Worldly Savages Blog

Never forget the North Star:

2016-06-09T07:49:58+02:00

Through all the temporary ego highs of being a musician and inspiring people with my music and performances, making money as an entrepreneur in business and all the lows which also come, please everyone could you remind me that I am above all to contribute to people's lives and society and that is my lasting happiness. I'm here to give you what you need to reach the next part of your journey: even if it's heartbreak, rejection, stinging criticisms OR inspiring insights, contagious passion and new visions for the future, and I expect the same from my friends. :) I'm here to make a difference in people's lives with my personality, in my own outrageous and extreme way, and that's part of my Aries/Libra full moon soul. You may love me and hate me, sometimes at the same time, but I'm here to be your thunderbolt when you need it.

Yours truly,
Erik

Interview with Romanian newspaper

2016-05-05T16:42:02+02:00

Interview Worldly Savages for Ethnorama, Bucharest, 5/5/16

Why Worldly Savages?

ERIK: When I was naming the band in 2008 I wanted a name which represented the idea of being a global citizen, sophisticated and compatible with many cultures combined with the idea of living from the heart and indulging the beast inside oneself which fits into no culture.

Tell us a bit about your roots as a band, musically speaking.

ERIK: When I was getting into making music as a teenager, I was into rock bands like Radiohead, Post-Rock like Godspeed You Black Emperor and Indie Folk like Neutral Milk Hotel among others.That’s all still in there.Later I added influences of Hip Hop (mostly lyrically) and a strong influence of World Music from around SE Europe and of course anything else that inspired me. Then there’s the voices and melodies in my head, who knows where they come from.

How did Toronto or London or both together affect what you are today as an artist?

ERIK: Toronto is where I grew up. It’s by measurable standards one of the best places in the world to live, so how can I complain? My Central European father always told me it was the suburbs of the world.He was right.It is where culture goes to die, with nothing authentic of its own, just stale ideas from other places.The struggle there for me was to make something which felt actually authentic and to find people who that feeling resonated with, so I got used to listening to my musical heart and not caring what other people thought, which really helps now.

London was a place where I went with the band’s sound and message already developed, looking to spread it.It worked well and fast, making me work harder and rewarding me for that. But London was not a place culturally for me to live and be creative long term.It inspired songs like March Towards the Madness and Glass Cage, which were rejections of Anglo-Saxon culture and the restraints it places on people and their emotional beings.

In the end, I feel much more inspired by my life in Belgrade, watching the western world from a place not fully enclosed and dominated by it.

What would your message be to all of the people who listen to your music?

ERIK: Find a way to express the passion in your heart and to make it somehow valuable to the world and people around you, without caring what anybody thinks of you when you are being true to yourself.

How about to the people who do music?

ERIK: Same as last question, just to be incredibly relentless and disciplined in applying this.

Tell us a bit about your new album?

ERIK: Our new album Culture vs. Destiny, out in September is the product of 2 years of finding direction and passion living in Belgrade as a singer songwriter working with Dutch producer and bass player Caspar Wijnberg and recording with great musicians, we strived to take the Gypsy Punk genre beyond its clichés to a new level of weirdness and complexity.

What are your musical preferences and how did they influence your own productions?

ERIK: I tend to like musicians who are passionate and charismatic, when you can see that they are being themselves when you watch and listen to them. That influenced me in being who I am in my band and not trying to be popular or trendy but really telling my own story from my own heart.I’m also an intense person emotionally, so I like every type of music which tends towards that and if you listen to my music, the intensity is there.

The festival you’re playing in Romania pretty soon, Etnorama, is about diversity, about different cultures. It seems like you’re right where you should be. How do you feel about the way diversity influences a cultural space?

ERIK: This is one of the important questions of this time.What is diversity in the 21st century?I grew up in Toronto where more than 50% of people, including most of my family were not born there, however, I can say that people there did not behave very much in a culturally diverse way, it seemed that they were more there to forget their past and history and accept the White North American middle class lifestyle.Is that diversity?Not the one I idealize.I idealize cultural diversity in which people can express their own values without having them unnecessarily compromised by the dominant culture in that place.

What does your music bring to this diverse environment?

ERIK: The violent catharsis of rejecting the insular Anglo-American cultural values which threaten to destroy all other diverse cultures, languages and feelings on this planet, told by someone who was born in and experienced that culture who is using Serbian/Balkan culture as a weapon to revive feeling and authenticity in the European heart.

What should the people expect to see on stage, at Etnorama Festival?
ERIK: 6 dudes playing intense and fun music which makes them want to drink and dance and if they listen closer, think about their lives and their passions.

HELLO FRIENDS

2014-08-28T16:56:04+02:00

This is a note to everyone, or whoever reads this rather.

This is Erik and I am sitting in Belgrade. It's been a great year so far. My only regret is that we haven't been able to get out there and play more shows. But the plan for this year was to take a break from that stuff and stabilize my life.

Stabilize my life, in SERBIA. Yep that's right, such a thing as a stable life here does exist, which is not filled with financial problems or explosive relationships. I'm living it.

I've been blessed by meeting very good musicians to work with and am extra grateful for my relationship with Producer/Engineer Caspar Wijnberg. I have already finished and released 2 songs with him, Hope & The Asylum. If you haven't heard them, you need to check them out. Finally I have reached a good standard of recording to put my vision to tape, finally I met a producer who fits with what I want to do, and I'm about to move to an apartment 3 meters away from his studio.

The live band is an equally positive thing. Last year I was in some stupid cliche rock tension, with members in ego battles, hurt feelings and all sorts of other tensions. So I just let it collapse. Better to start again fresh if it becomes like that. "One bad apple spoils the whole barrel" as the saying go. So I decided, Belgrade is the place, London is SO NOT the place...for me... So I started again finding people here and convincing them to follow me. This time one step at a time, rather than all in "you're in the band" sort of thing. I made it clearer it's my band and they are playing with me. The division between studio and live stuff cemented this as well.

