Local blues band MonkeyJunk â Steve Mariner on guitar and vocals, Matt Sobb on drums and Tony D on lead guitar â rehearse in Mariner’s basement for their Jan. 18 gig in Toronto.
It’s loud. It’s raw. It’s bedroom funk, swamp R&B and soul boogie all rolled up into one.
It’s the music of Ottawa’s leading blues trio, MonkeyJunk. In just a year and half, they have gone from rehearsing in a Centretown basement to winning five Maple Blues Awards last week, including the coveted entertainer of the year award.
“All these really good things are happening,” says lead guitarist, Tony Diteodoro, 47. “We’re still having all these firsts.”
“It just feels like one really long year,” adds drummer Matt Sobb, 37.
Steve Marriner, 25, completes the trio with his work on vocals, harmonica, guitar, baritone guitar and keyboards.
“Steve just likes to touch everything,” Sobb says jokingly.
The idea for the band was cooked up in Diteodoro’s kitchen. Marriner and Diteodoro were listening to old blues records and they liked the sound that they heard coming from bands with only two guitarists, a drummer and no bassist. Marriner and Diteodoro are both guitarists, so all they needed was a drummer who could match their sound. That’s where Sobb came in.
“They didn’t ask me. They told me,” says Sobb, with a laugh. “[Marriner] had the name all ready and everything.”
Their first album, Tiger in Your Tank, starts off with the inspiration for the group’s unusual name: legendary bluesman, Son House’s low, rumbling voice saying “I’m talkin’ ‘bout the blues… I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout monkey junk.”
Before they had even finished the album, they played at the International Blues Challenge held last February in Memphis, Tennessee. They were the first band to represent Ottawa in the competition, and they exceeded their own expectations by coming in third out of 100 bands from across the world.
Since then, they have played in France in the Blues Sur Seine Festival and all across Canada. They have also been nominated for a Blues Music Award in the United States, making them only the fourth Canadian band ever to be nominated.
Liz Sykes is the president of the Ottawa Blues Society, an organization that helps to promote local and national blues music. She says that the popularity of blues music right now is on a downslide, but bands like MonkeyJunk are keeping it alive by blending it with other music styles.
Sykes says that blues is still an older person’s music and that demographic is not going out and supporting shows in Ottawa anymore at the same scale that it once did.
Apart from places like The Atomic Rooster, Irene’s Pub, and The Rainbow Bistro, few Ottawa bars cater to blues audiences.
Even though most of today’s music can be traced back to its blues roots, Sykes says young people still have a preconceived notion of blues as their parent’s music.
“People say blues is depressing […] but tell that to the people on the dance floor,” says Sykes.
Marriner says blues audiences are changing, but he still finds it unusual if there are people his age in the audience that are not his friends.
“For people my age, if you sell it like a blues band, then they’re not interested,” says Marriner.
MonkeyJunk has played several all ages shows at the Black Sheep Inn on Sunday afternoons where the audience ranges from groups of small children just “dancing and freaking out,” says Diteodoro, to Marriner’s 90-year-old grandma.
MonkeyJunk will be playing on Feb. 27 and 28 at the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield.