Interview Article: Writing the Interview Article

My Interview Article that I Wrote:

These days, music truly lives online, with an infinite number of websites dedicated to hosting tunes for the laptop-wielding masses. Like many others, I first stumbled upon the music of the famous Polish singer and song writer Wojceich, a few years ago on Youtube. I found his music different and refreshing. His lyrics were so relatable. I guess that’s how his music caught on to the rest of the world so fast.

With No Beginning and No End, Wojceich’s third album he is trying to reconnect the two genres- acoustic and indie.  If acoustic music today is divided into "covers" and "esoteric," James is neither. “ I want to stay true to how music first started," James emphasizes. "I'm trying to make my music as genuine as possible, bringing back past instruments to the new world of music with my own takes on it… I want people to see how I see the world through my music”.

REBEKAH LEE: What is the first song you ever wrote?



WOJCEICH GLOMSKI: The first song I ever wrote with words was "The Dreamer," from my first album. I was in school, and that was one of the best musical moments ever, because I was really searching for the place of music in my heart. Well I found it! Haha. It had over a thousand views on YouTube.  I’m proud of the lyrics but not the chorus or the song. I have some very very old recordings of me singing a few song ideas, but The Dreamer is the first to be completed.

LEE: What is your favourite song that you wrote?

GLOMSKI: The Smiling Warrior. I wrote the song after my success on Youtube. I received several sponsorships after that. It was a real break through for me. I felt like I finally made it. My name, Polish given, is one of the oldest Slavic names. The name is formed from Polish "wój" , Slavic: "voj" – a root pertaining to war which also forms Polish words like wojownik meaning warrior, and wojna meaning war – and "ciech" meaning joy, with the resulting combination meaning "the joy of war" or "smiling warrior".

LEE: Was it tough being an indie-acoustic musician? And what made it challenging?

GLOMSKI: Everything about it. Just being Indie was already hard, and add on to just having an acoustic factor. Now that was extremely tough. It's tough to make a living of it. You start gigging making 50 dollars a night, or playing for nothing to get to something. It's insane. Youtube helped my publicity but its still hard to stand out. There are like millions of talented people on Youtube posting really good stuff everyday. It's like being a modern dancer, or something —the hardest thing to make money from, wondering if it will ever sustain you. It isn’t a place that you are safe financially, but spiritually it is my safe heaven. I was kind of going through—not an identity crisis—but just trying to figure out who I was. I was sitting in the practice room by myself, early in the morning, and I just started playing this really simple two-chord thing and this whole song unfolded. I posted it on Youtube. Views went up in a flash. It felt like a real gift and this moment of clarity: "This is a new direction for you."



LEE: You had a few songs with loads of views around that time – late 2009.  Are you bothered that your earlier stuff, that you aren’t so proud of, got so many hits?

GLOMSKI: Yeah, I’m kinda annoyed at myself. See, when I first started recording my songs I was using a webcam to record and was too eager to release them as they were. I fear that was my biggest mistake, because I believe that people who come to my YouTube account now look at the video with the most views and get put off by how bad the song is and won’t bother to look at my new stuff.

LEE: So how come you haven’t taken it down?

GLOMSKI: I use them as a way of drawing people to my newer music. Despite how bad the songs are, people still come to the channel and I guess there is a tiny ray of hope in me that they will check out my new stuff. The minute one of my new songs gets over a thousand views I will probably remove the other videos and start over. I’ve been able to present myself to a new audience in the way I really want to be seen, right from the beginning.

LEE: I see that you still post videos on your old Youtube channel. Why?

GLOMSKI: I want to have a personal relationship with my fans. Even though my new found fame and success is great and I have no reason to use Youtube to spread my music, I want to give something back to my fans. They were the ones that brought me my success.

LEE: Did you always want to be a acoustic-based musician?



GLOMSKI: I think so, it sort of drew me in at a young age. I really like the rawness; I feel like there's no other music genre that's really as satisfying.  

LEE: What got you into the acoustic scene?



GLOMSKI: I started off with singing. And then around 15, I decided to post one of my songs with a friend. We didn’t have a band or anything. It was just me and her, we did all the percussion. She started playing guitar, and was like "Grab a guitar!" I started playing, and it felt really good. It felt like ‘the one’.



LEE: Did you always feel free to pursue music? Or were you discouraged because it can be so difficult to become successful?


GLOMSKI: I felt both. Absolutely everyone was like "When are you going to outgrow this music thing?" And I'm just a super stubborn kid. I knew early on that music was the only thing that made me happy. And I think when you're in high school—you're 15, 16, 17—I think whatever you get attention for you sort of go into. I remember starting high school, when I was like, 14 and the next year, that's when everyone grew—all the guys shot up—and were playing basketball. All of a sudden I was, like, the shortest dude—it was a crazy basketball school. And I ran track, but it wasn't really satisfying. And I started singing and it was like, "Oh, this is what I can do." So I think that's the reason I stuck with it. I never really thought about this, but it was clear that there was nothing else I was really exceptional at.



LEE: When did you grow, then? Because you aren't short...



GLOMSKI: I wasn't short short. I just wasn't tall enough to play basketball.



LEE: What kind of music did you listen to growing up?



GLOMSKI: Well I grew up with an odd mixture really; I have a mother that used to blast out Queen – both the classics as well as the non-commercial tracks. My father was listening to 80’s disco, he also listened to bands such as Chicago, The Drifters, The four Tops, ELO and George Thorogood and the Destroyers. However, whenever my mother wasn’t around he would listen to classic rhythm n blues artists such as Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner, T Bone Walker, Elmore James and Jimmy Read. Out of all the blues stuff it was Jimmy Read that really stood out to me

LEE: What do you do when you get writer's block?



GLOMSKI: [pauses] I don't, I really don't. I don't try to write anything; when something comes, I write it. I just practice and when I get an idea I write it down. That’s what I like about being indie, you don’t have to rush out songs for an album or change songs to suit the mass.

LEE: I like the colour of your hair. Why purple?

GLOMSKI: Its kind of funny actually. Purple wasn’t what I was going for. I wanted to try dyeing my hair myself and bought the colour, but turns out the colour in the bottle wasn’t what I expected it to be. It was pink. [laughs] I wasn’t going to be walking around with a pink Mohawk on my head. Luckily for me, my friend had blue dye. And I thought, blue and pink would make purple. So I dyed blue over my pink hair. And viola! It became purple. 

LEE: What was the original colour that you wanted to dye?

GLOMSKI: Red because it conflicts with my eye colour- blue.

LEE: What is your greatest fear?

GLOMSKI: Having pink hair! No not really. [laughs] Well… It would have to be just getting bored with music. 

LEE: Why?

GLOMSKI: Because I don’t think I would ever find something else that I would have so much passion for.