In February 2017, Monday Night Social emerged as a full five-piece band and into the Chattanooga music scene with their win in that year’s Road to Nightfall competition, however their musical roots as a group extend back a couple of years before that moment.

Brock and Janet McGarity, along with Christian Mann, comprise the founding members of the band dating back to early 2015. Initially they performed as a more intimate, indie-folk group focusing on 3-part harmonies with Janet also handling percussion duties while Brock and Christian played acoustic guitar and mandolin respectively. Their songs in those early days were tunes they had written before meeting each other which they worked into 3-part, folksy arrangements and turned into a self-produced EP.

In 2016 they began writing songs together which led to a refining of their sound and direction. By this point the 3-part harmonies had become central to their identity, but the real transition came in the form of instrumentation. The acoustic guitar and mandolin were still integral pieces, but the electric guitar began to carry more of the load which required a shift in how the rhythm operated in each song. Janet’s musical versatility found her now playing acoustic on many of the newer songs as well as adding light hand percussion, while Josh English and JG Oliver joined the lineup on bass and drums respectively.

After winning the 2017 Road to Nightfall competition and Headlining one night in the Nightfall concert series in downtown Chattanooga, Monday Night Social finished out the year with shows at the Revelry Room (now Songbirds), The Country in Nashville, festivals in Chattanooga and Baton Rouge, and venues in South Carolina and Georgia, as well as releasing a new EP entitled Mixtapes Never Lie produced by Brandon Weaver of Ironwing Studios.

In January of 2018 they released the original track, Shutting Down TN, as both a single and their first professionally produced music video. Now, nearly a year and a half later, it has been viewed just over 23,000 times on Facebook and approximately 2,500 times on YouTube. Its success caught Monday Night Social by surprise and prompted discussions around releasing a new full-length album in support of that track. Thus, the remainder of 2018 was spent playing shows when available but primarily focused upon crafting new songs and returning to the studio.

Beginning in August of that year and wrapping up in January of 2019, the band spent many free weekends in North Chattanooga in the Soundry Studio with Brett Nolan, taking care of principle recording for the new music. Once that was completed, the next 3 months were spent on mixing the album before sending it off to Grammy nominated sound engineer Dylan Seals who mastered the album for distribution. The album was finished in the summer of 2019 and has been slowly rolled out while Monday Night Social works to fill out their calendar in support.

The album is available on all digital streaming sites, on CD, and also on vinyl. Blending elements of blues, folk, country, bluegrass, and rock into their own brand of Americana, Monday Night Social has crafted a full-length, ten song album containing emotionally raw moments and foot-stomping, raucous tunes which they hope will connect in some way with all who listen. Every song is written with an intentional focus on the intricate, 3-part harmonies which informs a depth of emotional weight to the more serious melodies and an anthemic, soaring quality to their more upbeat rollicking numbers. As Joshua Pickard of the Southern Sounding put it in his review, “This is an album enamored of its influences but also anxious to adapt those same sounds and explore the band’s own eclectic musical impulses in a setting free of expectation and rhythmic guidelines. ‘Watch It Burn’ establishes a freewheeling environment where concern for adherence to any single genre is non-existent and where the band is given free rein to experiment with a number of different aesthetics and histories. These songs are carefully constructed but also evince a loosely improvisational nature, and it’s within this musical dichotomy that Monday Night Social find a miraculous resolution of all their collective experiences and emotions.”

The 2020 pandemic hit the band hard, as they were set to perform many shows the first half of 2020 in support of the new Watch it Burn album. They were still able to do several virtual radio interviews and a few pre recorded shows, but the blow really hurt their momentum coming off of the new album. The band has since had a change in personal as Gabe Mann (Christian’s son) took over for JG Oliver on drums. We miss JG dearly, but are happy that he has been able to focus on being with his wife and 4 boys more. Monday Night Social is optimistic about the future and has been tirelessly song writing in order to hopefully record another album this summer of 2023. You definitely have not seen the last of this band.