So now here I am, ready to make the best recordings I've ever made, satisfied in every aspect of my life and loving living in Belgrade!

Stay tuned for more. Now booking for 2015. If you want to do us a favor, you can of course call up your local clubs and see if they're interested in getting us a gig, if they are, email me :)

Best,
ERIK

Version 3.0

2014-04-10T15:31:08+02:00

Well well well....
Here I am, I haven't written here since last August in London, when I announced the Passing Clouds Equinox party as the last one in London...

Well it was and it lead to the dissolution of the London WS lineup. What have I been doing since then? Living in Belgrade in a stable way, repairing my mind and heart to leave the past behind, making a new vision for the future, writing new songs, recording new songs and putting together the new Belgrade based lineup of Worldly Savages, which is now renamed Erik & the Worldly Savages.

The nature of life is that it is constantly changing and well with all the glory and the sadness sometimes it's easy to lose yourself in it all, dwell on the past and hold resentment about things, but really the best thing you can ever do is take actions right now to feel good now and make the future that you want for yourself and that's exactly what I've been doing so far this year.

New music is happening. Shows are happening and going to be released and shows are happening (in less than 2 weeks). So stay tuned for the new direction of my music and my journey!!!

Thanks to everyone for the support.

-ERIK

London again

2013-08-20T21:05:00+02:00

I'm in london once again, the city which I can thank for jumpstarting the success of the past year and a half. Don't get me wrong, it could have happened anywhere, but the energy of this city was instrumental at launching it.

And this is also a city where I know I will never be able to find my soul unless i'm able to get famous bring lots of money. If that happens, it might suit me great...

But instead I'm a poor muscial dream chaser. So Belgrade suits me much better.

London has just brought to head my existential angst though. It was always there. What was going to help? A life of my own design? Done that. Sex with beautiful ladies? I've done that. Standing on the stage and being adored for my music? I've seriously started doing that.

Still the confusion of being. The unconscious will to numb my feelings with alcohol. I'm sorting through it.

The only solution is to make more music. I'm feeling it. But the music I'm making now is a slight departure from the last group of songs, which this year and last year me and the lineup have literally run into the ground.

One of the main reasons for me creating this band was to attract like minded people. I've done that. But still so few are like minded enough to truely not be freaked out by the intensity of my thought processes and feelings. I feel steady on my path to become someone whose music you love but whose personality you can't stand. Or that person who you see every freedom and everything you want in your life as a lover but then breaks your heart so carelessly and in such an insensitive way.

If you know me really well, as few do, youll know that i come from a really perfect place, a neighbourhood in the centre of Toronto called Moore Park where money was never an issue, people are honestly good and classy, don't cause each other problems and don't have unrealistic expectations of life. The affluence of that neighbourhood is a specificness that is bonded to me forever. It gave me the message that life was on my side. And it is.

The decent life was never the problem. But somewhere along the way I wanted more... The longing inside my being had to see and understand everything. Through all of my self-discovery I've in the end gotten more confused.

I made it in London. I could stay here longer and make it more. But something about this Island never worked for me. Something about this culture. Same with Canada, but I had to come to the source to understand it greater. Now I do and I honestly say that Anglo-Saxon culture is wonderful, great, fascinating and it's no wonder that this was the one that conquered the earth in such a massive way. But in its core is something so violently opposed to what I stand for, my savage heart, that I will continue to pick and choose parts of this culture and others until I have found a sincerity that really satisfies me.

London london.... this ultra cosmopolitan box that i have fallen in. It's time to break the ties and cut the cord.............

September 21st at passing clouds. That's the last show in London. Until I have a wealth of new songs.

Trans-Cultural Blender

2013-06-07T14:40:14+02:00

After spending this year sleeping in 72 places to date, playing shows in many cities and countries my mind is churning with a sort of trans-cultural experience that is very energizing. More than ever I feel humanity split between cultures, different restrictions which allow different aspects of the human nature to be lived and expressed. Culture is your operating system. Is the operating system using all of the features of your genetics, body, mind and soul? Probably not. It's cozy to stick to a specific culture and not go outside and ask yourself what the possible range of being to live out would be if you just moved a bit beyond the mentality that you currently inhabit.

I'm traveling now......... But soon I will go back to Belgrade and settle down a bit. It's been a long long trip of many experiences and lessons along the way. London and the Worldly Savages group formed thereof certainly taught me a lot about life and the meaning of what I'm doing with this project. But now it's time to get back to the roots of the project, which is me as an individual in Belgrade, vis-a-vis the set of possibilities of human feeling opened up by the balkan culture.

I started learning the accordion today. It's already a "wow" in terms of the possibilites it will open up for song writing. I just push the buttons and out come chords. WOW! Then I sing on top. YEP. That's what I need. Time to do the droney stuff I"ve been meaning to do for a while, which guitar could never provide. I'm looking forward to that when I get in Belgrade.

I'm going to get my own place there. Start living a healthier and slower lifestyle, more doing what I want when I want. Less hustling around and bossing other people around. I need to regenerate from those last two. Probably because of this there will be no next European tour until spring 2014.

But, stay tuned for the future of my music. It's going to be a great one!

The Difference

2013-04-06T23:39:10+02:00

Greetings from the Czech Republic.

What's the difference between being a good musician and a successful musician? Getting the hell out there and playing as much as possible, really doing it......................

Here we are now in the middle of a 3 month tour. Pure insanity. It's intense. Everyday brings new struggles and people's nerves are getting tested constantly. Every day a rich mixture of tears and laughter.

After this I'm going to have a holiday. I'm flying to Israel, Turkey, Georgia and Armenia in hopes of discovering something new.

