Mucha na Dziko

KAMAW TUT — Journal Countdown until the show

So in just about two weeks I have a gig coming, and considering there’s a lot of stuff going on in the band currently, I might start a journal in order to kinda „think out loud” about different aspects of our preparations, the show itself, my thoughts on the band, etc. Ending this journal on the day after the show, with thoughts on how it went, and where (if anywhere) we’ll go from
there.

I’ll start with a quick memoir of how the band got together and then in the next days I’ll get more into the songwriting process, rehearsals and the songs themselves.
I’ll be calling the bandmembers the way we call each other, and not by their actual names, as I haven’t talked with them about writing this, so just in case.


7/06/21

History lesson
As of now, the band consists of myself (bass & vocals), Szelest (guitar & vocals), and Kilijanek (drums & vocals).

It’s kind of funny how we got together, as we were all in high school together, but never actually hanged out. I was friends with the guitarist first, but then after a year – or so – we've had a big argument and didn’t talk to each other for over a year, and so I started hanging out with the drummer. But then again after a year we parted ways in a not-such-a-nice way, and so we didn’t talk to each other for another year. Both of these friendships truly made my coming of age years, both in the good way (like getting to know – spend time – with people who actually get stuff, or that are compatible with me, or like running away from school, in order to smoke joints and jam all day long at my place) and in the bad way (like „how to deal with ****ty behavour from other people).
The weird part was, that the three of us were the only people in the school with active interest in music, but they never even tried to hang out with each other. I was the only link.

In the meantime I was going to study in France, and wanted to have a clean slate when I start a new chapter in my life, so I reconciled with both of them. And when I was in Paris I learned they got a band going (well Kilijanek did, and needed a second guitarist, so the first guy he thought of was Szelest). They invited me to witness the gig, but when you live in Paris, you can’t really go to Warsaw in a week's notice.

Paris was a horrible experience. And after a year I came back to Poland, only to learn that, guess what...they had an argument („he’s so irritating” „he’s so mean”). But this time around I was like „cut the **** guys, the three of us are the three people most in love with music, that I know, we’re gonna start a band, and Your dumb fight ain’t gonna stand in the way”. And they agreed. That was three months ago.

The first Jam we had, was in a quartet. Kilijanek played guitar, and we had another drummer. The Jam session was pure gold, we played blues, rock, psychedelia, reggae, and even a kinda jazzy tune. All (except the reggae one) invented on the spot, fun to play and just truly great.

Sadly enough the drummer never reached out to us again (). But it turned out ok, because Kilijanek had been practicing for a while already and wanted to take that spot. This caused a fair share of tension within the band, as he is arguably the best guitar player we’ve ever met (he’s had lessons since he was like 10 or something). But I guess it’s all for the best, as his drumming skills are (were at the beginning) as lousy as my bass playing, so now the three of us are pretty much on the same level skills wise, and me & Szelest are not a backing band for him.

We met two times in this new power trio configuration, and the music was pretty good if you ask me, but apparently Kilijanek thought it was amazing enough to enlist us for a gig. It was a month ago, and that was the point where Kamaw Tut really came to existence, as we started jamming 2 times a week, in order to prepare ourselves.

Trollheart

Interesting idea for a journal. You probably should consider continuing it after the first gig though, keep people updated on further engagements. What does the band name mean?

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Mucha na Dziko

Well really it wasn’t supposed to mean anything, I just made a collage cover art, and I glued on it some random letters, but when I presented the cover to the boys, one of them googled it (in order to see whether a band, song, etc already exists or not) and it turned out to mean „I Love You” in romani



I’d post that cover art, but sadly I don’t know how to insert jpgs

Trollheart

Just upload your file to a hosting service, such as Photobucket, ImagBAM etc (I use http://www.postimg.cc) then right click to get your code, type an [IMG] and paste your link between that and an [/IMG] tag. Or click the image icon above (the yellow square, four to the left of the WRAP YOUTUBE TAGS one) and just insert the link.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Mucha na Dziko

8/06/21 Setlist Part 1 — Psychedelic Punky Funky

Our rehearsals are held at an amazing place. It’s an old paper factory, that served as such before the II world war, but had since been reused by it’s owners as a complex where you can rent different buildings/rooms that don’t serve their original purpose anymore. The place is huge and absolutely gorgeous. Kilijanek’s parents rented two rooms in one of the buildings in order to have a sort of greenhouse there, but very soon Kilijanek transformed it into an amateur recording studio. So currently the smaller room has drums, a keyboard, a couple of amps, a pedalboard, mixer, and some microphones in it, and the bigger room (which is like 4 metres high — very nice reverb btw) serves as the smoking room/chillout zone.

