New owner says downtown Joliet club has proven it can draw a crowd

JOLIET – The club at 22 W. Cass St. is being revived.

What was Mojoes and then The Tree now is becoming The Forge.

New owner Frank Mastalerz is confident the downtown Joliet location will draw crowds if it’s run right. He’s seen it happen.

“I know it can work. We have a proven history of it working,” Mastalerz said last week in the middle of a remodeling at The Forge, as he and partners in the venture were preparing the club for an April 7 opening night.

Mojoes frequently attracted hundreds of people for the heavy metal bands that played there – so many people that the club ran into problems with city authorities for exceeding its capacity of 950. New owners took over in July 2015 and changed the name to The Tree, which closed in December.

Mastalerz is familiar with the history, having booked most of the shows that played at Mojoes and The Tree over the past several years.

He also said he has a pretty good handle on what he thinks didn’t work, having experience running his own club – The Pearl Room in Mokena – and organizing events when he worked as events coordinator at Toyota Park in Bridgeview.

Mastalerz owns FM Entertainment, which provides talent, production and marketing services to music venues.

“I know how to run a building,” he said. “It’s not that complicated. Honestly, over 25 years I’ve done over 4,000 shows.”

Club remodeling

The new owners are making some changes.

For one, the stairs that used to run right alongside the stage leading to the second level of the club have been moved to the other end of the room. Mastalerz said they were a distraction.

“People that come for a show, they want an experience seeing their favorite band,” he said. “Watching people walk up a flight of stairs while your favorite band is on the stage, that’s a buzzkill.”

The stage itself has been enlarged, something Mastalerz said was long overdue based on the feedback he had from bands that played at the club.

“The biggest complaint we always had was they had production constraints because of the stage size,” he said.

The new owners also are putting to use a kitchen to open a restaurant for lunches during the week and to provide food to concertgoers during performances.

It all sounded good to Jack Loftis of Crest Hill, who was looking into the window at The Forge last week, trying to get a better idea of what’s coming.

“I’m glad to know it’s going to go back to a venue we can be happy with,” said Loftis, a self-described metal head who called Mojoes “wonderful.”

“It was a great atmosphere,” Loftis said. “They always had the right bands for the right crowds.”

When the club became “The Tree,” Loftis said, “It was not like it used to be.”

Knowing that Mastalerz ran The Pearl Room convinced Loftis that the Joliet club is on the right track.

“The Pearl Room was awesome,” he said. “That’s the kind of venue that brought in the music.”

Bringing in shows

Mastalerz said he will bring in all genres of music for different age groups.

When he appeared before the Joliet City Council for his liquor license earlier this month, Mastalerz said he expects to stage between 60 to 80 shows this year.

He also promised he would be able to control the crowds, which occasionally became unruly at Mojoes, contributing to its demise.

Mastalerz got his start 25 years ago, managing a band out of the Lockport area called Elbow. After a while, he got involved with Dreams, a club in downtown Lockport, booking shows for the owner.

Today, his business, FM Entertainment, books talent for venues in 17 cities from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Sturgis, South Dakota, Mastalerz said. When he was lining up shows for Mojoes and The Tree, Mastalerz said, agents wanted to bring their bands to the venue.

“The entire time I was here,” he said, “I knew that it can draw.”

The April 7 opening is a free show featuring the band Hi Infidelity. Adelitas Way is scheduled for April 13, and Kashmir, a Led Zeppelin tribute band is coming April 14.