It's all about paying dues though, to keep on going and eating shit. I see steady progress in my dream from 2008 to now and I just need to keep pushing it in different ways. I'm 30 now. It was a big relief to pass that line, past the saturn return. I tell you the whole thing looks a lot more doable now. At this point it's just a question of adjusting the equations so that they lead to success.

Equation number one is my own inspiration. The most mysterious of all. I still don't know what makes me take one of my ideas and turn it into music and what makes me want to take that music and travel around performing it for thousands of people. Maybe i'll never know. But a few things I've realized recently. 1) my inspiration is incredibly personal and private and it needs to swell within myself before other people can get involved in it 2) there are lots of misses for every hit 3) songs need time to grow inside of me before they are ready to come out.

Sometimes I look at our set and really wonder how I managed to write all these songs....

FAN VIDEO VIDEO

2013-03-30T21:20:53+01:00

Full concert from Slovakia ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiFgRui5XIY

(un)perfect music

2013-03-02T17:10:00+01:00

so, 3 months in the studio learning hard lessons about life as a recording musician. I have to say it's driven me insane.

Time to deliver this incarnation of the vision of Worldly Savages, warts and all.

I'm closer than ever to getting the sound i want on tape, but still so far away also. The new Worldly Savages recordings are better than anything before, closer to my vision.

I can only trust that you people will see the character and intent behind the music that we've made and that this will please the fans.

So, enjoy it!

slavic germanic self torture.

2013-01-20T20:00:00+01:00

I can't get rid of this obsession of mixing slavic and germanic cultures. My mixed ethnic background makes it such that I'm confused where one starts and the other begins. I am both in one. Thought and feelings giving credit to both of them all the time. Thus I can't decide which type of society I want to live in. Slavic societies are true expressions of authentic, unfiltered humanity, letting it all hang out. Germanic societies are expressions of cultivated civilization, controlled and neatly organized.

I think the big problem is my slavic german grandparents grew up in a city and a time when they had both readily available, Bratislava of the 1930's. Then NAZI movement came and blew the whole german thing out of proportion. The backlash of that? Miserable Russian communisim brought on Bratislava, my grandparents choosing rather to leave than live it. Ending up in Canada forever freezing the previous image of the world they grew up in as ideal well cursing the relative uncomplex nature of the new world's god damn easy life. They passed it on to me somehow and through my own experiences traveling I confirmed everything. The mix of Slavic and German is the one for me.

There's a tender side of Slavic culture that Germanic doesn't get and there's a willpower and self-determination part of Germanic culture that slavic doesn't get. Somehow with the interbreeding of thoughts, emotions and genetic tendencies, I get an overdose of both of them. I'm so emotionally tender that I had to hide my heart away behind a wall of central european machismo. Discipline and organization are over done in my head. So is feeling. I've got a typical slavic tendancy towards dark deep and depressing philosophical thoughts that exist somewhere in between real life and my inner fantasy world. My mind is a scary place with a recipe for an ourageous degree of narcissistic self-satisfaction to the point of mania and ecstasy that comes when I manage to balance the forces of being me in such a way that it all comes together perfectly. That's where my music comes from.

That's all inside of me. Then there's billions of other people on this planet with whom I have to interact. It's a constant source of wonder, confusion and amusement. I'm an only child of two only children, which means I essentially, in my own mind, believe that I'm the centre of the fucking universe. me me me..... Okay, so where does that leave others? They can join the party, if they choose. And they chose...

Somehow I managed to decide to play music, to have a band, wrote the songs and got the people. Convinced them to drop their lives and move to Serbia. Now we're here! I feel guilty that I'm more confused than ever. A confused leader who is not self aware enough to assume the role. It's not because I'm lacking in confidence. I've got plenty of that. I suppose there's just a dark shadow of my personality that contradicts the main portion and constantly questions. Dooms me to a life of confusion. I know exactly who i am and what I'm here to do, except on a day to day basis, the moods and feelings within me are constantly spinning me away from that.

I've got that escapist tendancy which I wired to alcohol. Seems to be the sort of one that killed many a great musicians, most recently Amy Winehouse, for example. When life feels like it's too much, turn to drink, says the voice in the head. Drink drink drink. You'll feel less immediately. The more you drink faster, the less you'll feel. I understand that stuff perfectly. It just seemed really damn convenient to be able to blast away emotions like that. In October when we came to Belgrade, we were 6 living in 2 rooms. The only way I could go to sleep was by drinking about 1L of wine. You'd think the hangovers would teach, but they don't.

But the body can only sustain that for so long and now my body has given me the heads up that it's time to change and for this I'm thankful. Lately I've swapped the daily drinking for daily workout in the gym. It feels really good. Every morning I get a good sweat and I'm slowly working out of this mental hole I've built for myself. I won't go into great detail about the repetitive menacing thoughts which race through my mind constantly, but excercise really helps!!!

Why the hell did I ever start living in Belgrade. Well in 2008 I moved here because I knew that there was a whole dimension of human being here that I could never discover if I stayed in Canada. Whole levels of myself I could only reach in a place like this. People here are as confused about life as I am or at least the ones who are are allowed to feel that way. It opened up the gateway to a lot of self discovery. Now that stuff has gone through my system so many times it is one with me and I focus my eye on going out into the world and pushing my insanity out there in a musical form so everyone can see it and dance to it.

I just don't understand how me, the person who is the most overthinking and over feeling person makes this music that makes people forget everything and just enjoy and party on an intense level, but I guess I just decided it. where is this going though? Can I really reach greatness with this or will i sabotage myself? I'm learning more about making music and about myself every single day. It's all quite shocking.

One thing is for sure, I want nothing more in life but to touch people with the music which I brew in my soul. Everything else is secondary. EVERYTHING.

--This is Erik Mut, I send you greetings from Belgrade!

