Restaurant and Bar.

American Lion, fresh off the release of their album “Empire,” echoed down the strip. The Mount Vernon band mixes herd southern rock with the early forms of deep blues and features singer/songwriter Joseph Eastwood Frisch on guitar and vocals, Jake Schofield on bass, Tim Hall on drums and percussion, Hogan Williams on drums and keyboard and Troy Kirkpatrick on tuba and trombone.

Together the five-man band produces a sound unique to their genre. Funky bass lines and hard blues drums keep the rhythm while the sounds of the tuba, keys and congas fill in the empty spaces.

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The Lion’s heart comes from Frisch. With a deep echoing voice and a distorted take on acoustic slide guitar, Frisch breathes that final element into the band to solidify the overall sound. Frisch said when looking for songs, he seeks simplicity – by finding songs with simple lyrics and style, the band can have ample opportunity to improvise and make songs their own.

“The music that inspires me is pretty simple blues songs,” he said. “I like songs that can be done in any way and any style.”

The band usually plays about 75 percent originals and 25 percent covers, depending on the venue and how long they are scheduled to play, Frisch said. However, the band’s unique covers could be easily mistaken for American Lion compositions.

“We mostly play originals and we play a lot of old delta-blues songs, but we rock them out,” Frisch said. “Most people get confused and think half of them are our songs anyway because they sound very similar to our originals.”

This roaring hard-rock blues feel is evident on songs such as “Gasoline,” from Frisch’s solo album, “Mammoth.” The old Southern blues tune encompasses the band’s style with fiery vocals and slide guitar overlaying a blues beat.

Frisch and Hall, who provided percussion for “Mammoth,” formed the band in 2009. Williams said he began playing with Frisch about five years ago while they were working together on a cartoon.

“We were recording the soundtrack for the cartoon, and that’s when we realized we had just as much fun making music as making the cartoon,” Williams said. “We started from there and then I joined in with the whole American Lion crew.”

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Much of the group’s musical inspiration comes from a mixture of genres stemming from black culture, Schofield said. Blues, funk, hip-hop and rock ’n’ roll all play a part in the overall composition of American Lion’s music.

“I grew up listening to all kinds of stuff, so this is a little piece of what I like to do,” Schofield said.

The band is working on putting their album “Empire” on iTunes, but for now hard copies of the CD are available at shows. Frisch’s “Mammoth” can be found on iTunes.

American Lion returns to Hangar 9 March 29.

Kyle Sutton can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter @KyleSutton_DE