Jon Cleary Is Bringing the New Orleans Groove Back Down Under

Some music is made to be listened to. Some music makes sitting still almost impossible.

 For more than three decades, Jon Cleary has lived deep inside the rhythms of New Orleans, and in March 2027 he’s bringing that unmistakable Crescent City groove back to Australia with The Absolute Monster Gentlemen.

There are few musicians who understand the musical heartbeat of New Orleans quite like Jon Cleary. Funk, soul, rhythm and blues, second-line rhythms and rolling piano all find their way into his music, not as some recreation of the past, but as part of a living tradition that Cleary has spent most of his life absorbing.

Which makes it slightly surprising that his story began thousands of kilometres away in London. Before he'd even turned 20, Cleary was on a plane to New Orleans. What might have started as a fascination quickly became a lifelong relationship with the city, its musicians and the musical language that seems to spill from its clubs, bars, streets and front porches.

Cleary didn't simply study New Orleans music from a distance. He found his way into the middle of it. Over the years he worked alongside some of the city's great characters and players, including Earl King, Johnny Adams, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Snooks Eaglin, Ernie K-Doe, Jessie Hill and Dr. John, while his reputation as a musician took him well beyond Louisiana through extensive touring with Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal.

More than 35 years later, New Orleans remains at the centre of everything he does. And when Cleary sits behind a piano with The Absolute Monster Gentlemen, all those years become part of the groove. The band isn't simply backing him. They're a fundamental part of the sound — musicians drawn from the deep New Orleans musical community who understand that funk is as much about what you don't play as what you do. Bass, drums, guitar and keys lock into a pocket that can feel impossibly relaxed while somehow pushing everything forward at the same time. Add Cleary's piano, guitar and vocals and things tend to get loose pretty quickly.

That's the beauty of The Absolute Monster Gentlemen. The music can be sophisticated without ever feeling precious. There's history in it, but there's also sweat, movement and the simple pleasure of a room full of people having a very good time.
Their 2024 album The Bywater Sessions captured plenty of that chemistry, continuing a body of work built around musicians playing together rather than simply assembling songs.

Cleary followed it with Live at Royal Albert Hall, stripping things back for an intimate solo piano performance at one of London's most famous venues. It's another side of the same musician — remove the band, leave Cleary alone with a piano and the rhythmic DNA of New Orleans is still sitting right there underneath his fingers. 

Australian audiences know that feeling well. Cleary and The Absolute Monster Gentlemen were last here in 2024, playing multiple sold-out shows around the capital cities and reminding audiences just how quickly a seated room can start behaving like somewhere considerably closer to Bourbon Street.

Now they're coming back. The March 2027 tour will take the band through Melbourne, Port Fairy, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane and Cairns, including Cleary's biggest standalone Sydney and Melbourne shows in his long history of touring Australia. There's also a particularly fitting stop along the way. Cleary will return to the Port Fairy Folk Festival as the festival celebrates its 50th anniversary, marking his first appearance there since 2014.

It's difficult to imagine a better setting for a musician whose entire career has been built around musical traditions being passed from one generation to another. Because beneath the Grammy Awards, famous collaborators and decades spent travelling the world, that's really what Jon Cleary continues to do. He takes the music that drew him to New Orleans as a young man, carries it forward and puts it back where it belongs. In a room full of people. Preferably dancing.

Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen — Australia 2027
March 5 — Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne VIC
March 6 & 7 — Port Fairy Folk Festival, Port Fairy VIC
March 8 — The Gov, Adelaide SA
March 10 — City Recital Centre, Sydney NSW
March 11 — The Old Museum, Brisbane QLD
March 14 — Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns QLD