Coco Montoya at Bear’s Den Showroom | June 12, 2026
If you have been sleeping on the Bear’s Den Showroom at Seneca Niagara, Coco Montoya on a Friday night is a good reason to wake up. The room holds 440 people — no seat sits more than 40 feet from the stage — and the casino has wired it with production that punches well above its size. For a left-handed electric blues guitarist who came up under Albert Collins and spent a decade touring with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, that intimacy is exactly the right setting.
About Coco Montoya
Montoya came to the guitar sideways — he was drumming in Albert Collins’s band before Collins pointed him toward the six-string. That mentorship shaped his attack and his ear. When John Mayall spotted him playing in an LA club and invited him into the Bluesbreakers, the education continued. Ten years with Mayall. Seven albums. Global stages.
His solo career on Alligator Records launched in 1996 with Suspicion, which aired on more than 120 stations and landed him a Blues Music Award for Best New Artist. His most recent album, Writing On The Wall, was produced by Grammy winner Tony Braunagel, with Montoya writing or co-writing five of the 13 tracks. AllMusic calls him “one of the most prodigious and gifted electric bluesmen on the planet.” Billboard is more direct: “In a world of blues guitar pretenders, Coco Montoya is the real McCoy.” He is booked through European festivals after these Niagara Falls dates, which tells you where he stands on downtime.
The Venue
The Bear’s Den Showroom sits inside Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino, a 26-story tower at the edge of the Niagara Falls tourism corridor. Casino-grade lighting rig, clean PA, 440 seats. At this scale you can read the setlist taped to the monitor and watch the drummer count in. The Seneca Nation’s three-casino booking leverage pulls acts into this room for multi-night runs — which is how you get a guitarist of Montoya’s caliber in a club this size, on back-to-back nights.
Tickets & Info
Tickets start at $45. This is a two-night run — June 12 and 13 — so Saturday is an option if Friday fills up. Venue: 310 Fourth Street, Niagara Falls, NY. More Buffalo / Western NY concerts.