This past weekend saw a return to live music for the Canada South Blues Society as Ottawa-based blues-rock band MonkeyJunk performed back-to-back shows in Chatham and Windsor. Windsor Sportsman Club hosted the event to a full house on Saturday, April 23. This was the first show since the beginning of the pandemic, and there was an air of excitement among the crowd of society members and music fans, happy to be out socializing again and listening to great music.
The evening began with a short ceremony and speech by CSBS president Michael McCann, inducting the band into the Canada South Blues Museum. The show itself was a full two hours plus of energetic rock 'n' roll/swamp blues that had many in the crowd up dancing for most of the night. Despite being a three-piece band with no bassist, the band has a heaviness to their sound and sounds bigger than they are. The give-and-take between Tony D and Steve Marriner is great to watch, with lots of slick guitar licks from Tony and driving rhythm guitar from Steve. With his harp mounted on a stand next to him, Marriner smoothly moved between soulful vocals and harp solos throughout the night. Matt Sobb was the steady presence in the back, keeping it all together on drums. Guitar tech Steve Toman joined the band during the encore for a three-guitar assault that had everyone out of their seats.
Despite being a three piece band with no bassist, the band has heaviness to their sound and sounds bigger than they are.
MonkeyJunk is a multi-award-winning band, with 23 Maple Blues Awards as well as two Juno wins for Blues Album of the Year, most recently in 2018. The band members are Steve Marriner on vocals, baritone guitar, and harp; Tony D (Diteodoro) on lead guitar; and Matt Sobb on drums.
Canada South Blues Society will be having the grand opening for their new Blues Museum location on June 1 in conjunction with CFTV (Community Focused TV) of Kingsville. Details are still being finalized, but there are six one-hour shows taped for the occasion of local bands performing original material. CFTV will be launching a streaming app that will be available to view the shows.
