“Every Concert is Unique”
How did you become interested in music in your life?
It happened quite early on. My mother was a teacher in primary school, and because I showed a talent for music, she arranged for me to take some private lessons with the school music teacher. He was not a guitarist, but a pianist, but he gave me my first few theory lessons. A friend of my father’s started teaching me how to play the guitar, and it was then that I quickly realised that music was what I wanted to do seriously in the future.
Is Simple Sound the first band you played in?
Yes. I came to the United States in 2004 and before Simple Sound was formed, I played solo guitar in an American band called Windsor Circle for a few years, and later I was involved in bands like Super Nova, Power Blues and Kran. And it was in this last band that Dorota appeared on vocals at some point, and I recommended her because I had met her a while earlier through a good friend of mine and I knew she would like to sing somewhere. Dorota has an innate talent that she has developed over the years and she continues to do so successfully.
You could say that the band name is quite simple.
That’s true. There are only two of us, so Simple Sound refers to the number of people in the band and directly to the music we perform. It’s nothing difficult, everything is simple and obvious here. Just guitar, harmonica and vocals. We were looking for a name that would fit us best and somehow we naturally came up with this concept. And that’s how it stayed.
The division of functions in the band is also quite clear.
Yes. From the beginning I have been playing guitar and harmonica, and Dorota sings. Sometimes, depending on the concert, I also use percussion instruments and when necessary, I support Dorota vocally.
Simple Sound has been around for five years now.
We have officially existed since the end of 2019, but as I mentioned, we had played together in Krana before. We decided to form a duo because we got along well musically and we thought that something interesting could come out of it. And I think that these 5 years have shown that we were right. We play great as a duo. We do not plan to expand the line-up, but if an interesting drummer appeared, we would definitely consider such an option. For now, however, we have not found anyone suitable. However, we try not to force anything. We have often been surprised that, despite the fact that there are only two of us, we sound as powerful on stage as if the whole band was playing.
Was your style clearly defined from the beginning?
Not really. I think we have evolved, which continues to this day. The band was formed with the idea that we would mainly play rock covers in bars or clubs in an acoustic version. Dorota likes artists such as Whitney Houston and Dolly Parton, among others. So that was our starting point. However, I always had some of my own compositions up my sleeve and it quickly turned out that Dorota liked some of them too. Besides, when you create your own music, completely different emotions appear. So we quickly decided to go in this direction, especially since Dorota also had her own lyrics that she hadn’t used in previous projects. In the end, we focused mainly on our own work, although we also have a few covers in our repertoire. However, we have never played a concert with only covers. At most, they make up 20% of the repertoire.
How would you describe the music you perform?
Stylistically, I would describe our music as broadly understood indie rock with elements of folk and a big touch of blues. However, I don’t want to pigeonhole our music and I really only do it for the purposes of interviews.
You also recorded your first album quite quickly.
Shortly after the band was formed, the pandemic came and suddenly there was a lot of time to implement and refine your own ideas. So, paradoxically, our first, debut album entitled Stories appeared on the market quite quickly, containing only our own music, or to be precise, 12 tracks. The album is available online on all major platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. We are currently working on our next album.
Are you the author of all your compositions?
Mostly, but I think we create music together. Even if I bring an idea, we develop it creatively during rehearsals and Dorota as a vocalist always adds something from herself. Dorota doesn’t play any instrument, but she can create a melodic vocal line, and then I adapt the entire composition to it.
Do you create only in English?
Our first album is entirely in English, because I don’t hide the fact that we would really like to appear on the international market, and English is the most universal language in this case. However, we have our own songs in Polish and we often play them at Polish events. Sometimes there are even more of them at concerts than English ones, because it all really depends on who and where we play. All these Polish-language songs have not been released yet and we only play them at concerts. These are also our joint compositions.
Has a music video been made for any of your songs?
At the moment, we have made music videos for the songs You & Me and By the Time, among others. You can watch them on our channel on the popular YouTube service. There is also a so-called “lyric video” for the song The legend of the Lake. Of course, there are plans for more music videos, but I think it will take a while before they see the light of day.
You are a duo that has been performing a lot lately.
Indeed, there are more and more of these performances. I remember that in previous years we played only a few concerts a year, and this year there were already a dozen or so of them, and there are plans for more. We play wherever possible, because live performances are what we really love to do and contact with the audience gives us a lot of joy and energy. We most often perform in American bars, but we have also played for Polonia many times, for example in Piwnica u Dziadka in Philadelphia, in the Polish bar Amsterdam Alley in Linden, or in Klub Wisła in Garfield. We also performed several times during the American finals of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity.
Which of these concerts was special to you in some way?
It’s hard to say. In its own way, each concert is unique and there are never two similar ones. I would say that the one that sticks in my mind the most was our first concert, a very intimate one, which we played just before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 at a small pub called Van Gogh’s Ear Cafe in Union, New Jersey. It was also a short concert, because we had just started and didn’t have much material at the time. Above all, we wanted to see how everything would turn out and how our music would be received. After the performance, we gathered a lot of positive feedback and that gave us a big boost to continue. And despite the fact that the pandemic broke out a week later, this concert pushed us to make our own music, record and wait for better times. And those times finally came.
What can the Festival attendees expect from your concert?
They can definitely expect good, melodic music, because for us it’s all about melodies. We try to create catchy songs, often supported by strong vocals. We are happy to perform during the second edition of the festival in the Center, especially since it will be a completely new experience for us and a new audience, because we play relatively rarely in the metropolis itself.
Thank you for the conversation and I wish you good luck at the Festival.
Marcin Żurawicz
