Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Kranj / Bazen / Slovenia
Concert date: 12.04.2014
Attendance: 90
A proper rainy April day. And a lousy one at that! The ever-swinging Don Mentony Band finally dropped a new studio album at the start of this March, after 14 dry years. Led by Slovenian rock ‘n’ roll veteran, the legendary Janez Zmazek Žan, the quintet gave March and April over to a handful of promo shows. It was funny how the RockLine crew kept having rotten luck catching the band on tour. The gig at the Lukna club in the village of Prečna near Novo mesto, for instance, got shut down yet again a few days before the announced show! So fortune only smiled on us for the band’s last confirmed gig. In Kranj.
Besides Janez Zmazek Žan on guitar and vocals, the lineup is nothing but grandmasters of their trade. The excellent drummer Žiga Kožar (Moonlight Sky Trio), bassist Klemen Teran, guitarist Luka Vehar (The Dreams, E.V.A.) and accordionist Boštjan Dorič! This turnout confirmed once again that the club scene in Slovenia is fading out across the board. I doubt The Drinkers playing at Klubar (in downtown Kranj) at the same time had much to do with it! When Kranj’s B.A.K.S. hit the stage, the hall, which holds 1,100 people, had just over 50 heads in it, and mostly friends and acquaintances of the band at that. B.A.K.S. didn’t sweat it too much and got diligently down to playing their original material. Two guitars create a fat, massive sound, tuned a bit deliberately crunchy! Then there are the kinetic drums in the back and bass/vocals up front. Original music with a typically Slovenian melodic flavor, at moments edging toward the melodies of Siddharta’s philosophy, early Anavrin, and a riff here and there can open with a thunder in the style of Tide, though these are only associations, so read along and roughly judge for yourselves where B.A.K.S. are headed. A decent set, though the solos from the right-hand guitar were nowhere to be heard during the gig.
Don Menotny Band, as the night’s headliners, only made it onto the stage 10 minutes past eleven. There were definitely fewer than a hundred people in the hall. The guys open the first part of the show with three classics meant to fire up the thinned-out crowd: Ko noč zamenja dan, Dost mam and To je moje življenje. The band won the room over right away with confident tightness and a feel for each other on stage, even though they had a gig in Postojna behind them and definitely didn’t sound their freshest, which Zmazek’s voice showed later in particular, getting weaker and weaker at the peak of the show. In the opening stretch you couldn’t hear Dorič’s accordion at all. It first became noticeable in the title track of the band’s freshly released new album »Zajeban dan« – RockLine review HERE, followed by Ne grem se več, Lahko si za, lahko si proti, then Mojca, which has the potential to soon become a folk standard (everybody keeps requesting it from the band for their own Mojcas) and Vrag naj te vzame. The first set closed with the fun classic Marjetka.
The band’s big chief and musical visionary Janez Zmazek Žan remains the guru of his game. Besides his manly, rough, »cracked at the corners« vocals, he again won us over with his one-of-a-kind guitar playing. With a touch and a sound that only he creates on stage. The man remains damn skilled, and musically he always puts the notes in his solos in exactly the right spot; not a single note sounds superfluous. Žan uses a very direct guitar sound, we could even say a distinctly piercing one. On his left stood the splendid Luka Vehar, who two days earlier had played at Glej in Ljubljana with »the Slovenian Alman Brothers Band« The Dreams. Vehar is the softer one. Let’s say he’s technically more polished and his fingers can fly faster, too. The contrast between the two guitarists is a special charm of the revamped Don Mentony Band, and it’s a great pleasure to watch them both work. Then there’s the extraordinary, rock-solid rhythm line of Klemen Teran and one of the most accomplished and versatile drummers of the young generation in Slovenia, Žiga Kožar. And the extra juiciness is of course now supplied by Boštjan Dorič with his witty accordion fills in the accompaniment.
Žan remains recognizably grumpy and sarcastic in his banter between songs. Once again he entertained the crowd with a few »direct« observations delivered through his tried-and-true black humor, »Outside we’re selling our new CD for 87.00€, and you get two Easter hams thrown in« and when one of the rosy, cheerful locals from Kranj came up to the edge of the stage to show off the band’s new studio album he’d just bought: »Well, there you go, 20,000 more of those and we’ll finally make it«!«
After a fifteen-minute break, the guys came back on stage to deliver the second part, where they strung together classic after classic! They took the show through A štekaš, Nekam bom šel, Z občutkom, Nikol si nam odpustu, Sedem let, Zdaj sem pa miško, Lenoba, Rekla je ne, Na obali, and of course they didn’t forget Mrha, which closed out the regular set. In the encore they play Mojca again, which stands out from the rest of the material especially for the voluminous »stereo chorus groove« that Žan adds to his guitar sound for the occasion. His song, which hopefully will bring the band more buzz on the Slovenian music scene again.
The band, with its essential figure, the irreplaceable Janez Zmazek Žan, remains one of the most one-of-a-kind and special music stories ever to emerge in Slovenia. It’s great to see them on stage more often again. If anyone understands what »mojo« is, what rock ‘n’ roll is and what the blues is, Janez Zmazek Žan remains one of the first addresses for that answer. A tip of the hat to the band for an extremely nice and fun evening in Kranj, and I hope we’ll see each other soon at the first opportunity.
Photo Gallery