Sadly, very soon the place will dissapear, and we’ll have to start looking for a different location for a studio, as Kilijanek is getting evicted out of there (because the owners are not happy that this space does not serve as a storage space as it should, according to them). But so far, so good.



For the last 3 weeks all we’ve been playing were only jams really. We couldn’t quite imagine the sound we’re looking for, so we were just coming to the studio and doing „warmup jams”, which by the way were incredibly fun, but nothing was really coming out of it. They were mostly reminiscent of the desert blues genre, psychedelic punky, funky stuff, or some standard blues.

Some of it was really cool, like arguably the best song we’ve made so far really (though I guess we won’t recreate it anytime soon, as not one of us is good enough with ear and theory to know what the **** did we actually play ), which doesn’t have a title yet, but we refer to it as „Mario Jazz” as it reminded us of video game music, only funkier and jazzier.
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/XsSN1CQMJLFPiy7F7


And last week, during the last jam, we finally sat down and listened through all the jams we’ve had so far (well, not all, but those ones we remebered that were good, and came up with a setlist.

[ It’s then that I realised that the stage fright I was feeling up to that moment wasn’t because of a fear of playing live in general, but because of the uncertainty of how it will all work out during the gig. It was because we didn’t have any sort of plan. But now, when there is a setlist, with very specific songs that we can work on, develop them, etc, my fright completely dissapeared (though another one came to existance, but I’ll talk about that later). ]

The set consists currently of 7 tracks (we’re thinking about including an 8th one, titled „Co-Pack66”, but so far we found ourselves unable to recreate it with the same level of energy as when we played it the first time, so for now it’s shelved); 3 of them being a band efort, 2 written by me and Szelest, and 2 coming from my own personal vault.
Here it is:

1. Witamy w naszym cyrku [eng. „Welcome to our Circus”]

2. Punky Jam 1 [so far no title, as there’s no lyrics, but we’re working on that]

3. Ja Padam [eng. „I’m Falling”, meaning „being exhausted”]

4. Mada! [japanese for „More!”, „harder/faster”]

5. Tea in a Jar

6. Chocolate Man

7. Jasna Strona Słońca [eng. „The Bright Side of the Sun”]


In this entry I’ll talk about songs 1-4, tomorrow (or the day after) I’ll dive into the rest.



Witamy w Naszym Cyrku
This is one of the songs written by the entire band, meaning it originated from one of the warm up jams („one, two, three, four...play!”).
It was the first song during which we switched on the microphone, so one of us could sing. The singer here is the drummer. And I guess the final lyrics will be the ones he improvised during the first take (they're in polish, but I'll write down a quick translation):


I guess t's pretty clear why this will be our opening track.

The entire song consists of one 4 notes bassline, a 2 notes wah feedbacking guitar line and changing drum patterns (depending on whether the drummer sings or not). On top of that, between the verses the singer will be humming, howling, etc a simple repeating melody.
All kept in a exotic psychedelic aesthetic.
The only thing missing would be a sitar and trumpet on top, but on that we'll have to work when (if) album recording begins.
This one won't be long, 3-4 minutes max, as the patterns we're playing are cool, but as there's only the three of us, and no soloist, the audience might get bored if we'd do it for 10minutes.

Still, as an opener – gold.


Punky Jam / Ja Padam
I group these two songs together, as the idea would be to make them blend. We'd start with the so-far-lyricless punk jam (it really hits hard), that is played in Amin and then make a key change up a minor third to C, where "Ja Padam" starts.

Both of these songs started as jams, with "Ja Padam" having the lyrics invented on the spot as well (though, as you'll see, they're not very sophisticated).

