Roman Dragoun, one of our best rock singers and keyboardists, will celebrate his 60th birthday on 8 April. On that occasion, he released a new album called Samota (Solitude), continuing his long-standing collaboration with lyricist Milan Princ. The solo CD is, however, only one of many current activities of the musician whose life took him from his hometown of Písek to Brno.
Roman, your new album is called Samota, which may evoke many things...
After some time, I am alone and Milan Princ, who wrote most of the lyrics, also lives alone. It is therefore a reflection of the current situation, a current testimony of both of us. Solitude is good if you can choose it, but it is bad if you do not want to choose it. However, everyone likes to be alone sometimes. I like to run alone in the woods, ride my bike, listen to amazing music...
You also record music yourself sometimes – besides the fact that you are a member of several bands, you also perform solo. But you invited several other musicians to contribute to the album Samota.
A few years ago, I released my solo album Piano, which was more than an hour long, with FT Records. I had enough material for two albums and now Pavel Kopřiva wanted to release a sequel. I thought it would be too much so I conceived the new album smartly – it is and it is not a solo album. I had a few concerts with Michal Žáček, an amazing saxophonist, who collaborates with Peter Lipa, Richard Müller, Vlasta Redl and also with the Brno B-Side Band, and it was wonderful. Therefore, Michal Žáček is my guest on several songs, playing the flute and the descant recorder. Another person, whom I have liked for years, is Radek Krampl. He is from Písek like me. You surely know him from the band of Honza Spálený. I invited him to play the vibraphone in two songs. And for one song, which I enriched with various loops, I invited drummer David Křetínský, who plays with the Dizzy band and occasionally also with the B-Side Band.
You said that the author of most of the lyrics on the new album is Milan Princ, who wrote some lyrics for Futurum in the 1980s and he has been your main lyricist since your first solo album Stín mý krve. How long have you known each other?
We have known each other for about 35 years. Milan is also from Písek. He has a gift from God, he can write beautifully, even for music that I give him. Most of the time, he fully follows the phrasing and gives those songs such a spirit that many times I cry how powerful it is and how everything holds together. I thank God for having such a person by my side. Milan obviously writes for other singers as well and he has released two of his own records – Tabula rasa? and Smrti má –, on which I was also featured. We have experienced many things together, beautiful, funny and sad. I say that I am the megaphone of Milan Princ. I believe in what I sing and what he writes. It is as if I had written it myself.
And can the "megaphone" influence what he sings? Do you consult the lyrics or do you like to be surprised?
I like to be surprised, but I try to make the demos that I send to him of the highest quality. So Milan always sucks in the mood and writes the lyrics. Only rarely do I give him a topic. Or it works so that he writes a poem, I then take ten of my demos and celebrate when any of them fits the poem. This is, for example, how the song Šedesát (Sixty) was created. I got lyrics from Milan and at first I did not know what to do with them. But then I found one of my tunes and I found out that the lyrics fitted it perfectly.
Šedesát is not the first song that reflects your current age. On the album Otlučená srdce, you had a song entitled Padesát (Fifty).
Yes, and if God is good, then there will be also Sedmdesát (Seventy). But I do not like to make plans. As Jesus said: "Do not worry about what will happen the next day, worry about what is today." So many people have planned. Petr Muk was definitely looking forward to his new album. Or David Bowie...
The lyrics for the song Šedesát say: "Šedesát zavání lehce stářím. (Sixty smells of old age.)" Do you see your 60th birthday as a turning point in your life? My dad lived to be 89 years old and he used to say that he felt mentally fine, just the "physicality" was worse. I am trying, I have a lot of concerts, both solo and with bands, and it recharges me, I see that it makes sense. People come to me and say that it was beautiful, they buy albums. That keeps me going. Moreover, I have a large family, nine granddaughters. It is beautiful. One has the feeling of life at the age of twenty as well as ninety. Arthur Rubinstein played until he was 94, B. B. King was nearly 90, John Mayall is 82. So we'll see…
I will go back to the demos that you give to Milan Price for lyrics. When composing music, is there a story going on in your head?
Sometimes it may happen, but I see myself as a mediator. Something hits me from above, from the presence of God, I spill it out and sing it in pseudo-English. I may be coming home from the nature, I get off my bike and start to sing and play. I do one or two things this way, then I send it to Milan and we discuss it together. Sometimes, we agree on a topic in an interesting way. We were together, for example, in Javorník in Šumava and I told Milan: "I was here in a sanatorium." And he goes: "I was there too." And so Milan wrote a beautiful text about the sanatorium, it is called Vzpomínka (Memory). However, this song is not on the album Samota because it requires different interpretation.
