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Joker Out between dreams and reality (Val 202: Music 202) - Part 1: Bojan and Jan

Today, 3.08.2023, Slovenian national radio station Val 202 broadcasted a recent interview with Joker Out members Bojan Cvjetićanin and Jan Peteh. Below is the translation of the interview, which you can listen in the audio file above, or on this direct link.

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Interviewer: Joker Out, the five-man band that sent Slovenia into a frenzy and is well on their way to sending Europe into a frenzy too. After their Eurovision performance in Liverpool, a lot of doors opened to Bojan, Kris, Jan, Nace and Jure. And Joker Out are stepping through all of them with decisive steps. Massive crowds at their concerts at home and abroad, concerts until the end of the year in Serbia, Croatia, Poland, Scandinavia that sold out in minutes, and crowds of dedicated fans around the world who seem to know all the lyrics by heart, even though Slovenian is far from familiar to them. I talked about all that with Bojan Cvjetićanin and Jan Peteh, two of the founding members of Joker Out. To start with, I asked them whether they’re living their dreams.

Jan: Fortunately, we're living more than our dreams, we’re living our lives. Bur what’s happening right now was still a dream not so long ago, yeah.

Bojan: I passed the Museum of Modern Art yesterday and saw that they currently have an exhibition called “Don’t dream your dreams”, so… it’s better to live them.

How are you absorbing everything that’s happening right now? A Slovenian band that’s, let’s say, more “midstream”, has never managed to do what you’re doing right now. Are you watching that with excitement, wonder, maybe even fear?

Bojan: Yeah, it all definitely caught us a little unawares. It’s true that everything that’s happening now was absolutely our aspiration when we decided that we wanted to go to Eurovision this year. And what we secretly and not-so-secretly wanted really came true. But I’d say that you cannot be prepared for all that to really happen. It’s truly crazy to follow these moments when we announce a concert abroad in some city, often in cities we’ve never even been to, and before we can even all post “juhuhu”, it’s sometimes already sold out, so… I mean, damn.

Jan: Never in my life could I have imagined that I’d see a full venue in Glasgow or London sing our songs in Slovenian, so moments like that are definitely the highlight of every week and month. But then there’s a big contrast when you come from that somewhat surrealistic experience into the quiet of your own home, and you’re at home for a few hours. Because you don’t know if this is real life or just a dream, or if you’re shifting between them. So it’s unusual, but… I’m enjoying it immensely.

Jan has pointed out that even abroad, fans sing Joker Out songs in Slovenian. After one of their recent concerts in the UK, I saw a comment on social media that went something like this: “I didn’t understand a word, but that was the best concert in my life.”

Jan: That’s what Bojan says at the start of every concert, “prepare to not understand a word for the next hour and a half.” But people are screaming, enjoying themselves. And some even pretend to understand the songs, even though they probably don’t.

Bojan: Well, that’s the main point of music, right? Music is special exactly because you don’t have to understand it, you just have to feel it. But it is weird for us because we’re not used to this happening with Slovenian language. Especially because… really from the moment we started making music, everyone was telling us that first of all, with Slovenian you can’t even make it in Slovenia, second of all, absolutely no way you could make it in the Balkans, and we’re not even going to talk about breaking into other foreign countries.

Bojan says that even with the upcoming songs, and hence with the new third album, they will not forget their mother tongue. Especially because they recognise you can achieve a lot even if you don't sing exclusively in English. Their ambition to tell an even bigger story, to expand to larger venues and to have a new, larger fan base is turning things around.

Bojan: As you mentioned in the beginning, we are a mainstream band. In mainstream music it is always a good idea to include the masses and make your music easily accessible to them. We have witnessed an initial push of interest after Eurovision, with some fans genuinely drawn to us as musicians. They're really, really committed to learning the material, because they want to come to the gigs and enjoy themselves. They're taking it to the max and that's phenomenal. And it's also our aspiration to grow. After all, writing songs in different languages is, by definition, a kind of musical experiment.

Kris (in the background): And a challenge.

Bojan: Yes, absolutely a challenge. We're not setting off to write the third album as an English only album, of course. We've decided that we want to do a multilingual album, it will absolutely include Slovene, Serbian and English, and hopefully include some Spanish and French language as well. That is something we want to play with.

Not only Slovenian and English, the other languages represent a challenge as well, say Joker Out. Speaking of the third album, it's already, let's say, marinating, in the making. Joker Out is also a band that has not suffered the so-called curse of the second album. It was, dare I say it, was even better than the debut. Are you concerned about the possible third album curse?

Jan: Our Demons have obviously defeated the curse of the second album. As for the progress of the third album, we recently had our first really creative rehearsals since December, when we were working on Carpe Diem in Hamburg. From then on, we've accumulated so much creative potential, that it simply poured out of us during those few rehearsals. Now each time we get to our rehearsal space, our need to create becomes so intense that I think if we keep this up, we won't have to worry about the demons of the third album either.

As Jan points out, they are not lacking in creative inspiration. Bojan agrees, adding that in recent months they have often been 'emotionally shocked'. This means that emotions have boiled up and things that they were not used to before have been happening, which made it difficult to process certain situations. Last week, Joker Out parted ways with one of the members of their core team, who found himself under an avalanche of criticism, especially on social media, for inappropriate behaviour. The news of the termination of the collaboration was followed by many thanks from fans that the band members had not only heard the message, but had also taken action about it.

