Attila Tapolczai: bio and musical history

[January 2012]

Well, I arrived in Galway in September 2011. This was my old dream to come to Ireland, i.e. to live in Ireland. I was born in Budapest/Hungary in 1981 and I've been playing guitar since I was a teenager. As a child I learned violin but it never suited me really. I grew up in the Budapest punk rock community in the '90s and I formed a melodic punk band in 1996 but I was always interested in the American/Irish folk music.

One day while we were gathering with my friends on one of our usual squares in Budapest we met a busker who took out his guitar and gave us a few bluegrass songs. Later on he asked me if I want to busk with him in the summer so we played every day at the Fisherman's Bastion, a famous tourist place in Budapest. He was an amazing guitarist, his name was David Tarr. On that summer I learned a few bluegrass, Irish and country songs from him which I had been always playing since then but I mainly focused on my punk band (The name was 'Hatosagilag Tilos' which means 'Officially forbidden'. We recorded five albums in a twelve-year period).

Then eventually as the years passed by I turned from punk to folk music. I wanted something new, a more relaxed but also powerful music, and since we had more and more access to western music through the internet, I found myself picking bluegrass tunes, discovering the acoustic flatpicking guitar. Bluegrass and Irish folk gave me a huge inspiration for my new acoustic music style and I started to build up my songs on a bluegrass basic (bass, guitar, mandolin, violin), mixed with my own melodies. When I heard the first bluegrass songs in my life I felt the same as when I heard the first up-beat US punk music. They both are very powerful music styles with beautiful harmonies but I love the naturality of the acoustic music. And altough the punk rock was traditionally filled with political topics and you can't tell it about bluegrass, I easily found this political connection in the American and Irish folk music, which has often been very political. Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers, Christy Moore, Bob Dylan, they became my favorites along with Tony Rice, Doc Watson, Tim O'Brien, Flatt & Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs, Alison Krauss, Loreena McKennitt, and many more.

So this is how I turned from punk rock to folk and bluegrass. The story of my acoustic band had just begun.

In 2005 for personal reasons I left Hungary and moved to Augsburg/Germany. There I found a classical viola player, Johanna Regenbogen, while busking. We met regularly, practiced my songs, and later on we recorded our first CD, We are the ones. Since I didn't find anyone playing mandolin in Augsburg, I decided to learn it myself. I bought a cheap instrument from the internet, and (first time in my life) I was really glad that I learned violin because it was so easy to figure out the notes and I already had a good right-hand technique for the guitar. We could find a double-bass player, Markus Drescher, so on this album we made a good bluegrassy sound with my own melodies and a few covers like 'Bad religion' in acoustic.

In 2007 I moved back to Hungary for two years because I found a Hungarian wife and we started our family life there. We lived in a beautiful forest which gave me a lot of new inspirations for my music. In this perion we played on with the punk band too and my bassist friend Laszlo Pasztor became the bass player in the acoustic project as well. So we came together again - Johanna, Laszlo and me - for a few tours and a recording session, so we made our second album, the Dreamer. For this album I found a young 5-string banjo player, Gyula Egyed, for a few songs.

In 2009 I moved to Augsburg again and I made my first solo album, The guy from a big town, inspired by Tony Rice's Church Street blues. I wanted to make a nice stereo guitar recording, and thanks to my boss in the music school where I taught, I had good equipment for the recording. This was a very fertile two-year period; in 2011 we recorded our third album, The Devil's knockin' on my door, with the same guys: Johanna (viola, vocals), Laszlo (bass, vocals), and myself (guitar, mandolin, vocals). We also invited guest musicians for this album, like Julia Neukam (violin), Katharina Waldmann (violin), Manuel Hengge (mandolin), and Markus Drescher (callo, guitar).

And back where I started the story. I finally came to Galway in September 2011, and Laszlo, the bassist, will follow me in February 2012. I've already found very good musicians here so we're ready to show our music to the Irish bluegrass and folk scene.

First I visited Galway in 2006, we planned to settle down here with my family but we couldn't make it back then. Since then I always wanted to come back but somehow I had to wait five years to make it. Now I'm very glad to be here and at last the band is in the same place too.

About the music in general:

For music the best thing is to listen it, not talk about it but I tell you a few words. We have an acoustic bluegrass basic setup. That means: double-bass, guitar, violin, mandolin, and banjo only occasionally. We sing harmonies too; the lyrics are mostly in English but we have quite a few Hungarian songs as well. We also play tunes, traditional bluegrass, Irish and self-written ones. The lyrics are often political, sharp capitalism-critics, protest songs filled with ironical elements.

Since I'm a kind of qualified sound technician I always do the recordings myself. I always try to make the best out of the material I have to work with, the sound equipment, instruments, environment, musicians. I learned this approach from a very good sound engineer friend of mine, Szabolcs Szücs, who made our previous punk recordings.

And here are the links. I prefer Facebook, Soundcloud (these are very clear) and through Facebook you can also reach our ReverbNation profile, it's OK too. There you can also buy our music. I have a YouTube channel but unfortunately I only have solo performance videos. We're gonna change this soon and make a few recordings with the band:

Attila & Friends: Facebook; Soundcloud; Reverbnation
Attila Tapolczai: MySpace, YouTube