Inside

2012-12-15T14:23:41+01:00

I basically stopped writing here in September right after I jumped into the World of my band full time. Since then it has been every single day in this mess of the glorious struggle to carve a place of ourselves in the world of music. I guess i'm so inside it now that I don't know how to possibly relate it to the world. The other feeling is that writing about it is kind of betraying this world that I now live in non-stop, telling its secrets, exposing its struggles and triumphs.

Or maybe I feel like I should no longer be the one writing directly about it. There was a girl here for dinner the other night who is writing an article about us. Let her spread the legend.

The reality of our situation is that we are a group of people thrown together in our common desire to travel with music, brining with us all of our humour, talents and intelligence but also all of our neurotic tendancies, insecurities, flaws and anti-social tendencies.

There's no choice other than to grow in a situation like this.

But as for the stories. Nothing I want to write here right now.

"A world of freedom chanted: Worldly Savages"

2012-11-30T19:00:00+01:00

Google translation of an article written in Romanian, I'm offering this without comment, cause I think it speaks for itself. -Erik:

"Worldly Savages: FOLK PUNK ENERGY contagious with Ethno Music spiciness." Broadly. In short: Music. Hopping. Freedom. They were born in 2008 in Serbia. Since then a (u) raised in Toronto and London, and maturity has come on the road, with every concert that I had around the world. With a musical style that is redefined with every concert, singing borderless, nomadic style with one thought: not to restrict never.

Now, have come to mature and Romania. My way. Thursday night. Clujana.

Red stairs, covered in marks, dust, all began to be lowered curious minutes after midnight. Foreign, 6 pairs of legs fast, they had to play barefoot, they let down when yet time gap between now and midnight. At 11:47 p.m. I lowered myself. Not just with two legs, but with a decision: do not forget! I entered the dance! A seemingly morning dance, if you skip count steps, but at night, if you managed to watch a language gaze. Steps that are arrhythmic because you look and feel and its looks. Close your eyes to feel among eyelids and eyelashes makeup: rhythm, resonance, 'soon I'm gonna move from the city and find my freedom! "Everyone dances to freedom. On stage, the bass, see bare feet, shod and talents would fetter. However, if it boots, put them curly hair, a Scottish accent and become a he, a Ben. After singing microphone. Sing in a soul that is released singing about total freedom. Behind him, the same red pants that were illegal in Tijuana bar in Belgrade. He is perhaps the most feral of wild wandered on. In the bulletin it simply says Erik. He also says Canadian now residing in Belgrade. The microphone has another appointment. When he gets tired before the calling too wild, Erik is changing so-called megaphone. Call breath intimidate him when the microphone. The result is a rhythm of clapping beat many pairs of hands that rise.

Behind accordion, comes from the eye, pull and flaps, pull well! Welcome! Before him, is a violin. And Ursula, the only daughter of,, singers savages ". She wearing a tight, colorful. Sing fingers, fingers that caress graceful but powerful violin strings. The Latin is worn with long hair, (a) caught and step lively. Long dress with leggings to keep up. It Ivo. His right arm, which replaced the leggings with a guitar, he says Britton. The audience tells him not to forget the way up magic, increased finger tips.

Every song has a story. Story that began it's the story continues. It's a story many stories that are regenerated every song. This is for all those who have no home-home. Now I understand! Paradoxically, you always home with you. A human snail.

Freedom dancing in circles ever wider, as the clock go through space for hours before. Before too. Through the crowd, eyes closed and steps crisper. And lively! People still knotted in their dance. A tie salt. Two jumping boots. A hat hangs up. I feel. They sing. Bisss.

Romania in one word for those of Wordly Savages ... That can not be! "Says Erik, looking at me with big eyes. I explained then that they already have feelings and memories of Romania, more. How many? As many as can be fulfilled in an opening of branches, fresh descended the stage. And his broad smile shows that enough. Back, waits a bunch of new friends and beer, that is, very cheap ". However, longer time. Until tomorrow, when the road will take them to Scotland.

How traveling? With a van. It's like a hippie van, says Ben, shoes on asphalt covered the early morning, before the club was left feral price that evening. ,, Maybe, with boots, we take the cases and uncertainty. You're free down (empty) on earth. "To be and that's just a thought."

north west

2012-11-03T11:50:00+01:00

England is a place on an island of North West Europe. I spent most of the last year on the South East of the North West of Europe, in a city called London. It's fucked. Island mentality totally. Separated from everything. The most outrageous thing is that they managed to create a whole part of one continent, called North America, which speaks their (this, my) language and lives on the rules established on that little Island on the fringes of Europe.

Perspective is like that. It's just a small fucking Island which managed to attain global dominance, which is pretty cool... And it's weird!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I lived there enough now though and now I'm again (like before) much happier living in South Eastern Europe, where the North Western bullshit does not apply in the same way. Everyone needs to explore the options that are there for their souls, but I just need something like fucking Belgrade to make me who I need to be. London was a step, but Belgrade keeps on proving to be step after step, but not everything. Life is complex, I don't know how to explain it.

For those of you who have only ever lived in one country, it's probably best if you stay that way to avoid confusion!!!

Meaninglessness

2012-10-28T12:05:00+01:00

Sometimes I'm surprised that the meaningness of life is not pondered by the general populace of the earth on a more daily basis. Or maybe it is, as an undercurrent. What I mean is the general lack of any sort of connecting theme or meaning in life. We're all out there for our experience. Yet the ego doesn't allow us to ponder it in a real way because we're always trying to stay focused on our little goals to make it happen. Little successes and little failures, that's all we concern ourselves with. Our nations, our jobs, our whatever. Most people are too busy to look at the big picture.

But well, it's grim if you do. We're all here and we're all getting old, getting our satisfaction any way that we can. There's a wall there of the limits of what we can all feel and perceive and most of us take it for granted. Then there's those of us who see the wall, know what's beyond and resent it. Using booze or drugs or anything that can make us feel like the wall has windows. We who can go to that edge become the artists. Whether through substances or not.

