INTERVIEW: Stefski & Hutch and “Selling Lies”
Stefski & Hutch is a rock duo formed in 2016 by Stéphane “Stefski” Wlodarczyk, a songwriter born and raised in Paris, and Tomasz “Hutch” Bogacki a guitarist and sound engineer from Warsaw. They just returned with a new powerful anthem titled “Selling Lies”. We got to chat with the duo about the release, how the band came to be and their upcoming album.
– Hey guys, can you please start by telling us who’s behind Stefski & Hutch?
Stefski: Well, it’s mainly the two of us, me on lead vocals and rythm guitars and Tomek, lead guitar, bass, backing vocals and production. All the songs are written by the two of us. We had a session drummer on the album, but he did great so he will be playing in our live band. We’ll also have a bass player for the shows.
– How did the duo come to be?
Stefski: It’s a nice story. Our parents were friends since a long time ago, and we first met each other when we were teenagers. I was then living in France, in Paris. It’s Tomek’s father who gave me the first opportunity to ever record a song in a real recording studio. He is a pianist and composer who has worked for the theater and television in Poland. Some years later, I had moved to Warsaw and produced many concerts of notorious French artists there. One day, I met with Tomek’s father who asked me If I was doing anything with my own music. The funny thing was that–it must have been in 2015–I had just started to write new songs with an acoustic guitar to create little demos. That led me to invite Tomek to my place and I kind of had an audition in front of him. Tomek had become a professional guitar player, band leader and sound engineer. I played him maybe 3 or 4 of my songs, and he liked them. The first three songs I played him that day have all landed on our first EP that came out in 2017. We always have personally got along, but musically with time we have turned into a very tight creative unit. It’s funny how we are able to understand each other musically, having slightly different backgrounds. They call that chemistry, but it comes with some work and rehearsals too. (Laugh)
– How would you describe your sound in a few words?
Hutch: Finally we know now what is our sound! We are just a modern rock band, but with a lot of personality. We mix sounds and musical ideas coming from different eras of the history of rock. The main inspiration is the music we were raised with, alternative rock from the 90’s, grunge, hard-funk fusion or britpop, but it’s all intertwined with 70’s classic rock, 80’s Hard rock and Trash and all the indie guitar music we may have heard and loved in the 21st century. With all that we were a bit afraid that we will remain sounding kind of “revival-ish”, especially because we had almost forbidden ourselves from using any keyboards for some time. But surprisingly the result, the new single and the whole album, sounds kind of fresh and modern. We just did our best without trying to copy anybody’s sound. We are our own producers, Tomek has recorded and mixed the whole thing almost by himself.
– You’ve just dropped a new single titled “Selling Lies”. Can you take us behind the creative process?
Hutch: At the beginning of the band there were Stefski’s acoustic songs that I would chose and arrange into real produced tracks. There were not many rejected songs, in fact. Stefski always loved my arrangements and ideas, so it became very fluid. I could change any part of his song ideas and at one point I just gave him some music to write lyrics and melodies and it worked fine. “Selling Lies” is a song that we played live first on acoustic guitars. We played some shows like this, unplugged, at the beginning of our time as a band.
Stefski: It’s a song of transition for us. Even if it was created on an acoustic guitar, we knew how rocking it would turn out. That song was probably the reason why we have decided to go full on the big guitars. The lyrics came fast, right with the music and were announcing the themes of the album; the media, disinformation, rebellion, war, society… And sometimes some lighter stuff.
– This track is the first preview of your upcoming album, can you give us a sneak peek into the album?
Stefski: We can truly say that the rest of the album is on par with the first single, but there are surprises. We have fast tempos, slower ones and at some point there are progressive touches in the tracks that may last longer than the single format. We are very happy to have been able to fit in all these music influences of ours and that we were able still to create something original. Different people will probably perceive the album differently regarding their tastes, it’s coming out the 26th of April.