The song Prosím has powerful and current lyrics which begin like this: "Mohamed prý lidsky trpí / cítí se jak na kříži / krví víru neutopí / v Praze ani v Paříži." ("Mohammed is suffering / He feels like he is crucified / Can't drown the faith in blood / in Paris or in Prague")
These lyrics were written in 2013 when the situation was not yet as it is today. They talk about our civilisation being based on Christianity, on the Ten Commandments, on Jesus who preached love and forgiveness. Today, the force of Islam is flowing into Europe which, in my opinion, brings more violence. There is no forgiveness and love in it, instead there is stoning and rape. I do not think it will work and I am simply scared of it. Milan Princ feels the same, so we conceived it this way.
However, the song also covers other current topics, for example, it mentions "TV reality shows".
Yes, Wife Swap and similar shows, this is a huge decadence, something so primitive... They attack the lowest instincts. The lyrics of the song also contain the phrase that "Jesus rides in a wreck." That is about people not appreciating his enormous sacrifices.
The author of the lyrics for the song Smím tě znát is Soňa Smetanová, former main lyricist of Futurum.
Yes, Soňa worked with our band Futurum already in 1983, when the album Ostrov země was in the works. She even came up with the whole topic and wrote many beautiful lyrics. Our cooperation continued on the next album Jedinečná šance. Many years have passed since then, but about two years ago, Soňa dedicated a new poem Smím tě znát to me. And she said she would like to do something for us again, and I am looking forward to our further cooperation. By the way, Milan Princ said that he started writing lyrics because of her lyrics. At the time of Bolshevik's rule Soňa wrote wonderful poetry. She knew how to avoid censorship, yet she gave her lyrics a spiritual dimension.
In the past, you have also set several texts of your dad in music – Zdroj, Kronikář, Lák and more – and now you added the song Achilles which closes the album.
My dad wrote poems almost daily, he had several thousand of them at home but it is hard to choose from them. They are very powerful words and making a whole album of them, for example, that would be a real killer...So I pick from them like it was saffron. This year, it will have been a hundred years since my dad's birth and a large exhibition of his art work is planned in Písek and there will certainly be other exhibitions as well.
You perform with several different bands and solo. Can we summarise your current musical life? The band Progres works and it should celebrate its 50th birthday in 2018. And next year, Zdeněk Kluka will be seventy. For many years, our fans have been trying to get us to record a new album, and I believe it will happen. Furthermore, the band Futurum plays and it would also deserve something new, but it is not so simple. Then we have the band T4 with Guma Kulhánek, Standa Kubeš and Martin Kopřiva, which should also record new things. A few have already been created, but Standa Kubeš is a little lazy unfortunately and I do not want the new album to only consist of my songs. Then I play with the band His Angels, with whom I recorded a live record in Sono Studio the year before last. It was an album celebrating ten years of the band and it contained new versions of songs from my solo albums. Furthermore, occasionally I perform with the band Lidopop who invited me to play on their album as a guest. I cooperate with the B-Side Band which has rehearsed several of my songs. Then, there is the band Supergroup, which was originally founded only for a few concerts, but in the end it has been operating for three years and a lot of people go to see us. I say that it is our best cover band... And then I play solo – in churches, synagogues, clubs, pubs, private events, grand openings...I look for environments where the lyrics are easy to understand because lyrics are essential for me. I cannot imagine singing something incomprehensible at the age of sixty. Čankišou made it in the entire world with such a concept, which is amazing, but I would like to put a message in the songs. I say a little immodestly that I want to be a messiah in a good sense. I try to make sure that what I want to say gets to people through my lyrics and music and that the light of live and forgiveness lights up in them. I am not ashamed to feel a certain obligation. Since I got such a gift, I should pass it on.
Do you choose your repertoire depending on where you play? Is it a different concert in a church and in a pub?
It is a little different, of course. For example, in church, I do not use musical background, there I play mainly piano stuff because of the acoustics. However, Jesus used to go among the drunks and gluttons and used to say that "ill people need a doctor, not the healthy ones". And those "ill" ones for whom I should sing, are mainly in the dirty clubs. I am not afraid of it.
I noticed that you walk with big headphones. What do you listen to on your travels?
When I was about thirteen, I used to walk around Písek with a big Hitachi tape recorder and I wished for a stereo. Eventually, I had a stereo, then a variety of cassette recorders, a mini disc and now I have a beautiful MP3 and large headphones and it plays amazingly. I listen to jazz a lot – Pat Metheny, George Benson, old Miles Davis, Stanley Clark, Chick Corea, as well as things with singing. It is beautiful, a sunset, a bike and music.
