Photo via Jon Cleary - Facebook
Jon Cleary (2026)
Jon Cleary (2026)
Jon Cleary plays rhythm & blues, soul, jazz and funk, along with a few other styles. For him, that variety reflects both his status as a skilled tradesman and his residence in New Orleans.
“New Orleans working musicians play all kinds of different gigs,” he said during a recent phone interview. “One night with a traditional jazz band, the next with a Latin band, the next with some funk band. These are all facets of the same thing. The DNA is all there in New Orleans music.”
The DNA is also present in The Bywater Sessions, a 2025 mix of Cleary’s older and newer songs cut hot in about two days by the Absolute Monster Gentlemen, an ensemble then featuring seven other local pros on horns, organ, guitar, bass, and drums.
“I’ve been using a larger lineup, and it’s been sounding really, really good, so I wanted to get a recording of the arrangements as they stood,” Cleary said. “I’d just finished rebuilding my home studio, which was creamed by Hurricane Ida, and that coincided with a period when everyone was in town at the same time.”
Loose and Comfortable
Fronting the lineup on piano and vocals, Cleary holds the reins loosely but confidently on tracks like the boogie-woogie “Uptown Downtown,” the backbeat-riding “Just Kissed My Baby” and the greasy “Lottie Mo.”
Cleary nods to his experience as a sideman, including gigs touring with Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal, as a guide to his attitude as a bandleader. “I had a fairly good idea what a sideman wanted from a bandleader and what the bandleader has to do to get the best out of his gang,” he said. “Stylistically, you have to lay down guidelines. Make the most of what the musicians are good at and give them room to be themselves.
“It’s a bit like holding a butterfly: hold it too loose, it’ll fly away; too tight, and you’ll crush it.”
His experience and knowledge are undeniable: after being entranced as a lad in Kent, England, by 45s his uncle brought back from New Orleans, he switched from guitar to piano and, before he was even 20, moved to that city with little more than a phone number for a bar.
“I showed up with a hundred bucks and just landed on my feet when people were so kind,” Cleary, now 64, said. “I had this confidence that it would all fall into place, and miraculously it did. It was the best thing I could’ve possibly done.”
While his current live configuration of the Absolute Monster Gentlemen is three other players—longtime bassist Cornell Williams, percussionist Pedro Segundo, and relatively young drummer Thomas Glass—Cleary will, in October, put out “Live at the Royal Albert Hall,” a solo gig.
“That was quite a challenge,” he said. “It’s cavernous, not intimate, but the audience was fantastic.”
For Cleary, it’s not about the venue or the genre. “New Orleans music is rooted in the people,” he said. “It’s not a business phenomenon. It has a cohesive tradition, distinctive from anywhere else.”
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen, 8 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 23 at Vivarium.
