Closing Out Season 4 of the Postojna Blues Festival! (2008)

For this year’s grand finale, the organizers dreamed up an open-air event. The whole thing was supposed to take place on the platform in front of the entrance to the Postojna Cave. Fantastic idea, but the weather didn’t share our wishes in the slightest this year. The rain drove us into the shelter of the cave castle, where most of this year’s concerts took place anyway. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, of course — well, at least the average of 150 heads a night who dared to attend the finale of the big event.

MOJO HAND

Mojo Hand are a homegrown blues-rock outfit whose frontman Slaven Kalebić has been at it since 1995. Old friends of Postojna’s stages, they’re surely the best thing the blues has to offer on the Slovenian music scene right now. In a good ten years of existence, Mojo Hand have managed to build a cult status, and that despite the fact that they still haven’t gotten around to recording an album!

The secret of Mojo Hand’s success lies in the quality of the individual members, where, besides the ever-watchful eye of Slaven Kalebić, the lead vocalist really stands out. Mojo Hand sent their strongest weapon into the fire: the young Azra Alibegić, a full-bodied lass with the voice of a properly enraged rhinoceros, one that still sounds like her voice hasn’t quite broken yet! The girl has an exceptional vocal range, and her voice sounds confident whether she’s going for soul or blues, though maybe it’s a touch too soft for songs like Piece Of My Heart, which demand above all a heaping dose of testosterone from the performer. Understandably, Azra still did the job with flying colors. A woman full of emotion and temperament, she charmed the crowd from the very first contact, and for a while at least, the stereotype about Slovenians being impervious to character-packed roaring was put to rest.

Mojo Hand fully justified the reputation the band has proudly carried for over a decade. We can only wish for more of their gigs in the future. Judging by what we saw, Mojo Hand can surely hold their own against the best bands in the genre, especially the foreign ones, of course. Slaven Kalebić has drilled this band thoroughly, carefully sharpened its senses, and consequently turned it into one of the most attractive acts around! Hats off!

Mojo Hand setlist:

1.Let The Good Times Roll
2.Evil
3.Mary Had A Little Lamb
4.Raw Blues
5.Cold Shot
6.I Can Love You Like A Woman
7.Some Questions
8.Do Right Woman
9.Big Bang
10.Piece Of My Heart
11.Hey Bartender
12.Ride On
13.Sweet Sweet Baby
14.Glad I’m Dead
15.Won’t Be Long

JIM KAHR

After the “devastation” Mojo Hand left behind, Jim Kahr soon took the stage. Jim who? An exceptional musician and excellent guitarist who, following the example of many predecessors, left the USA and settled permanently in Germany. “Chicago” Jim isn’t one of those guitar-hero types who pelt an uninitiated audience with endless experimental variations on assorted blues standards. His set, even though it’s largely made up of countless improvisations, comes across more like an impulsive reaction to the surroundings, which gives it a touch of authenticity and unaffectedness. Jim came across as an extremely pleasant fellow, with smooth, well-oiled communication with his bandmates as well as the crowd. Probably thanks also to a surprisingly mellow voice, whose warmth has an especially balmy effect alongside the hot-blooded slide noodling. Slide is surely one of the strongest points of a Jim Kahr show. In it you can at times make out strong Bo Diddley influences, which flirt nicely with the man’s excursions into soul and jazz waters. A bit of everything, gathered into an exciting musical bouquet, and Jim Kahr was the first to reap ovations from the audience as he stepped off the stage.

TINO GONZALES

The temperature in the cave castle’s big hall kept climbing, and by the time Tino Gonzales hit the stage, the mercury was hovering near boiling point. Nicely warmed up, we waited impatiently for the performance of the stocky Latin uncle. A child of Chicago who grew up on a wide range of musical influences, from jazz and Latin to R&B and, of course, blues, he wowed us with sensual guitar playing full of thrilling improvisations, with which Tino kept teasing our old acquaintance Enrico Crivellaro. Tino Gonzales is definitely a character worthy of closer analysis. This funnily shaped uncle catches the eye with a metronomic sway on which world-class innovations nest. Tino speaks from deep within, he’s direct, yet he often gives off a sense of being distant. And that’s about all that reminded us of blues tradition about him. He switches playing styles almost in passing, and certainly faster and more productively than most of today’s guitarists.