We're in Belgrade, which is a good edge for me always. Where I can explore myself vis-a-vis infinity.

I saw my friend Nikola play a show yesterday drunk on 2L of wine. It was epic. Then at the end of the night police started raiding the club and he started to sing drunken insults at them. Amazing! These things can go two ways. The drunken singer can be your portal into another world so profound and slippery in a meaningful way, or he can be an example of too far gone. I've been on both sides. A girl in Poland was so inspired by one of the drunken ecstatic episodes of worldly savages that she got a tattoo of a peacock. This frightens me and intruiges me. I don't have any tattoos. For me they seem like a frivilous and overly commital way of trying to cling to meaning in life in a permanent way. Meaning for me is fleeting and thus it just doesn't work. I want to be able to change, put on different masks and not railroad myself into any one moment or mode of being. Yet the experiences I have as a singer are always tattooed on my soul. I can change the costume and move on any time however.

It's a long road ahead. Gotta keep booking shows. Gotta keep pushing it and oh yes, writing songs.

The music is my only escape from meaningless. Oh yes, i have worked different jobs, but they left me totally half empty. Music is the one that leaves me energized and willing to deal with the mess of humanity.

-Erik Mut

TORONTO

2012-09-30T05:30:08+02:00

OKAY.

Well I'm at the airport.

After 10 nights in Toronto.... The place where I grew up!

It looks different now that I've lived in London for a year. I've spent my time trying to not let the city wind me up, trying not to get angry at this wannabe World City, wannabe cultural capital... My only excuse to not get angry at it is that I really don't have to live here and I don't.

With that being said, I had a nice time. (Hi Milica [g raf detail])

What always strikes me about this place is how rich it is. How the average person has money to throw around in a way that in Europe they just don't. Either they don't have that money or they don't throw it around. Different places different things.

Everything is so expensive here these days. This is the Switzerland of North America. The same level of cleanliness, the same level of cultural and lifestyle limitation in order to ensure that everybody gets the promised and prescribed 'good life'.

I got so fucking sick of everything here. This was the case since I hit puberty when my father took me to Vienna, Prague, Bratislava when I was 13.

Not only am I from the Switzerland of North America, I'm from one of the most affluent neighbourhoods.... Surrounded by money.

And indeed I managed to clean up a bit while I was here. Old clients of my computer business. Money money money. So easy. But that's not everything in life. I could make so much money if I decided to stay in Toronto. I've got the class, the intelligence and the practical skills to make it happen. But it won't satisfy my soul. Hence Worldly Savages, hence what I'm doing now.

I've told people over the past few years that I like the way Toronto is going, it's just not fast enough. Surely I will never feel the feeling that I feel in Belgrade that I do in Toronto... Impossible! Surely even what I experienced this year in London cannot be found in Toronto. Every city is different.

But all in all I'm glad I grew up here. But now is time for me to 'make it' in the old world, the regions that my grandparents left, that's where I need to be.

So Europe here I come again!!!!

What is this ultra cosmopolitain box that I have fallen in?

2012-09-18T18:25:00+02:00

If you had asked me 5 years ago where the last fucking place I wanted to live was, it was London. The reason I would have said would "It has everything I hate about Toronto amplified"

Well, I still feel that way after I've been living here for 1 year. This city is toxic. But I'm glad that I spent my year here.

A year and a half ago I decided to move here. Things with my Worldly Savages lineup in Toronto were starting to stagnate and I didn't want to cling to any of it, I wanted to move on and keep going on the journey. I decided I needed a music centre. I decided I needed it to be in Europe. I decided that I need place where I could get a visa to work legally quite easily. I decided that I wanted to see what London was all about.

So I came here.

Immediately upon arriving, the stress of the place overwhelmed me. I had visited before always on my way to Europe. I was always noticing the toxic tense atmosphere, but this time it was something I had to let within me and deal with it.

So I started on my journey. It was a rough start. There were good signs all the way, but it was a rough start. I didn't want to get a full time job (I thought I was allergic to them, still do). I did freelance computer repair work. The problem was there wasn't enough of it. I was subcontracting for 3 companies, but there wasn't enough work.

Finding band members took time. I found Ivo first. We resolved to make something happen. Then we tried a drummer, but he wasn't committed enough. We were just trying to figure out how the hell we could find a violin and accordion. 2 months of that. Not enough work, not enough band members.

Around the end of October, me and Ivo decided, we're doing this. We're booking a tour of Europe for April. We started working on it. Then by the end of November we found the people, Jonny, Yula & Seppi. We were ready to go! European booking confirmations were coming.

Then, I realized, after all the work to get the band together, I now had to find some way to stay in London financially. So I got this job doing IT support for a structural engineering firm. Yep, a boring office job, 37.5 hours a week. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaa the very thing I hated. I was to start January 3rd.

I took a quick trip to Canada at Christmas, which was emotionally rough, but now I see necessary to get me ready for what was to come.

I got back, partied for new years with Yula on a 3 day binge and then I started my job. It was hard to get used to.

The started playing live on Friday the 13th of January, Serbian New Year's eve in, YEP, Belgrade, Serbia. It was after only 8 days of work. That weekend with my new bandmates in Belgrade was so amazing, two gigs surrounded by great people. After the second gig we went straight to the airport and flew back to London. When I saw the British passport control I started crying at the fact I wasn't in Serbia and I had to go to the job the next day. It was horrible.

And so we powered on. Playing gigs almost every weekend in the UK. Britton Vincent arrived in March for 6 weeks. Taking 3 weeks in April off of work to do a playing every day tour of Europe. Things grew in a wonderful way. Still that part of me though knew that this lifestyle was ultra temporary. I wanted to live in Belgrade and I wanted to do it with this lineup. So I started pitching that idea. It worked.

