Mönsterås Bluesband

Half a Century on the Swedish Blues Circuit

Mönsterås Bluesband was founded on 2 May 1974 by Calle Engström, Mats Grönqvist, Peo Fahlström, Tommy Lindberg and Gunnar Eriksson, with help from their music teacher. Fifty years later three of the founders are still in the band.

Calle Engström handles vocals, guitar and harmonica, Mats Grönqvist plays guitar and sings, and Peo Fahlström is on keyboards. Drummer Tommy Medner has been aboard since 1995 and bassist Viktor Johansson since 2020. The line-up has changed around them many times over five decades, which is part of how the band has lasted.

Swedish lyrics, American roots

MBB write their own material in Swedish and set it beside traditional American blues. The lyrics take on social questions and the complications of love from a plainly Swedish vantage point, without dressing the music up as anything other than blues. They have toured the Nordic countries, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, and have backed or shared bills with Lazy Lester, Phil Guy, George Mojo Buford and Houston Stackhouse.

The festival and the records

For their twentieth anniversary in 1994 the members started the Mönsterås Blues Festival, now the Mönsterås Blues & Roots Festival, which marked its own thirtieth edition in 2024. The discography runs to sixteen albums, the most recent being the fiftieth-anniversary release Tåget går in 2024.