Day two, Friday, 13.6.2008

COLINDA

Opening the final act of the Postojna Blues Festival on a soaked Friday evening were German zydeco guerrillas Colinda. It’s an instrumentally colorful lineup of five explosive musicians whose roots run deep in the tradition of Louisiana’s Creole sound. But Colinda go much further in revealing their charms. Besides the dance-driven, laid-back rhythms, to which a large part of the Slovenian audience apparently remains immune, the band has a very effective flirtation with the basics of raw blues rhetoric, which, in favor of the energetic and relaxed interplay of fiddle, guitar, harmonica and bass, stays in the shadow of carefree Southern merrymaking. Despite an initially numb crowd, the audience soon took Colinda in with open arms. No surprise there. With rhythms that are fairly monotonous yet charmingly lively, wrapped in a blend of overblown candor and folk innovations, it’s not hard to see why zydeco keeps gaining a status that will have to be reckoned with in the future.

Colinda setlist:

1.Allons danser
2.Dance On the Bayou
3.Bernadette
4.Paper In My Shoes
5.Allons a lafayete
6.La porte d’en arriere
7.Zydeco Gris-Gris
8.Jolie Blon
9.Sugar Bee
10.Bosco Stomp
11.Les flammes d’enfer
12.Jolie Catin
13.Pine Grove Blues
14.Un autre soir d’ennui
15.Toot toot
16.Iko – Iko
17.Colinda
18.Hackberry Hop

SUGAR BLUE BAND

Time for the blues! And not just any blues, but an orgy of harmonica-fueled whipping-up, directed by the indestructible wind man who goes by the name Sugar Blue. The performance by this eminence of blues music, who in the past has worked with names like Willie Dixon, Stevie Wonder and the Rolling Stones, was in its own way the highlight of this year’s Postojna blues festival.

Sugar Blue is a wizard with the lung capacity of a whale. His formula is pretty simple. Backed by an exceptionally tight band that lets him pour out even the most powerful emotions without a care, and slyly using the tricks of harmonica heroes Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter, the old-timer grabbed us by the throat with a venomous storm between the traditional and the modern. Sugar didn’t waste time showcasing a broad catalog of outstanding performing traits. An hour and a half of tireless indulgence, for instance, shot a proper dose of adrenaline into the veins of brilliantly arranged classics Hoochie Coochie Man and Messin’ With The Kid. For “unspoiled” Slovenian ears, maybe even too strong. But before the master let the Postojna crowd revel in the pounding of blues evergreens, he understandably took care of some self-promotion too. Lip Service and Lies and especially Nola, a funny ode to the not-so-funny fate that befell the people of New Orleans when Katrina raged, showed the musicians in a different, very modern light. While the former wowed by combining the traditional school with more conventional approaches of the 80s blues revival, at one point Sugar Blue even turned the emotional moments of Nola in the direction of anti-Bush political agitation. The triumph of the Sugar Blue Band was complete with an outstanding rendition of Pontiac Blues, from which the Postojna audience hasn’t recovered for a long time.

Sugar Blue Band setlist:

1.Help Me
2.One More Mice
3.Hoochie Coochie Man
4.Lip Service and Lies
5.Bluesman
6.Nola
7.Another Man
8.Messin’ With The Kid
9.Pontiac Blues

MATT SCHOFIELD

After the bombastic set by the Sugar Blue Band, Matt Schofield, the fresh hope of the British blues school of the new millennium, faced the biggest challenge of this year’s finale of all the performers. The guitarist, almost 30, recently made a pleasant splash with the album Siftin’ Thru Ashes, and before his planned assault on the land across the pond, his travels, to the great luck of Slovenian blues fans, brought him right to the stage of the 4th Postojna Blues Festival!

Unlike most blues bands, the Matt Schofield Band presents itself as a trio of guitar, drums and Hammond, which also takes care of the bass foundation as the situation requires. A setup that provides a platform for a masterful display of spiced-up guitar playing. Matt is an innovator of stylistic blending. He charmed the crowd with a full-blooded show of sharp blues rhetoric, mixed with funk and jazz rhythms, often enriched with tougher rock moves. Following the example of Rory Gallagher’s early work, Matt pushes the trio format to the limit, and his fluid playing surprises again and again. Everything of course stays firmly within a blues context, seasoned with, let’s call them, different shades of blues music. Matt Schofield opened our eyes and, in a fatherly way, showed us that we don’t have to see the blues as something prehistoric!