SO now we're taking a short break, before coming back to London to practice for 3 days then play a gig, then traveling all over Europe to end up in Belgrade and spread out and make an album. It's great.

I'm sitting here right now. It's the last day of my job. I'm done in 2 hours.

I'm going back to Toronto tomorrow for 10 days, my friend John Hall, who I have known since I was 4 months old is getting married and I have to be there.

It's all going to be great. I'm building my ideal life, one step at a time.

All I know is I have to get away from London now. This was great, but it took as much from me as it gave me. Mission successful for sure. But this city is not a place where my soul can breathe for an extended time. It's stressful just being here.

But thank you London. See you soon, but only for visits.

on the edge of the next chapter

2012-09-17T18:00:00+02:00

There's something about being about to embark on a big change in my life that makes me feel really kind of fragile and slightly sorrowful.

In 2008 when I decided not to live in Toronto anymore and that I would sell all my stuff, I remember the feeling of my life collapsing in on itself. Liberating yet scary. Something about those last few days you spend living in your place when you know a big change is about to come and you know that things are never going to be the same ever again. It's kind of sad. I remember that time, the day of the evening I was supposed to get on a plane to Vienna I smoked some DMT and that was like a giant mental reboot and after that I was purely ready to go. A nice 10 minute psychadelic tune-up.

What a connection in life that was to catch. The serbianization of me.

Last year, I was in Toronto, had been there for 4 months and decided again that the city was not doing what I needed for my music career, was leaving band mates and everything. That was hard too. I remember sitting in my parents house (they were out of town) and listening to some really sad bosnian sevdah music. Drinking rakija , so excited dreaming of what moving to London would bring me. It had this same sort of feeling. Pure sorrow, excitement, longing for the life!

It's something to do with the combination of your acquired fondness for the life that you've built yourself in a place, the sadness of leaving it, the frustration with not being able to have everything you want your life, the resolve that you have made the choices and the plans to change your life and the anticipation for the life that lies ahead of you on the road.

Now here I am more than one year later, life in London is collapsing for me now. My room is being rented out. Someone else is working my job and I have one day left at work and I know that my brief affair with London as a full time place to live was very successful although short and it really has lead to this next thing.

It's kind of sad still. But so exciting.

The show on Saturday in Exeter at the old Firehouse was really fun! One of our best. I felt like I was throwing myself into the show with abandon, but with such a knowing and warm charisma that I was just drenching the whole room with my self directed celebration of the strangeness of my being. The whole exercise of being a singer is one of great narcissistic value and I freely admit to that. In the end my music is a celbration of my own humanity and on nights when it really works and touches people, theirs too.

I've sacrificed almost every stability I ever had in my life so that I can do this. It's not easy. But the nostalgia I feel for the future makes it all seem worth it.

It's just days like this it's really hard not to cry about it all, just like I cried in January when I saw the British Passport control after the weekend in Belgrade which initiated the new lineup.

Blender

2012-09-11T13:40:00+02:00

Eastern Europe, Western Europe, North America bam bam bam. Mix it all up and you've got characters like me. I feel like I didn't really have a choice in the matter, my genetics and upbringing kind of forced me towards becoming this monster that I am, at home nowhere taking aspects of each. I'd like to think I'm taking the best of each and putting it all together, but it's probably just as likely that I'm taking the worst parts, if you know what I mean.

All I want to do is create a unique cultural melange and make music about it.

Somehow I feel grateful that growing up in Canada gave me such a blank slate that I could do that, because if you're from a place with more of a full on culture, it's hard to find room for it, but Canada, no, you can find room for maintaining whatever culture you want, the problem is always keeping it fresh. You see, Toronto, where people grow up, people go there to settle, they don't just go in and go out like people do in London.... They go there to forget the old world, forget the history, forget the complicated stuff of the old world culture and live a simple, rational, convenient life.

I'm thankful that I was raised in a way that could never forget that. By grandparents who grew up in a city with three languages and are relics of an empire with a rich history of binding together multiple cultures. Being raised in that mentality, being taken by my father to Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia when I was a kid and being told "These are our homelands"... Plural... Great...

Fortunate enough to inherit that cultural schizophrenia I've taken it to a whole new level. I am at home nowhere. It's all just fragments of belonging. No where can do it. Either this will destroy me or it will propel me to do something uniquely nomadic. So far it's a bit of both.

So the Worldly Savages, a musical chronicle of the aristopeasant mentality that wants to be refined and cosmopolitan at the same time being simple, primal and immediate.... It's disgusting and endearing.

And fuck you and fuck your culture, you are a lousy little slave to your boxed in mentality, you have no idea how small and narrow your cultural mentality is. You think you know everything, but you only know everything from one lens. You are a slave. Slave to culture. Can it be so? Can you accept that? Ok so let's party.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. You need money. you gotta do what you gotta do to make it. Good for you.

But for those of us who dare to find a different way to be able to play that game and along the way find some method of scraping by at the same time as seeing the world, it looks different.

For all of us with mixed blood and contrast in their heritage and upbringing, we're the ones who feel that banging dissatisfaction which never relents, which pushes us to create.

This is my creation. I keep on developing it. I’m gonna keep on going! You can’t stop me. I fucked myself in the head so well that I will just keep going.

JUST GET ME BACK TO BELGRADE. I MISS THOSE PEOPLE. THEY'RE FUCKED LIKE I'M FUCKED.

London

2012-09-05T15:02:03+02:00

Okay... Things are starting to shift and this term in London is coming to an end and I'm being launched into the new era of Erik in Belgrade with his band, touring as much as possible. It's exciting.

London has done good things for me. Really good things, I love it. It's also been miserable, stressful and made me a bit more of a cynical asshole, I must admit. But in the end, I think I will look back on this experience in this city as an important part of the journey.

