Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / Etno klub Zlati zob / Slovenia
Concert date: 12/18/2014
Attendance: 300
Ticket price: €10.00
Mojo Hand’s show just before the end of 2014 heralds the rebirth of one of Slovenia’s most respected and most recognizable bands, devoted to keeping the world heritage of the blues and its closest genre relatives alive. Going strong since 1995! The band has now entered an enviable twentieth year of existence.
Their imminent return to Slovenian stages was quietly foreshadowed by the band’s show in Novi Sad, Serbia, last October, opening for Šinobusi, and by Slaven Kalebić’s guest appearances at Šinobusi concerts during a short Slovenian tour, when Šinobusi presented their new studio album »Nebo od skaja« (including, exactly eight months ago, at the Zlati zob club – RockLine report HERE). Mojo Hand have been friends with Šinobusi for years.
Mojo Hand showed up at Zlati zob in a revamped lineup, a crew of eight musicians: Azra Alibegić (vocals), Slaven Kalebić (guitar), Miha Friedrich (drums), Matej Tekavčič, Marko Petrušič (keyboards), Romina Ponti (backing vocals), Špela Zajc (backing vocals) and Janja Gomboc (backing vocals).
A good 300 people packed the place, and the band hit the stage around half past nine (in the evening, of course). At first, without a vocalist. It was a quartet setup, in other words just the guys, easing into things and loosening up their fingers and limbs, with Kalebić’s guitar playing front and center in the opening stretch. Before the blues guitar master could even properly settle into the Zlati Zob stage, an unexpected malfunction hit his Fender Stratocaster and forced him to swap it for his (golden) backup. That’s how it stayed for the rest of the night, and from then on Slaven played exclusively on his Gibson LP. That naturally showed in the guitar sound too, especially in the solos. The Gibson simply produced a somewhat fatter, rougher, chunky, rockier tone.
After the opening section, which included the band’s own instrumental Slow Blues, and right after Muddy Waters’ I Just Wanna Make Love To You, the most striking figure of the evening walked onto the stage. The band’s famous first lady, Azra. Azra, whose singing career was in serious doubt not long ago, delivered her absolute max, as expected. She was literally bursting on stage with all that bubbling-over positivity and joy she can share with the crowd. Azra built up her performance from song to song, from minute to minute. Her fiery, explosively distinctive, relentlessly passionate and emotionally charged approach literally enchanted the audience, and it instantly started to sway in the coquettishly teasing rhythms of the erogenous vibration the band was creating. May the devil take me if I didn’t mistake her voice for Aretha Franklin’s a few times during the show. One moment devilish with venom on her tongue, the next gently murmuring and full of tender longing. Azra seduces you in an instant! Watching Azra perform, you’re definitely stunned and left speechless, and the floor slips out from under your feet! That’s how much seething energy this hugely charismatic singer produces, and how much charge and vibration she shakes out of herself the whole time. The three no less extremely likeable backing singers certainly did their part too, with their soothing hip-swaying through the charm of rhythmic kinetics, wrapped in the velvety warmth of the organ and Slaven’s chunky blues riffs, which the man fantastically complemented with exquisitely fine-tuned solo work – and those solos, besides talent, reflected unbelievable experience, a sharpened sense of softness, power, and the know-how of this brilliant guitarist. With their “cooing,” the backing singers added that much-needed dot on the “i,” where constant teasing in the performance leaps into the experience of true concert ecstasy.
The show, tight as a drum and convincingly blissed-out, strung together the band’s own Raw Blues, Glad I’m Dead, Some Questions in Big Bang over a marathon set, but above all surprised with a whole host of covers that aren’t necessarily well-known blues, soul and R&B standards. Among them, the version of The Eagles’ Take it to the Limit definitely won over the gourmets, while the band took on BB King’s Let the Good Times Roll once more at the close of the concert.
A bomb of a gig! No less, no more. Their exceptional tightness, given how rarely the group has played live lately, fills you with all the more excitement. Let’s hope that for Mojo Hand’s first 20th anniversary this year they’ll prepare some special kind of surprise, and maybe some new original material will show up too. A studio album release would be more than necessary. Especially for a band with this kind of track record, know-how and convincing playing! In a word. Devilish!
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