Drums and bass lock very hard on this one, especially the bassline with the hi-hat line win order to create this disorientating quasi-rave flow to the song, with the distorted and echoed guitar playing slowly 2 very dissonant chords, that mimic the melody of the vocals (sung by Szelest):

I'm exhausted
I'm falling
I'm so exhausted
Cause I have no home
Oh, I can't go on

As for the Punky Jam, the guitar goes full hardcore mode (to my ears Szelest's guitar here sounds like if Hendrix was a guitarist of a punk band in the 80s), the drums keep a very aggressive and busy rhythm, with lots of cymbals and ride hits, and the bass has a line (which I'm pretty proud of, in terms of rhythm and consonant-dissonance) that goes


in a similar fashion to "Eight Miles High" by the Byrds.


Mada!
And there, when the audience thinks it knows where the show is going ("oh, ok, they're gonna rock our heads off with this psychedelic punk stuff for the next hour") we enter with the jazziest tune in the whole set.

This one is my original composition, going back a year or so, which I wrote when being obsessed by Donovan and Shintaro Sakamoto.
The whole thing centers around a really weird rhythmically baseline, that goes

D – F – F# – A – C – G

With with constant ghost notes and slight variations for the chorus and a solo.
In the original version I went for a simple muted guitar (with it's melody reminiscent of the main theme from the animation "Ice Age"), but for the band version we went with jazzier chords and phrasing, with flat 7ths, 9ths, etc. The drums center around rimshots and tight, closed hi-hat during the verses and going full John Bonham mode in the choruses.

I'm the one singing this time, but in no particular language (so the lyrics are pure nonsense in the likes of):

Kara-mi-wo Ti Ka
Manada
Dolo kviwa todo
Saramada

Wo ti kvana la
Di wu
Gambawoona
Dambura ki da

Mada!

The funny part is that after singing it the first time, I put the words I'm singing phonetically into the google translator, and apparently some of these actually mean something in Japanese. Like "Mada" means "More", and sometimes it even made whole phrases and sentences, like:

"A bra is the final barier"
"Earths breath is looking straight at you"

And some others I don't remember right now.




Anyway, that's it for today. Tomorrow or the day after (as tomorrow I'm going over at Szelest's place to work on some real structure in these songs, so they seize sounding so much like jams and start sounding more like . . . sophisticated jams ) I'll break down the rest of the songs.

Mucha na Dziko

Oh, and here's that cover art that gave us our name

Attached Thumbnails

 

Mucha na Dziko

9/06/21 Setlist Part 2 — Melting On The Streets

Just when I wrote the previous post, I thought that „Mada” is supposed to have this feel of „Low Rider” by War, but covered by the Talking Heads. Just an idea.

The three remaining tracks are the strongest material we’ve got if you ask me. In my eyes, the first four songs are a sort of warmup, in order to get ready to knock everyone off their feet when we start this second half.
Anyway, without further ado, let’s get into the shoegazing & punky reggae party part of the show.


Tea in a Jar
This one is a song I’ve written when I was 17, and recorded for the first time a year later. It became my biggest hit (if you could call it that way) among my friends, and my friends’ friends, etc.

When in high school, every day for a couple of months I brought a jar with tea in it, and one day I found a sticker somewhere and wrote on it „some tea in some jar”. When my english teacher saw that jar on the table, he said it’s the most pretentious thing he’d ever seen. Which I found rather funny at the time.

It started out with the lyrics, that I wrote while trying to find all words in english that rhymed with „Jar”, and then I just needed to fill the gaps in the verses.
This is what I came up with:

I keep some tea in a jar
And when I go to a bar
I drink it all up

And when they kick me out
I’m lying on the floor
I’m freezing in the snow
I’m so cold

I’ve got no home
And I’ve got no job
And I’ve got no god
I am so cold

I keep some tea in a jar
When I’m riding my car
And I’m scratching my scar
I’m stopping at a bar

And when the kick me out
I get beat up
Then I drink it all up
And I’m not cold as much

I keep some tea in a jar
When I go to a bar
With my guitar

The idea behind it was to get „in-character” of a person who on the outside is fine with the attrocities of life, it’s monotone routine, but really he just can’t stand it anymore, but doesn’t know how to change it.