To do the sort of thing that I'm doing, I have to go outside of my comfort zone, just like I did moving to Belgrade, the same was coming here, especially the experience of getting a full time job. I hate this lifesyle of working Monday to Friday all day........... It's not for me. A version of it is, and the discipline of it is for me, but the idea of having a job like this for more time than I have this year (8.5 months) is frightening. It's only all the wonderful stuff that's been happening in the band that keeps me going.

My advice to anyone who wants to do something with music, come to a place like London and whatever you have to do to scrape by. Just don't stop. The process will strengthen you and prepare you for the seriousness with which you need to take your artistic pursuits. After all I've been here, what I want is now clearly in focus and I'm ready to just go with it.

I've got a team of people who also share the vision and I have no doubt that we will work together and make it happen. There's no other way.

Belgrade will look different after this, rather than a place where I go to drink, fuck and talk bullshit, it will be a place where my dream will start to grow. Okay, well it has always been that sort of place, but this time it will be more so... Cause I'm closer to living the dream now!

"You gotta eat shit if you wanna be a star"

2012-08-30T19:43:49+02:00

On the recommendation of Bob Lefsetz in his newsletter, I listened to the interview with American talk show host Jay Leno on this site: http://www.jaymohr.com/mohr-stories.php

I'm not a huge fan of Jay Leno and his style of humour, but I found this interview completely fascinating, especially where he talked about what he went to in his quest to be a star........... most notably being homeless in LA, getting arrested for vagrancy, etc.

You look at a guy like him and it's hard to know what he went through to get where he is, but if you listen to this, you'll see. There is no easy path to become someone like that. It takes time and effort.

It just proves that those who do actually succeed in a business as tough as entertainment tend to be the ones who just have such an unstoppable quest for success that they are willing to do whatever it takes (even sleeping in alley ways) in a single minded quest to attain their goals.

It's inspiring. Really inspiring.

business is good!

2012-08-29T00:23:09+02:00

So my plan for Worldly Savages when I came to London was to make it into an actually functioning business, A gypsy punk upstart. It was rough at first. All I had was a portuguese guy and a dream, sitting in the room I wasn't earning enough money to pay for trying to figure out how the hell we were going to find a violin and accordion. Somehow during November, we decided to start booking a European tour as a major order of business, before we even knew who was going to come on it.

So we started, firing in the dark, but sooner rather than later, it all came together. By the end of November a new lineup was born and by the middle of January we were out and gigging. A legendary European tour in April and lots of notable moments in the UK since then and I'm happy to say that everything I dreamed of when I left Toronto has now come true.

Now we're ready to take it to the next level. We're going to live in Serbia to record there and kick the booking and music making machine into high-gear. We've set a goal of 150 shows in 2013, which we will start booking next week. It's all so fucking crazy.

You have no idea how much hard work and hard lessons it's been up until this point, but it's all so funny now. We've just got to keep on going.

Life and its inherent misery

2012-08-21T13:00:00+02:00

Life is indescribable. It’s the sum total of everything you could possibly feel on your journey. There’s absolutely no way to get away from that intensity. Some choose suicide. Some choose the security of mediocrity.

I’d like to think that I’m rather adventurous. Not only to I take a less trodden path in my journey, but I try to create an artistic that reflects the journey itself and makes something beautiful and lasting out of the moments along the way, which would otherwise just escape in time. It’s a tricky business! What’s even more tricky is to make my art in such a way that resonates with an audience. For years I only made music for myself and was incredibly hesitant to share it with other people cause it was so personal. Then I decided that I really did want to make music that touched other people’s lives.

I feel like as a person I’m quite tapped into the sorrow of life, but not in a way that cripples me. I don’t avoid it. I embrace it, like a Slavic tradition of enjoying being miserable that seemed to be enjoyed by both my grandfathers.

The default emotional state for me is depressive introspection. With my feet firmly planted in that ground I can explore all the other emotional territories which I enjoy, lose myself in ecstatic bliss, apply myself in hard work, indulge in curiosity and fascination of how things in life work.

But the default is depressive introspection. As in, what is this life and why is it such a miserable place to be, and what the hell can we make of all that?

How to prepare yourself for such things? How to prepare your children for it?

I was talking yesterday with this polish girl I live with about this… She was having trouble with her parents and their insistence to say those typical parent things to insist she work towards getting a good job and to ‘be successful’.

It then occurred to me that it’s wise to tell your children such things: Join the mainstream. Get that job. Take the secure mediocrity.

Chances are your child is one of the ones that would best benefit from that sort of talking to. Most people lack the courage and are far to complacent to actually figure out what their dreams are and to focus their whole lives attaining them.

So very easily, your art school daughter, in her lack of focused direction, could end up having no greater skill to bring the world than waitressing, or worse, that she would become a junkie.

So it’s better to tell your kids to go to business school, be ambitious in following a sure fire career path, etc.

If your child is one of the few people on this planet who are decisive enough to think differently from that and willing to make their artistic fantasies actually serviceable in reality, if they have something inside of them so strong that it cannot be silenced, then they will ignore the talks you give them and they will follow their dreams regardless.

Parents just want the best for their children, just want them to be happy. Very few people in this world know what truly makes them happy.

For all those kids in their 20’s trying to find themselves and their path in life, I would urge you that the way to make your parents happy is to find happiness yourself first of all, and success in the world as a closely related second accessory to this.

To find that voice inside of you which tells you what your calling is and to make it louder until it screams and you want to do absolutely everything you need to in order to make your dreams a reality.

Otherwise, life is a pretty bleak place and the best you can do is try to shield yourself from it.

-Erik

DISCIPLINE!

2012-08-17T16:35:00+02:00

Life is a battle. I truly believe this. You need to fight every day to ensure that you get what you want from it. It’s also a business. You need to make deals. You need to focus on growth (on all levels). You need to innovate, be passionate about what you’re doing and instil a military like discipline in yourself and those around you. Ambition is glorious.

