Time: 8 p.m.

Tickets:$30

MONKEYJUNK:
A GENEROUS HELPING OF SWAMP RHYTHM
AND BLUES, SOUL BOOGIE AND BEDROOM FUNK
MARK THE BAND’S STONY PLAIN RECORDS DEBUT

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (three musicians speak up):
Where’s the band from, and when did it start?
Ottawa, Ontario – Canada’s capital city. And it began on a casual basis to play some Sunday gigs, back in the spring of 2008.

Who’s in the band?
Steve Marriner (vocals, harmonica, keyboards, guitar), Tony D (lead guitar), Matt Sobb (drums).

What, no bass?
No. Hound Dog Taylor didn’t have a bass player and Little Walter often didn’t as well.

Where the heck did you get the name from?
A chance remark Son House made. “I’m talkin’ ‘bout the blues. I ain’t talkin’ about monkey junk,” he said. We love Mr. House, and we get his point, but the word stuck with us. And we use it as one word:MonkeyJunk, with a capital J in the middle.

How do you describe your music?
Swamp R&B. Soul boogie. Deep blues. Oh, yes, and bedroom funk. Dark sometimes, rockin’ at others. You can dance. Does that tell the story?

So what’s the band’s history?
All three of us started out as players on the Ottawa blues scene. Played solo gigs, played with a dozen different bands between us, met up over beers years and years ago. Ottawa’s got a really supportive blues scene.  It started out informally between Tony and Steve. Then Matt got told he was in the band, whether he knew it or not. Between us, we’ve got over 60 years of combined experience.

How did the breakthrough happen?
Six months after we started, we were nominated for a Maple Blues Award for best new artist. Well, we were new — we hadn’t released a record yet. Then, in February 2009, we represented Ottawa at the International Blues Challenge. We competed against all those killer bands from Poland and Croatia and Australia and France and who knows where else —and, of course, from all over the US and Canada.  And when the smoke cleared on Beale Street we had placed third overall. We were staggered.

When did you release your first record?
We put out an independent CD called Tiger in Your Tank in April 2009. People liked it; CBC Radio in Canada played it a lot; Dan Aykroyd’s House of Blues Radio Hour named one of the tunes, “Small Time Evil” as “blues breaker of the week” six months later – well, he would, wouldn’t he? He’s Canadian too. And we got airplay reports from all over Europe, and even South America.

Did you tour?
Did we ever! We played nearly a dozen major festivals all over the country. We put a lot of miles on the van — and then we played the Blues sur Seine festival in France. MonkeyJunk plays Europe. Cool!