As I mentioned earlier, my 2018 version of this song, became something in the sorts of my biggest hit. And during the last Jam session, when we tried to play „Tea in a Jar” for the first time live, Kilijanek absolutely ****ed up the first drum fill that he tried to do, as he went full Keith Moon mode on the toms and snare and got out of the feel/rythm. And he just said „oh, sorry guys, I just got way to excited that we’re actually playing this”. Which I think is the nicest thing I’ve ever heard about my music.

The song is a two chord composition, with only two fretting fingers needed to play it. It’s basically just a E power chord for four bars, and a C power chord for four bars. But the thing that gives this song it’s punch is that you don’t play only the power chords, but you need to leave all other open strings ringing, and when you put chorus or vibrato effect on it, it creates this brooding, furious but monotone sound, that really delfines the track.
The bass goes mostly for the root, but every four bars has these very defined fills and runs, to push the guitar chords forward. The drums are aggresive, very busy, with high emphasis on the ride, cymbals and the kick that plays more and more hits up until every 8 bars it resets.
During the rehearsal Szelest absolutely nailed the guitar part, with vibrato and reverb turned all the way up to 10, and making lots of feedback against the amp during fills.

It’s all played in this dreampop/shoegazing aesthetic, only with plenty of post-punk style rythms. I’m the one singing again.

Now, this song actually gave me another little stress component. First of these is that I kinda feel there’s a lot of expectations. Like, Kilijanek said that we have to play this song, because plenty of his friends will be there, and it’s like going to a Rolling Stones concert expecting you’d hear „Satisfaction” during it. Which is nice, but still, damn.
The second thing is that the song has (should have) a guitar solo in it. And it should be played with two guitarists really (rythm&lead), as the rythm guitar can’t stop playing it’s part, because it’s by far the most recognisable element of the song. But as we’re a trio, we needed to come up with another idea for it. And we’ve decided that the song will have a bass solo. A fuzz bass solo. Meaning I’ll be the one playing it. And as much as it seems fun and great, that I’ll be able to express the feeling I’ll be singing about through Baśka (that’s my bass’ name), I feel rather unsure of myself whether I can deliver something really exciting on stage. But Hey, there’s still 10 days left to practice.


Chocolate Man
Ok, this one and the next are the songs co-written by me and Szelest. During one of the jam/rehearsals, when we were supposed to go for a cigarette break, Szelest said he has this chord he really likes (it was Emin add9, with a doubled minor third), and I told him to go from there to Amin7 & Bmin7 in the E string shape, which he really liked.

Then after the break, we started jamming some nonsense, and in minutes we were like „Stop. We’ve got these cool chords, that’s what we should be playing”. And „one, two, three, four” we just change the entire sonic landscape from nonsense to beauty.

I came up with this bluesy bassline, that goes something like

E - E - C - B - A
E - E - C - B - A
E - E - C - B - A
A - G - F# - F

And Kilijanek made this „Blood sugar sex magik” type of drum pattern. Pretty much right away Szelest started improvising lyrics, and it sounded so great, we imediately thought that this has to be included in the set. His vocal style here reminds me greatly of both Ian Curtis and Lech Janerka, which is kinda a weird juxtaposition, but I don’t know how to describe it otherwise.

The improvised lyrics are something in the likes of:

A little chocolate
My body
Is made of Chocolate

Everybody’s made of
Something
I’m made of ****ing Chocolate

I didn’t see, no
Whatever my eyes could see
My body is made of Chocolate
And me

I can’t be happy
Because everyday
I’m melting on the streets
Along with my Chocolate brain

Cause I’m a Chocolate Man
A Chocolate maaaaaaaaaaan!
Just a ****ing Chocolate Man

Everybody tends to disagree but
I’m a Chocolate Man
That’s what I am

Oh, as far as I can see
My body is made of
Chocolate and me

I want you to see that
Everything’s allright
With me
(Not)

I’m a Chocolate Man!
A Chocolate maaaaaan!

And so on and so on, we played it for like 15-20minutes straight. Very post-punkish shoegazy. We were supposed to have a trumpet player on this one, but for some inexplicable reason he never shows up.


