Good Mojo keeps four pals in the same band 30 years
Three decades in, most bands, especially local ones, have long since hung it up — but not Mojo Depot. The four members have somehow not committed mayhem against one another or gone their separate ways.
So why not celebrate 30 years together, which the band will do Friday night at White Water Tavern, where they first played a club show.
“Back then we had a different name, Loose Change,” says Rob Moore, half of the band’s guitarist/vocalist duo. “When we got started it was guitarist and singer Tyndall Jackson and drummer Jason Adams and me, and we have all been friends since childhood. Tyndall and I met in the third grade and began playing guitar together 35 years ago. We eventually got ourselves some electric guitars and went looking for a drummer.
“We found Jason Adams and worked as a trio for a few years before we added Johnny B [John Wright] on bass when we were seniors in high school. That’s the lineup we still have today.”
Along the way, there were interruptions at times when college was the focus, as Moore attended the University of California at Berkeley and Jackson attended the similarly named Berklee College of Music in Boston. In the late 1980s, the band re-grouped in Oakland, Calif., in what became a sabbatical from school. After about a year, the band again splintered, thanks to school and love, although they continued to re-group for reunions and holidays in Arkansas.
When he completed school and tired of drifting around, Moore hooked up with Jackson in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, with Adams soon joining them in an outfit they called Flavor Razor. The opportunity to open a Little Rock show for The Allman Brothers Band led them to return home. On the way, they rescued Wright from Oklahoma and the band began working together again on what would become their first CD, Phantom Train. The foursome completed the album at their Los Angeles home after first recording three songs with Little Rock-born producer Jim Dickinson at the House of Blues Studios in Memphis.
“This was when we changed the name of the band to Mojo Depot, after we got tired of running into so many other Loose Change bands around the country,” Moore says. “The new name paid homage to an old train depot on the Moore family farm near Arkansas City, where the band liked to serenade the rice and soybean fields, along with my dad, Robert Moore, a big, big music fan who took me to my first rock concert, which was to see Rush at Barton Coliseum. He and my stepmom, Beverly, were sometimes willing to listen to us.”
Life on the road took its toll, as the band gave up its home in California and took to living in the band van. A barroom arson in Athens, Ga., destroyed the band’s equipment and sent them limping home to Arkansas City, where they found replacement instruments and set up a studio, where they recorded their second album, Crazy to Believe.
“As we began to play more locally and settled back into our Arkansas home,” Moore says, “we celebrated 25 years together with the release of our third album, Twenty Five, which was five years ago, if my math is correct.
“And we will be marking our 30 years together where we first performed live professionally and honor our many friends and employees of the White Water who have shared in these many good times, plus it’s a chance to remember the great Larry ‘Goose’ Garrison, who first gave us a chance, as he did to countless others.”