There are lots of paths in this life that will let you just sail along giving an absolute minimum of a shit and still do quite okay for yourself. Get a job, follow the rules, get the paycheck, blah blah blah. If there’s one thing you might discover I despise it’s this sort of complacency.

The arts is an area where I see very little room for that sort of stuff, at least if you want to be successful as an artist, you need to be motivated, extremely so.

Only a fraction of so-called ‘artists’ will ever be able to manage that. The brilliant and fortunate ones might find someone else to manage them and instil discipline from the outside.

I’ve gotten really lucky this time in this band, the new line-up is blessed with people who really understand how things work. That’s why I came to London, to find those people. A place where you have to struggle just to keep your head above water, the people I met here are a stark contrast to the people I was working with before in Toronto in terms of seriousness and the ability to understand my vision and what’s necessary to pull it off. I’m so grateful for that.

And so now we embark on our journey in a business of pretenders, flakes, all types of delusional dreamers all lost in a maze of smoke and mirrors.

To guide me through this I have the wisdom of my father, music industry veteran.

If you’d like to hear some of that wisdom, click here, it's an interview with him and his friend and long time co-promoter, Gary Cormier:
http://www.jazz.fm/index.php/education-mainmenu-111/music-seminar/5013-gary-muth-and-gary-cormier-from-the-music-seminar-2011

-Erik

How to describe it...

2012-08-14T20:10:00+02:00

So I've been thinking about the new biography for WS that I need to write...... It's kind of fucked up to have to write about it. Over the past few years I've witnessed how much information gets absorbed by people and well it's hard to decide how to represent my band at this point in light of how media and promoters tend to interpret information. Let's analyse some of the often generalized things:

-The band started in Serbia. That doesn't mean the band is from Serbia. It's not from Canada. It's not from UK. It's from all of these places. Sort of like me, mixed... But most people's attention span can't begin to comprehend that a Slavic-German-Celtic-Anglophone from Canada would go and start a band in Serbia and join with people from many different countries and travel around Europe playing music. It's not digestible enough as information and the answers create more questions than they answer. So it's easy for a venue just to put up posters saying we're from Serbia, or Canada, or who gives a fuck.

-The band makes party music, IT'S TRUE. but that doesn't mean there's no message. Yes part of the message is to drink and dance and throw yourself into cathartic abandon, please, if the music makes you do one thing, please let it do that. Party party party. Scream. Jump. Let our concerts inspire you to have magic mushroom driven orgies until sunrise while clutching a bottle of absinthe in one hand and your childhood teddy bear in the other thrusting into the absurdity of the universe. But please also think about what keeps you from feeling able to have those moments in your life and all those mundane emotional states and social obligations that keep you from feeling the authentic and strange feelings that you hide away in your soul. Think about all the things that stop you from being an honest and emotionally authentic human being, I beg you. The message is to party and the message is to think, to feel, to release the beast, but not mindlessly. If you think it’s just frivolous and superficial, you got the wrong idea. It’s the opposite.

-There is a message to the music, but that doesn’t I’m a serious person, or I’m against anything or think you should change your life. I'm not an activist as you might imagine them...I enjoy and accept all this thing this recklessly out of control civilization has given us: the social inhibitions, the class systems, the millions of shitty plastic products, the bad dirty food, the pollution, the decay, the turmoil, the existential confusion, the monotony, the schedules, the formality, the jealousy, the greed, the propaganda, the education, indoctrination… AND ALL THE MORE SINCERE STUFF. My message isn’t typical activist shit about being against this or against that. I am pro-everything! It’s more than anything a spiritual viewpoint. I eat meat, I take pride in the affluence in my language and world-view, I like to make money, buy stuff, I’m shamelessly hetero-sexual and masculine, I have bank accounts, credit cards, I think the system is on the whole pretty good…….. What am I singing about then? I am just on the whole bothered by society and the way it railroads people towards mediocrity, ignorance and complacency in a civilization where our leaders are, to put it lightly, not very good examples of human potential.

-The band makes ‘gypsy’ or ‘balkan’ influenced music, buit it’s not just that. Whatever you want to call it. I’m no gypsy and I’m not from the Balkans. I’ve exposed myself to both of these influences extensively and think I have done so on a very deep level where most who have tried have done it only superficially and I’m happy with the result. However, I think that growing up in Moore Park in Toronto, or being half from a Slovak German family, having a dad in the music business, etc. is just as influential and integral to my music than whatever I picked up from the Balkans or the gypsies……

-Yes, I’m fucking crazy, but I’m also other stuff. The band works on discipline, I drive this as a leader. I’m a very sensitive person, I feel this all the time. I consider myself a well-rounded person who is interested in a wide range of aspects of life. I can control my emotions. And yes, I have a frightening side of myself that even I don’t understand which has madness which wants nothing more than to be sprayed out onto the audience and that's part of the thing. I’m a complex and varied human being who has a strange mix of characteristics, I’m not just the crazyman singer on stage. I’m also a computer technician with a very refined customer service touch. I’m a good son/grandson who loves his grandmother and parents. I’m an entrepreneur, businessman. I’m a pervert. I’m a philosopher.... I’m whatever. I’m sure you’re very varied as well. Don't be so fucking surprised when you see me pounding shot after shot of hard liquor while reading tarot cards, watching videos of cute little kittens and talking about the necessity of discipline and "standards of excellence".... It's all me!

So at this point I’m going to admit that I’m a little lost at how to describe all this in bite sized stuff to be sent out to media and promoters and fans. If you read this whole post, you’re one of the very few who cares about any of these things in depth, and thank you for that, but as a slogan I’m just going to stick to the thing I wrote in New York City in March 2009.

“Contagious Folk-Punk Energy with Ethno Music Spiciness. Wild, engaging music to fight boring post-modernity.”

-ERIKO

HELLO!

2012-08-09T18:35:00+02:00

Testing the WS BLOG.

-Erik