Bojan: Yes. We have really had a very, very complex situation that we have always hoped would never happen to us, but as we said in the statement, we hope and believe that it will never happen again. What has happened was that one of our team members has created an unpleasant atmosphere with our fans, with our listeners, in a repetitive, how shall I say... Pattern. He often chose the wrong words, and this in turn led to many feeling, I would say, unpleasant, uncomfortable. Both at our concerts and on social media. And that is something that is absolutely unacceptable for us. We have always tried to put 1000% positive energy out at our concerts and share it with people, and the people also gave that energy back to us, so any disruption of that process is, as I said, unacceptable to us. And we absolutely had to say goodbye to this member.

The singer of Joker Out says it was the right decision and the band stands by it, adding that they have learned a lot from this experience. If nothing else, they have realized the true power of social media. They have learnt that it can bring a lot of good things, but there are also a lot of bad things that you can't be prepared for.

Bojan: I have to say that, yes, I've withdrawn from social media now, because I want to make this album under positive influences, not negative influences, and really, on social media I feel like I'm trapped in a world that I don't really want to be trapped in. So, yeah, for example, let's say two days ago, I was really negatively shocked, or affected by a moment when... We had a concert in Ptuj, which was a really specific experience, because I was having a panic attack on stage for an hour and a half, and I was just thinking about whether or not I was going to faint or not. I don't know why, whether it was the air, whether it was too much coffee, or what happened, but it really wasn't a pleasant concert for me, so within 20 minutes after the show I was rushing home, right. But on Twitter there was this post, some girl who said that I... that some security guard or somebody on my behalf invited her backstage after the concert. Which, whoever was there, including the organiser, knows wasn't even remotely true, because as soon as I got out of the shower, hands shaking, I got into the van and went home, sitting next to Nace, bag in hand, so as not to throw up right there in the car. So, there are some things we are not prepared for. There are dimensions that are a whole new world for us.

In the second part of the interview with Joker Out on "Val 202" (name of the radio station, "Wave 202"), we're sticking to departures and leaving. Joker Out is a group where two band members were replaced in the past seven years. The drummer Matic was replaced with Jure and the bassist Martin with Nace. That's why I am interested in how replacements influence the group or rather the ahmosphere in the group. A music group has to breathe as one. Jan says that each member brings a different energy to the team. He's convinced that one half of the first album and the whole second album would have sounded totally different if the drummer Jure hadn't joined them.

Jan: At this point, I'm simply happy that it happened, and it goes for Nace as well. Because now, I can hardly imagine two better persons for this band or better friends.

Jure (in the background): Awww!

Bojan: The fact is, members leaving a band is definitely a very difficult thing. We've had five members in the band since its creation. And as Jan said, when the energy changes, the balance that was there gets disrupted. Now there are only two possible scenarios. One is that the new energy is less suitable for the collective and the whole balance is brought down. Or that it is more positive and elevates the whole thing. I believe the universe helped us somehow; in both cases the energies that joined us, pushed us into new realms of creativity, positivity, literally everything in a very short time. So, I know that everything happened here just the way it had to happen. Even if you ask Martin, who just left the band, because he wanted to pursue another path in his life. You can ask him now, I know, because I live with him, because we are roommates. He is the luckiest man because, in the same short time that we have started branching out in new directions, his personal spheres have taken off in the best possible way, and he is, as we say, kicking ass. We can say that by 2023, everything that went on has happened as it should have.

Everything happened like it was supposed to happen, says Bojan. Also in Liverpool on the Eurovision stage. Barely three months later, Joker Out are living the life they could have only dreamed about. Masses of fans, sold out concerts and a feeling that only the sky is the limit. Is the current success partly or solely due to Eurovision, that's our next topic.

Bojan: It's absolutely not just a consequence of what happened in Liverpool because that was just one big catalyst for everything that we've been doing as a band since the beginning. (It also has to do with) how we dealt with Liverpool. Because what is happening today, as I said, was planned. We didn't know to what extent it was going to be realized, but it was a plan. Liverpool has made a difference for us in a way that no other night in this world can make because it has literally brought us, in one night, bizarre numbers of new audiences that we could not have imagined before. So, in one sense, yes, that is what Eurovision did for us; we cannot deny it. But on the other hand, it was us who did it.

Jan: In harmony, Eurovision and Joker Out, hand in hand.

Bojan: Together forever Joker Out, hand in hand.

Jan: *singing* # Together forever #

Together forever. Behind the group Joker Out is 7 years of creating. For the very end, a question, where do they see themselves in 7 years.

Jan: Now I've had a couple of people ask me recently how do you handle it when there's so much going on. To me, it seems like a primary school experience, where every year, the new grade is a little bit harder, but you're also evolving from the previous years. So, if we were thrown from zero to where we are now, we wouldn't even know where to begin. We have quite a bit of experience behind us now. It's a very steep road, exponentially growing, mathematically speaking, and I'm glad that we are at a point where nobody is confining us to a certain determined path that we should follow, but it's all up to our own volition. Whatever we decide to do, we will do, and I think that we can be very happy about this kind of artistic freedom. So, I'm also very excited and eagerly awaiting to see where this will take us.

Bojan: Here, Jure is suggesting that in 7 years we'll be doing Wembley. There was an idea that we should book Wembley now for the year 2030 and we release the tickets today. It would be the first concert in the world, where the tickets would be sold 7 years in advance. Then we'll wait and see what happens. If something will happen, it'll happen; if not ... it will get canceled due to illness.

All: (laughter)

Translation cr: @kurooscoffee, @beeoftheanxieties, drumbeat, +2 anonymous jokeroutsubs members