The Aron Theatre Co-op looks forward to welcoming Moondoggy to our stage in October! Originating in Collingwood, Ontario in 2019, the five-member indie band got their start playing house parties and now plays on stages across the greater Toronto area and beyond. Their name is inspired by legends of an old mafia boss in Montreal. Sample their songs What a Shame, Carry On and Passport on Spotify (Passport is also on YouTube).
We asked frontman and vocalist Jakob Matanowitsch about the band’s origins, musical influences and why they like playing on stages of all sizes.
HOW DID MOONDOGGY GET STARTED AS A BAND?
We started in high school. I really wanted to start a band and find musicians to play the songs that I was writing. So I gravitated towards the best guitar player in the area, who was Jonny Contini, our lead guitarist. We all started to write together, play shows, play cover songs and work on our original music. We would make a lot of DIY recordings, just microphones and interfaces in our bedrooms. We were between 16 and 19.
WHERE DID YOU GO NEXT?
From there, we moved on to university, and most of us ended up in Toronto or the GTA. We found our drummer, Victor Carrillo, at York University. And then my brother Ben Matanowitsch joined the band a little later, when we first started playing real club shows in Toronto. He added a lot on saxophone, brought in a new element that we didn't have before.
We started recording studio albums. We went into Dreamhouse Studios in Toronto to cut our first record with a really small budget and small window of time. We would make money from selling DIY tee-shirts and playing shows. That album was “Mad and Noisy”. That gave us a foot in the door.
WHO ARE YOUR MUSICAL INFLUENCES?
We don't play as many covers these days because we like getting our own music out there. But when we did, it was a lot of Mac DeMarco, and classic rock like Pink Floyd, the Steve Miller band, and Neil Young.
As far as influences go, it's really different across the board for all of us. I love Cage The Elephant, Max DeMarco and Neil Young. Jonny's really into jazz. Victor's into jazz and R’n’B. And Ben is into everything. All of our influences come together to make our sound.
WHAT INSPIRES YOUR ORIGINAL SONGS?
I think songwriting is just something that I've always felt like I had to do. I started pretty young, just like stealing MP3s off of YouTube of instrumentals and trying to record my voice over them, back when I didn't know that that was illegal. I always loved making stuff, and I'm lucky enough to found four other guys that really like doing that as well.
YOU’VE PLAYED ON A RANGE OF STAGES—DO YOU ENJOY THAT VARIETY?
I love all kinds of rooms. We do a lot of DIY shows in Collingwood. We'll find a space, rent gear, set up and trying to make a space sound the best we can. There's a little amphitheatre down by the Collingwood Harbour where we've done shows. The community supports us a lot here, and we get a great turnout of family. It's always a generational party, which is my favorite part of the hometown shows.
In Toronto, we've played everywhere from really small rooms like the Cameron House back room, which is about 70 people, all the way up to Lee's Palace, which holds like 500 or so people. You're always going to get something different, which is what I like about playing different rooms. We know that The Horseshoe Tavern is going to get a lot of foot traffic, and maybe some people that have never seen us play before, which I love, because we get to try and win an audience member over. At the Cameron House, you'll have a smaller, intimate show where you can have a handful of your friends come out, and fans that are really dedicated. So there's really something in each of them that's special.
WHAT MAKES YOU INTERESTED IN CONTINUING TO PLAY SMALL STAGES?
We're small-town guys, maybe not quite as small as Campbellford, but that’s where we were raised and where we feel comfortable. We want to get out of our little bubble of the GTA and see all those beautiful small towns where there's new fans to be made and new people to connect with. Anytime that an opportunity comes up for us to get out of our area and go meet and play for new people, we're always eager.
DO YOU PLAN DIFFERENTLY FOR DIFFERENT VENUES?
Definitely. We always account for the age demographic and kind of room. Is it a sit-down audience or stand up? Are people going to want to dance or sit back? Maybe it's a bit of both. We're always imagining the night with some sort of cadence to the set list.
HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR THE SHOW, DO YOU HAVE RITUALS OR WARMUPS?
It usually starts with a good meal. When the band gets together before show, we love to have a good sit-down dinner to debrief and talk about what we want to do throughout the show and cool our nerves a bit.
Then everybody has their own little kind of warm up they do. I do vocal warmups, Jonny plays with his guitar, Ben's warming up his reeds for his saxophone. Victor's always tapping away with his drum sticks on a couch or a water bottle. We're probably very annoying guys to be around about five minutes before the show.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR MOONDOGGY?
We just wrapped up the mastering process for our third album. The first single will be out in November, and the full record in early 2026. Then we will be in Europe for our first shows abroad in May 2026 which is really exciting. It's our first international run.
Moondoggy performs at the Aron Theatre on October 23, 2025.