I just had the pleasure of listening to an oh so tasty morsel of musical performance known as New Monsoon live at the Freebird Cafe in Jacksonville Florida from January 4, 2006. I haven’t had a chance to see or hear New Monsoon live for a really long time and my how they have really grown as a group! They are extremely tight and have really polished their live act. I love bands that know how to mix the right covers in with originals in the propper proportions. Its no fun to see a band that does nothing but covers that sound exactly like the original. On the other hand, a few covers are always in order so that the band can showcase its influences. New Monsoon does this very well. They are heavily influenced by Santana, The Allman Bros, Eric Clapton, The Dead, and an arsenal of other bluesy jammers. One thing that I love about New Monsoon is they have a very unique approach to encorporating blues and bluegrass into their music. There are moments during this performance that they instantaneously switch from a gut wrenching blues guitar solo directly into a bluegrass banjo solo. How cool! Give it a listen, your ears will thank you. You can access New Monsoon live at the Freebird Cafe in Jacksonville Florida from January 4, 2006 in lossless, mp3, and streaming format at the live music archive. Here is the skinny:

Band/Artist: New Monsoon
Date: January 4th, 2006
Venue: Freebird Cafe
Location: Jacksonville Beach, FL

Source: Studio Projects C4′s (DIN, FOB) > Mogami Gold > Denecke PS-2 > Denecke AD-20 > optical > JB3
Lineage: JB3 > firewire > Audacity > FLAC16
Taped by: Jon H.
Transferred by: Jon H.

Also, there is a great live365.com station dedicated to New Monsoon that you can access here.