Jasna Strona Słońca
Now this song has some history. The chords and bassline were written as a reggae songwriting exercise. But it was fun to play, so we jammed on it on different ocasions, including that first jam we had as a band (proto-band?), meaning the quartet one. I played rythm guitar, Kilijanek played bass, Szelest lead and that drummer we had back then - drums (obviously).

It turned out that Szelest had written some lyrics that were sort of a stereotypical ironic lyrics on how people usualy perceive reggae (meaning smoking joints, peace, love, rastafari!). He was supposed to sing it, but we couldn’t plug in the microphone, so he stayed on lead (which was actually a good thing, his guitar work on that version was just amazing, it was like he was telling a story).

Anyway, I went over at Szelest’s place one day, and we got really drunk and high, I started playing the rythm on his guitar and he was jumping all over the place singing the lyrics he’d written before. And it actually sounded like a real song. Then the day after he took me to an open air party, with a fire, and all, and we put the studio version of the song through the speakers. And everybody was having a great time dancing, singing, and stuff. And that’s when we realised there’s something golden in here. Like, for the first time ever people weren’t annoyed by our 10minute Jam session, but quite the opposite — they were having a great time listening to it.

So on the next Jam, already in our power trio configuration we tried to recreate the song, but with lyrics this time. Szelest on rythm and vocals, me on bass and backing vocals and Kilijanek drums. And well, wow, this turned out to be like the definition of a 70s punky reggae party. The song got grittier in it’s sound, and these happy, no-care-for anything, ironic lyrics about smoking joints and making love actually completely changed their meaning and atmosphere when presented in this punky first, reggae second environment.

The chords go

Gmin Gmin Gmin Fmaj
Cmin7 Cmin7 Dmin7 Dmin7

Ok, that’s it for today, tomorrow I’ll talk about development (if there will be any) in these songs after today’s songwriting jam I’ll have with Szelest.

Mucha na Dziko

11/06/21 — The Pencil Problem

Oh boy, oh boy, this is another game changer.

A couple of days ago, I was listening to some of Kamaw Tut’s jam sessions, and I’ve found a mind blowing song. It was Szelest who came up with the chords (a couple of years ago, he says), and for over an hour we were trying to figurę out how to play them. It was tricky, as the song has 3 parts, and each of them is in a different tempo and requires different feels.

Anyway, both me and Kilijanek came up with our parts, but playing it was rocky to say the least, mostly on the part of Kilijanek, as he was unable to change the rythms so quickly on the drums.

I remember I wasn’t very keen on that song during the jam, but when I listened to it these couple of days ago I instantly fell in love with it, and it inspired me to write a vocal melody & lyrics.

I took this hour long recording and cut it in different places (to cut out the parts where we don’t even play „kinda good”), and put together a 1:30 showcase of the song in order to sing the lyrics I’ve written. I found the result satisfying (amazing if you will) and sent it to Szelest, whether he aproves or not (it’s his chords after all). He didn’t respond, but yesterday I was at his place, and we were supposed to come up with some structure to the gig’s Setlist.

I showed him the demo again, and he was like „damn, we absolutely have to play this”.
And well, I couldn’t agree more.

The lyrics go something like this:

Without you around
I cannot write
My thoughts will get lost
And my songs will be toast

How can it be
To play hide and seek
All of the time
All of the time

You are mine
But you can’t be found
Where do you hide?
Come back inside...

...my pencil case
...my pencil case

Which I like, as they seem at first to be some sort of stalker/misogynistic lyrics, but then they turn out to be about a pen, that you’ve lost somewhere and it drives you mad (because you can't doodle or write down any thoughts – that will get lost, if they won't be written down, like, just right now).



So we’ve decided to try it one more time on the next rehearsal (sunday).
Here’s the demo version (keep in mind it’ll get much better the next time):

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/a7RKKujjSvYdUtmJ6



News of the world
By the way, on the sunday rehearsal we’ll play as a quartet again. As we’ll be auditioning a second guitar player. A guy our age, who is Szelest’s girlfriend’s roommate.

Wish us luck!

Mucha na Dziko

14/06/21 A Quartet is Born

Yesterday's rehearsal brought some fundamental changes to our band.
The first being that we're currently (finally) a quartet, and not a trio, as it was for the last couple of months.
The second one is that our setlist changed quite considerably (we're dropping two songs out of it).
And the third is that Szelest might become a full time vocalist and drop the guitar for most of the gig.

