• Andrew Ryan — enjoying Mojos’ renaissance.

MOJOS is well named, taking out its second WAMI award for best venue last weekend, and co-owner Andrew Ryan picking up a Golden WAMI.

Ryan has been a force behind the bar’s success for eight years.

“Mojos can’t die, but it can live better,” was Ryan’s mantra as he ended a decade of mediocrity and transformed the place into a thriving creative hub that now hosts 363 gigs a year.

Gigs seven nights a week makes the difference, he says.

“It had been run for about a decade by people who really believed in its potential, but perhaps didn’t have the experience,” says Ryan, who’d previously booked acts and done marketing for the Hyde Park hotel.

“There was half-a-million dollars owing in 2006 when I bought in, which was a stupid thing to do. We didn’t have any credit with alcohol suppliers… a local store would give us stock before the weekend, and we would pay them back.”

Since then, marketing has been modernised and musos are put first. It’s “rock and roll hospitality” Ryan says.

The bar hosts emerging bands early in the week, with headliners raking in the cash on weekends.

“I think those in the music scene here are coming from a certain groundedness: doing it, being it, trying it, nothing to do with buying it,” Ryan explains, adding that places like Mojos are essential to local artists learning how to operate independently.

He remembers Mojos from his own performing days in the ‘90s as “an outlying punk on an otherwise antique store-filled street, with no other hospitality businesses around it”.

Since then he has witnessed the metamorphosis of the strip into a night-time entertainment and hospitality economy.

“Mojos gave a centrepiece for all those businesses to believe in the alternate culture that can apply in the North Freo town centre,” says Ryan with a grin. “But we’re still scruffy. We’re really proud to be the punk on the street.”

‘Massive contribution’

Andrew Ryan’s second Golden WAMI recognises his “massive contribution” to the industry, says WAM CEO Mike Harris.

He says Ryan has been a leader in “venue management, promotions and booking with Cool Perth Nights, his music, but also organising the Big Splash band competition”.

“He facilitates the advancement of young new bands, enabling growth from the emerging end of the business.”

by JESSICA COCKERILL