Jonny Monster: 'We play like our lives depend on it'

Jonny Monster has lived in Chattanooga four months and already his band has opened a Nightfall show, and they'll play Clyde's On Main on Friday, June 2.

Originally from New York's Hudson Valley, Monster moved to Knoxville three years before coming to Chattanooga.

"When I was living in Knoxville, a lot of the players I worked with lived down this way, so I just got to a point where it made sense for me to come here," he explains.

Charge the Atlantic, a funk/rock/reggae band, plays Clyde's at 10 p.m. Saturday, June 3. Members of the Nashville band are Patrick Krystman, vocals, guitar and keyboards; Peter Racine Jr., drums; Alex Curnow, guitar; and Kyle Barboza, vocals and bass.

He met bandmates Oneal Dover, bass, and Brian Gross, drums, through networking with other musicians. Together, they put out an original mix of acoustic blues and dynamic electric guitar that Monster says gets them compared to Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix quite a bit.

"Johnny Winter is another guy we get compared to. I have many influences, but those guys are who I grew up with the most," he says.

The band has headlined shows along the Eastern seaboard from Vermont to Florida and has two albums to its credit.

Monster says the band plays mostly his original music, with each throwing in ideas so the result is "high-energy and blues music."

He predicts the show Friday at Clyde's will be a "high-energy jam out. We play like our lives depend on it."