{"id":28660,"date":"2015-10-29T17:29:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T22:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=28660"},"modified":"2015-11-10T12:13:15","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T17:13:15","slug":"mojiles-covering-the-library-with-country-and-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/mojiles-covering-the-library-with-country-and-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"MoJiles: Covering The Library with Country and Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re looking for something fun to do on Halloween weekend, The Library<\/strong> is lending its stage to MoJiles<\/strong> on the 29th, 30th, and 31st of October, and if singing along to 80s rock or country classics is your thing, you\u2019re pretty much guaranteed to have a good time. Not to mention there is a $500 prize for the best costume on Halloween night. Can\u2019t make it that weekend? Mojiles will also be at the Library on the 5th of November. I had a chance to speak with Jon Kott<\/strong>, the singer of MoJiles, about the band\u2019s success.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"MoJiles2\"<\/a>How did the band start?
\n<\/strong>MoJiles started about eight years ago from a guy who\u2019s not even in the band anymore, it was his brain child. His name\u2019s Mike Jenks, and he started the band out of Pensacola. I joined the band, and we immediately got picked up by a booking agency out of Birmingham called Music Garden. They just started putting us in the college circuits around the southeast, and all the SEC schools, and it really just started snowballing from there. There have been so many variations of this band. I\u2019m the only consistent member who\u2019s been here through the eight years.<\/span><\/p>\n

What members are in the band presently?
\n<\/strong>There\u2019s myself, Jon Kott. I\u2019m a singer. Tim Stephens, our newest acquisition, is a guitar player from the band EMF, with the number one hit \u201cYou\u2019re Unbelievable.\u201d Justin Smegelski is the bass player, Justin Rogers is our other guitar player, and Chris \u201cWinky\u201d Winskey is our drummer.<\/span><\/p>\n

What genres do y\u2019all focus on?
\n<\/strong>Everything from country to rock to southern rock to 80s. We try to gear our shows towards high energy. In this whole southeast area, people like this saying that up north, country people don\u2019t like rock, and rock people don\u2019t like country, but down here, it usually crosses over.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"MoJiles3\"<\/a>When did you first start coming to The Library?
\n<\/strong>We\u2019ve been coming here about a year. The owner Johnny found us down at the Hangout in the Gulf Shores. There\u2019s definitely a group of 50 or 60 people, we see their same faces all the time. Which kind of helps build that crowd. It takes a few people to come up to the front to get the other people comfortable enough to come out.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what are some of the favorite songs here in Oxford?
\n<\/strong>We have been finding that Oxford really enjoys Eric Church. The country stuff and the 80s stuff. We have a lot of love for the 80s — we\u2019ll play Journey, Def Leopard, Bon Jovi.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do y\u2019all have original content as well?
\n<\/strong>We do. All of us have come from different original backgrounds. We\u2019ve had so many requests from people at this point that want to hear our original stuff. Tim and I have been working on rehashing and pulling out some new, original stuff, that should hopefully be coming to fruition soon. But since we pulled Tim over from the UK, things have just been filling up. We\u2019re gonna be up to like 240 shows booked next year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"MojilesTag\"<\/a>What would you attribute to y\u2019all\u2019s success?
\n<\/strong>I think it\u2019s just the hard work, man. We don\u2019t stop, and we constantly keep evolving. We keep things fresh. A lot of the bands we see in the circuit, they\u2019re playing the exact same show from end to end. And we just keep adding stuff and trying to evolve, and hit new markets, and stretch out.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the most difficult part about being in a cover band?
\n<\/strong>Being in a cover band.<\/span><\/p>\n

What do you mean by that?
\n<\/strong>There\u2019s not a lot of respect from all of our peers. Some people respect the crap out of what we do, and are envious and flattering. We all came from original bands, but there\u2019s always that stigma of cover bands not having original stuff. But there\u2019s really no downside to it. We get to play for a really great crowd, who are really into it. It\u2019s a bummer that we\u2019re not getting to share our songs and they\u2019re not singing our words, but it\u2019s still entertaining, and it makes you feel alive.\u00a0 \"The<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re looking for something fun to do on Halloween weekend, The Library is lending its stage to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":28661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-shows"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/MojilesFEAT.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}