‘Windsor boys at heart’ – Hometown rock heroes The Tea Party honoured with Key to the City

Windsor rock band The Tea Party returned home on Friday to be presented with one of the city’s highest civic honours.

After more than three decades touring the globe, Windsor rock band The Tea Party returned home on Friday to be presented with one of the city’s highest civic honours. The band was presented with a Key to the City by Mayor Drew Dilkens in a ceremony in the basement of the former legendary music venue Coach & Horses where the band played to sold-out crowds in the early 1990s. “We’re Windsor boys at heart,” bassist and keyboardist Stuart Chatwood told reporters on Friday.

“And just travelling the world, representing Windsor as The Tea Party, it was just great to come home and know the city has our back and recognizes us. It’s just a really warm feeling inside for us.” Formed in Windsor in 1990, The Tea Party has sold nearly three million albums worldwide, including more than one million in Canada.

Over a 35-year career, the trio has toured extensively across Canada and internationally and earned a reputation as one of the country’s most distinctive rock bands by blending hard rock with blues, progressive rock and Middle Eastern musical influences. The band embarked on the largest Canadian tour of its career in 2025 and performed to a sold-out audience at Sydney’s world-famous Opera House accompanied by a 50-piece orchestra earlier this year. “We’ve been around the world many times now, but to come back home and to receive this honour, it’s truly a humbling experience,” said guitarist and frontman Jeff Martin, who now lives in Australia.

“It’s just been a wonderful, wonderful journey.” The Tea Party has brought “high esteem to the city of Windsor and our region,” Mayor Drew Dilkens told reporters. “If you go back to the ’90s and you talk to people who are sort of from my generation and followed The Tea Party growing up, and you’ve watched the band members and what they do, there’s no doubt that they’ve earned the Key to the city today,” Dilkens said.

The historical brick building at 156 Chatham Street W, now occupied by Rocket Innovation Studio, holds fond memories for the band, drummer Jeff Burrows told reporters. “This building itself, we’ve had many a-long evenings,” said Burrows. “We recorded our independent album here” in a second-floor space that belonged to the owners of the old Fish Market.

“Selling out the Coach in the basement, we realized what we had was special,” he said of the band in the early 1990s. “And just the fever that the fans had for an independent local band. We took it to London and Toronto, and we just grew from there, but to have that support (in Windsor), we just knew it was going to work out some day.”

phogue@postmedia.com