Hi,
reader / listener / fan, Bosak here!
I'm glad you want to learn more about the band and our history.
This is my way of telling the story, in an interview format and the third in this series of posts.
If, by the time you're reading this, there's more where this came from - feel free to read the rest of the story in our BSHBlog.
I hope you'll enjoy the read and find out some interesting facts and stories you probably didn't know about us.
So let's get to it...
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The discography so far
I’ve always believed that we shouldn’t record and release anything until we have something very good that we can record and give it our best.
It takes the right people who have been together for a long time, the right moment, the right material, and of course the right financial situation because recording an album, if you do it properly, costs money. Such moments have only happened twice in these 20 years.
That's How We Do It
In 2008 when we had the idea to record 15 cover songs and take the 3 best just to have something recorded. Then we turned the Sax!' club into a big studio. I'd like to use this opportunity and say a big thank you to Bojan and all the Sax! crew for the huge support and trust and for being great friends to us all those years.
We threw out all the chairs and tables, the drum was in the middle, guitar amps in booths, piano, Rhodes and Hammond at the backstage, and vocals at the sled of course. We were all separated by big plexiglass that my great friend Dino Bahtijarevic Baba lent me for the occasion. A friend and the greatest rock'n'roll preacher of our time, the one and only Jura Havidic and his son Ivan Havidic recorded the session, and the album was then produced by Dragutin Smokrović Smokva. The album took 4 years to complete and at the end we named it "That's How We Do It".
It took that long because we recorded it as an info recording and in the end, it turned out better than we expected. But in each song, something was missing or there were mistakes. I was sorry that we didn't use it now and make an album, and then a lot of things were recorded again, re-recorded and at the end of the story the effort paid off. The album was released in 2012 for Croatia Records. I'm not sure, but I think it was the only cover album in English at the time, released in Croatia by our biggest record company.
Original is always best
The second moment happened 3 years ago when we started working on the original album. It was recorded again by Jura Havidic, this time in his studio, where I feel at home. I recorded all the info material and everything else in his studio. Unfortunately, Jura got sick and left us at the time of making the album and that’s why that whole story, and that album, has a deeper meaning and one dimension more to me.
We recorded on two occasions, 5 songs each time. The vocals, acoustic guitars, and the song „Porch“, which is completely acoustic, were recorded by Dragutin Smokrović Smokva at his studio. The band recorded and played live and then everyone fixed or added or after listening re-recorded something if needed, and this album was produced by Smokva. From the first rehearsal to the release it took 3 years.
The album was published by Nota Bene Records in April 2020 and we are very proud of that and happy because they have done a lot for us so far. We have a great collaboration and I hope it will continue.
Our new album is called "Based on a True Story".
It contains 11 songs, 11 true stories, special moments or situations, images, and snapshots from my life described through the lyrics.
Marko Bosak
"Based on a True Story"
Our new album is called "Based on a True Story". It contains 11 songs, 11 true stories, special moments or situations, images, and snapshots from my life described through the lyrics.
Each song is a story in itself and has a message which I hope listeners can identify with and recognize themselves in. The songs were created in the last 15 years as these stories happened. Emotional situations, which were strong and important enough to make me mark and describe them and give them wings.
The arrangements were made by the whole band. We tried to work in such a way that it follows the emotion of the story being told, because in my opinion, only in that way, a true, meaningful song can be created.
The album is currently only available in digital form on all music services worldwide, and soon it will be on CD and Vinyl available!
The only expectation from this album is to reach the ears and hearts of as many people in the world as possible - the people who love and understand this kind of music - and then let them decide if it is good enough and honest enough for them or not.
Songs from the heart
It's hard for me to single out any of the songs from the album because each of them is special to me and tells a story dear to me but take for instance...
REVOLUTION IS WHAT WE NEED
Revolution
It's a song that is so suitable for this situation we live in at the moment.
I've never been involved in politics or interested in it but at one moment my best friend, a great fighter for justice, Dr. Domagoj Prebeg, asked: “Bosak, why do you only sing about love? Don’t be so soft, man! You’re rock’n’roll and you have to criticize the system. You have to make people open their eyes!”
I thought maybe he was right. Maybe I should say something on that topic. At that moment I just looked at the situation around me and wrote what I thought and felt. I remember that people were very dissatisfied, and at the time there were peaceful protests in the center of Zagreb.
I remember thinking… What are peaceful protests anyway? They sit in their armchairs, you talk quietly under their window and calm the people who came to rebel, because you are civilized citizens who will, in a civilized way, draw the attention of uncivilized people… because if they were civilized they would not do this to us? They would not work against the people who voted for them? …you peacefully protest with the intention that you will change something, change them…..
And I remember imagining how they look at you through the window, laugh, and wait for you to break up and go home. They drink one more, go home, and sleep peacefully.
I welcome that peaceful way to say something, but I'm afraid it doesn't work that way with the people it's aimed at. Anyway… I say how I feel about this in the song!
I'm sending those words to you, give them wings and they'll fly to you
For you
...is my favorite song from the album. It's a song, which describes the moment and the frame of me, sitting on the couch and looking at the door, which the love of my life slammed shut and left just a moment ago.
That feeling… at that moment I would give everything if I could go back and lock this door, just to try to explain and save us. The song says it all. It obviously succeeded because she is still here today.
Southern girl - the song is about a girl from the south, my girl from the south, from our Croatian south. It describes the way I see her and the things she doesn't see. So the song is essentially about a Dalmatian girl but is in the context of southern rock stories.
We can hear your hands clappin’
we can see you smile
Already there
You all know a group of older musicians, old rockers who watch you play and they never like it, whatever you do. Like: „ Hmmm…. it's good but ...“ There's always a but! They're the main inspiration for this song.
This message goes to them, and at the same time, it sings about traveling through life.
I have a feeling that in everything we do we're constantly waiting for that one big thing to happen to us after which nothing will be the same and everything will be better. But we don't understand that it's always the journey that does it, not the destination.
Porch
It's one moment - Prebeg (the main culprit for the „Revolution“), Frenki, and I sitting on the porch of my cabin in the woods. It's 1 am and we decide to write a song. By 3 am we write the sentence „..sittin' on the porch and singin’ a song“, and they go home.
I stay there alone and in the morning and songwriting chemistry is created on that terrace between me, the porch, nature... I sit down, I remember that picture, the sun's rays brakings through the vines, through the leaves, a light wind blowing…
I wrote the rest of the song in one piece and heard this whole arrangement in my head. I think we totally hit the atmosphere that the song describes with the music. It always makes me remember all those people who were there with me, guys I grew up with. Unfortunately, some of them are not here anymore but some of them I still have the opportunity to sit with on that porch today, on rare occasions when the stars align. I sit at that table, on that porch, and listen to that song... and I think to myself how rich a man I am. Well, that's Porch.
Some songs are created like Porch, some are created piece by piece for days, weeks, depending on inspiration. Then I write down ideas, which come to me anywhere and anytime. Then there will be verses written down everywhere, mostly on my cell phone. So after a while, if I'm satisfied with every detail, It turns into a song.
SITTIN' ON THE PORCH
AND SINGIN' A SONG
To be continued...