1&3

The newest member is Jędras, and as I've said before he came to our attention by being the roommate of Szelest's girlfriend. Szelest met him at their apartment, learned that he plays guitar, likes a lot of blues stuff, they jammed, etc.

As I'm a rather (very) introverted person, I was being quite stressed out by the fact that I'm supposed to meet this guy ON the day of the rehearsal, as there would be no time for any sort of knowin-each-other/bonding other than playing really, so I might end up ****ing this up, by being unkind or not-very-welcoming. But it all turned out all right, he seemed cool, and wasn't imposing his presence upon everybody, so the social part went well. We didn't talk much, but the impression he left was pretty great.

The jamming was awful.

For the first hour and a half.

I guess it was because of the new blood in the studio, we had to work out among ourselves how to approach this new playing style, in a band that was rather a hermetic one up to that point. What certainly didn't help was that instead of doing a warmup jam to get to know how Jędras plays when he's free of structural constraints, we went straight to rehearsing songs.

So we played and played, and although it wasn't really that awful, it didn't have any of the energy, power, atmosphere as it should.

Anyway, we took a break, Kilijanek and Szelest nearly broke up the band (I'm getting kinda tired of being the mediator between these two), but after half an hour we went back to playing, but this time we took a different approach.

I was playing bass and Kilijanek drums, nothing changed here, but Szelest gave up the guitar duties to Jędras alone. So our squad became one of a power trio and a vocalist (with the singer occasionally submitting some keyboard licks here and there). And this work out just perfect. Jędras free of playing just rhythm or just lead started to really shine, and his guitar work on Chocolate Man and Ja Padam was a work off pure genius. I really like his playing style, it's like exactly somewhere between Szelest's and Kilijanek's in their prime. It's good to have someone (apart from myself) n the band who thinks at least a bt about theory and actual composition.
The reason for which Szelest was singing only (and not playing) was not only because of an agreement, but also because we (me & him) wrote some more lyrics for the songs he's singing, so it became a bit more tricky to play and sing them at the same time (they're long and in polish, so I don't have the energy right now to translate them and type


2

As for the changes in the setlist, it's that we dropped The Pencil Problem and Punky Jam 1 (which we renamed "I'd dance pogo").

Punky Jam got dropped because it's mostly (like the title implies) a jam, with no real structure, and there's no time to work it out, so that it would become a real song.
The Pencil Problem got dropped because of it's complexity (), as the different rhythms and tempos were too hard for Kilijanek to master n such a short notice, and playing the song on bass and singing at the same time was tricky for me to say the least. Also, for whatever reason Szelest is unable to play the chorus part right (those are his chords god dammit!).
Anyway, it's a shame, but there'll be plenty of time to work on the track later on (it's great).


Also, what was another big improvement was the new arrangement for Mada!, before this jam we were playing it with guitar, bass, drums and vocals only, but now with Szelest free of his guitar duties played keyboards on the whole track, and to my ears it finally started sounding right. Like there was something missing before. Now the song has a bit less of it's jazzy mood, and has more of a ethno/exotic rock'n'roll feel to it.



stay tuned

Mucha na Dziko

This is the Day!
18/06/21

Hey MB, so as it happens, the organisers have moved our concert. And we're playing today - not - tomorrow.

It's a great change, as if we'd play tomorrow we would be the ones who start the entire day of concerts (so the audience would be hangovering & wouldn't be yet pumped up [by other concerts before us]) and that we'd be playing at 5pm, meaning it would be 30 degrees Celsius in the full sun.

And as we're playing today, we'll be playing at 10pm, so it will be dark already, and our concert is the last one (so we're kinda the Star of the Evening!




Last two days we've had two rehearsals. Sadly, Jędras only showed up for the second one (but it will be fine, he plays real good and he got the essence of the songs).
And you know, if we'd play the gig like we rehearsed yesterday (our even a bit worse) it would still be the greatest show on earth !


Anyway, the set didn't change much, only the order:


Another good change is that I've finally figured out how to play that sweet sweet reggae bass, so the song went back to it's roots.



Wish us luck!

Mucha Na Dziko