Meet the BTARs: Mystery Music Mondays at Club Cafe
by Jason Washington, 2026 Beckom-Freeman Teaching Artist-in-Residence
If you’ve been around the Pittsburgh music scene recently, you may have heard people talking about Mystery Music Mondays, also known as M3, happening at Club Cafe.
What started as a simple idea between a few friends has quickly grown into something that a lot of musicians in the city genuinely look forward to every week.
How it started
When Club Cafe closed in 2024, it left a bit of a hole in the music scene. It has always been one of those places that musicians really love playing at. The space is small and intimate, which naturally brings people together. It is the kind of place where the audience feels close to the music and the musicians feel connected to the room.
In 2025 the venue reopened under Keystone Artist Connect with Danielle Mashuda and Maddy Lafferty helping to lead things. When the club came back, it had a fresh energy and a new chapter began.
Around that same time I started talking with Nick Gueckert, Drew Bayura, and Club Cafe’s sound engineer Wes Peters about doing something on Monday nights.
The idea was pretty straightforward. We wanted to give musicians a place to come hang out, play music together, and see what happens.
More than just a jam session
A lot of us in the scene are already friends, but we are also all working musicians doing our own things. Some of us are gigging around the city, some are touring, some are teaching, and some are recording.
Mystery Music Mondays became a place where all of those worlds could come together again.
One of the best parts about it is the freedom that people feel when they step on stage. Musicians try things they might not normally try on a typical gig. Sometimes someone brings a tune they just wrote and wants to hear it with a band. Other nights people jump in and play classic tunes together just for the fun of it and see where the music goes.
Because the musicianship in Pittsburgh is so strong, it almost always turns into something special even when everything is completely improvised. Being in that environment has had an impact on the musicians themselves too. Nick Gueckert summed it up best when he said being around that level of talent has made him better simply by being in the room with “not only the best players… not only on earth but any planet.”
A growing community
Another exciting part has been watching the community grow week after week.
We probably have around twenty musicians who come regularly. On top of that, we usually see five to ten new musicians walk through the door every week. Word has started to spread and people are excited to come check it out.
For Drew Bayura, the coolest part has been watching it happen naturally. In his words, it has been amazing to see this network “organically form out of love.”
Pittsburgh has an incredible amount of talent, but collaborations like this do not always happen as often as they could. Part of our goal with M3 is to help change that. We want musicians to meet each other, build relationships, and create together in a way that feels natural.
For a lot of us, Monday nights have become something we really look forward to. For drummer Marvin Irish, also known as Marv Stix, it has become both a musical and social outlet. As he described it, “It’s a great social and musical outlet for me… it’s rare that I get to play music yet still hang out with my friends.”
Just the beginning
While the music is a big part of what makes Mystery Music Mondays special, the community forming around it might be the most meaningful part.
That welcoming energy is something Wes Peters sees every week from behind the soundboard. He describes the session simply. “You don’t have to play a specific thing… be this good or that good to join us. We’re all here because we love good music, playing it and performing it, but most of all for the community.”
It has been amazing to watch musicians connect, collaborate, and push each other creatively week after week.
We are excited to keep building on that energy and continue growing the community here in Pittsburgh. There are plenty of ideas ahead and a lot more music still to be made.
And honestly, this whole thing is just getting started.
