Two and a half years. Maybe three. Maybe more.

That’s how long local musicians David Miller, Sean Leary and Patrick Smith played in an under-the-radar, mostly unnamed power trio around Bend with the nagging feeling that something was missing.

They had a foundation and some chemistry, having come together in 2009 to back Bend-based singer-songwriter Kim Kelley for her CD-release gig at Silver Moon Brewing. Once that was done, the three men enjoyed playing so much they kept it going, sometimes under the name DSP, an acronym of their first names.

They also had songs. Miller, a longtime Bend resident and veteran of several hard-rock projects over the years, had a quiver full of tunes he’d written over the past 15 or so years that didn’t quite work within the heavy aesthetic of his previous bands, including Bad Influence.

“I grew up with country and blues and all that stuff, and while (these songs) didn’t fit the heavier stuff that I came out of high school doing, I knew eventually I would find some place for them to land,” Miller said.

But they also didn’t have … something.

“I was just hearing more than the three of us in the songs,” Miller said. “I was hearing some keyboards and things like that. But mainly, I was hearing someone else singing some of them. When I sang ’em, they weren’t reaching where I wanted ’em to reach when I wrote ’em.”

He elaborated: “Vocally, I didn’t like what I was doing on certain songs. They were either not in my range the way I’d written them, or I wasn’t soulful enough,” Miller said. “I heard that there could be so much more heart and soul in these songs than this rock ’n’ roll guy can sometimes throw out there.”

That heart and soul, it turns out, was striking up a friendship with Leary from behind the bar at the M&J Tavern. At the time, Stacie Johnson had her own flourishing band, Broken Down Guitars, but Leary had a hunch that Johnson might also be the right person to fill the hole in his band, so he asked her if she was interested in joining what is now known as Voodoo Highway.

Johnson’s answer: “Why not?”

The new quartet opened for The Fixx at Munch & Music in August of 2012 and played a couple other gigs, focusing mostly on covers of classic acts like Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane. Johnson’s comfort level with that material gave Miller the confidence she was the missing piece of the band’s puzzle.

“Hearing her and feeling that dynamic, I knew that if we started doing originals, that it would be what I was looking for all the while,” he said.

For Johnson, the thought of joining a band and singing melodies and words that were already written offered an appealing alternative to her heavily songwriting-focused duties in Broken Down Guitars. She likened it to her background in choir and musical theater, being handed a “script” and asked to develop a character and a delivery.

“It was refreshing … to be given something and being told: ‘This is what we’re going for. Now we just want your spin on it,’” Johnson said.

Miller says that’s shortchanging Johnson’s influence on Voodoo Highway’s songs. The band changed keys, adjusted melodies, tweaked lyrics and more before it entered the studio to record its first full-length album, “Part of the Plan,” which came out in June.

Recorded at Don Hoxie’s Session Room recording studio in Redmond, “Part of the Plan” is a 12-track collection of punchy, classic rock ’n’ roll that features plenty of Miller’s trademark guitar crunch and gives Johnson space to showcase the more soulful side of her vocal abilities. Leary and Smith are a solid rhythm section, anchoring songs that dip into blues groove and gospel harmonies as (or more) often than they ascend into showy guitar solos. Johnson’s Broken Down band mate Lilli Worona contributes violin to the achingly beautiful “Hope,” while Moon Mountain Rambler Joe Schulte plays mandolin on “Trouble @ Customs,” a gentle acoustic tune.

Voodoo Highway will headline the locals’ stage Saturday at Bend Fall Festival (see “If you go”), and if you want to see ’em play these songs, you should take the opportunity when it comes. Scheduling gigs can be tricky given everyone’s busy lives, but Miller is also careful not to overplay the band’s home town.

“With these songs being what they were for me — a long time coming, keeping them away from other projects — I feel that way about Voodoo Highway, too,” Miller said. “I’m real protective of our band, so when people see us playing, I want them to come out because it’s been a little bit.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0377, bsalmon@bendbulletin.com