The Mojos

I kind of see myself as that college dropout turned band kid. Suddenly realized I didn't care about what I was doing. So I stopped doing it. In my mind for a long time I had wanted to do something I wanted to do for once, be in a band again. I always flashback to the high school punk band. I was great fun and just what I needed back then.

I decided I wanted to take conscious steps towards building a band again. So I started gathering people off of craigslist, the Cal State Long Beach music department, and other people I knew to play blues.

It had to be blues, so classic, so basic, so simple yet so deep. I fell in love with the blues instantly. Anyone and everyone who could play blues and who was willing to play I jammed with in my Long Beach garage. I met a lot of great players and others not so great. Unfortunately everyone wanted to just come and go. Just jam and leave never to return. While I was enjoying myself I knew that there needed to be consistency with each practice in order to really make originals and get somewhere musically.

That's when I met Jose in one of my Engineering classes at CSULB. We jammed and meshed right off. We would play what ever we could think of on the spot, Zeppelin, Hendrix, Santana, and improvised blues jams. It was great and such a relief to find someone willing to come back who could really play.

That was a the first great step towards LA Blues Boys. After a while we were having fun but I knew there was something else missing. I kept inviting people over and Jose went with it, bless his soul, and we went through some
weirdos and duds together. The day we met Justin it was just another day we were gonna jam with some new guy off of craigslist. 'Whatever' we thought. Well we got down to it and I realized shit, this is it. Jose and I were good and we could play but unfortunately you can't get shows saying you have no set list, no songs and its all improvised. Jose and I both knew we weren't songwriters and to try to force it out would be stupid. That's were Justin came in.

He had tons of originals that he recorded with his electronic keyboard drums, his vocals and his own guitar riffs. As a band those originals really come to life well. Thankfully Justin stuck around and we became LA Blues Boys for a little. We came up with some originals and played some shows and really started getting out there. We more appropriately named ourselves The Mojos at that point. Shows were growing in number more and more along with the positive feedback from peers and other musicians we looked up to. We were on a roll and It felt great. The rest is history

Influences? Where do we begin? Old Bluesmen (Buddy Guy, Muddy, T-bone, John Lee Hooker to name a few), Chuck Berry, James Burton, ACDC, Stones, Stevie Ray, Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Clapton, Eagles, CCR, Dave Alvin. We touch on Afro-Cuban rhythms and Jazz.