THE MOJO STARS
Formed fifteen years ago, The Mojo Stars have established themselves as a musical force to be reckoned with. With deep roots in the blues and soul combined with a rock driven edge, this multi-talented band has been collecting a large following, starting from their debut performance at one of the closing nights of Vancouver’s 2006 Jazz Festival, to their festival dates for summer, 2022.
Started by singer and front man Randy Clarke and guitarist Mark Rankin, the band recorded their first CD, 2009’s Devil’s Advocate, a collection of ten original songs penned by Clarke and Rankin. The CD received massive airplay being featured on blues programs in Canada, the US and Europe, including being the new spotlight artist on Canadian Brent Zwicker’s show, At The Crossroads. The disc was also in regular rotation on the US’s Tony Steidler Dennison’s podcast, The Roadhouse, which has a listenership of over 10,000. Locally, the band had four songs featured in the Vancouver Province’s Playlist section in 2009/2010, which with an online/print weekly readership of 920,000, enabled them to reach an even greater audience.
In 2017, the band released their second CD, Under The Influence, which debuted in the top ten of the Roots Music Reports’ Top 50 Blues Rock Albums, and in the top 20 Canadian releases. With rave reviews from a variety of international critics, the band continued playing a series of high profile shows in 2018 and 2019, splitting the bill with acts like Curtis Salgado, Monkey Junk, Jerry Doucette, Mississippi legend, Super Chikan, and many more.