Jumping right in.
For those who don’t know, BOSSMAGS really started 7 years ago in 2015. Me and Fetza played Lesz Feszt in Hungary (plus a few haphazard Budapest gigs) together with – at the time – a Warrington-based band he had started playing with when he moved here (I lived in Scotland at the time but I came down to fill in on bass). At this point we had only now just met through the mutual friend who’s band it was we were playing with – but as it turned out, unbelievably, the year prior, when I was playing guitar with a Dundee-based band, I had in actual fact played on the same bill as Fetza on his very first gig in the UK. I still can’t believe that. I was there. This was in Warrington, where for those of you who don’t know is where BOSSMAGS is based. How’s that for gigception?
I saw him play but for some reason never met him. Some time after this we (the Dundee-based band I played with, but left in early 2015) invited the band F played with to Dundee to play an album launch. Somehow I still never met him then either. Separate afterparties I suppose. So for this Hungarian tour, it was in actual fact the third time I’d been around him – but this time I actually met him. We hit it off big time. It was like a conjunction of energies. For me and him that Hungarian tour was a riot. So ridiculous. We got each other. When we got back it was a no brainer we were going to try our own thing out and make some music together. We knew it would work.
As soon as we came back from that tour 7 years ago, we started a project together and called it The Mighty Bossmags. Before I went back up the road, we recorded this exact track together ourselves. Waste Of Time: https://soundcloud.com/heightyossmags
We were so excited in those days. Who would have known that this track was a precursor to where we took this band that we’re so proud of. We did always know that we didn’t want to restrict ourselves and so we later introduced the BOSSMAGS MACHINE, the engine of our own Curio Punk experiments – where we take any genre and Bossmagify it, with our own tincture of which became ghoulish, theatrical execution or madcap punk rock energy, of course playing with everything from jazz to swing to dub to metal to synthy stuff right from the start.
Anyway, I’m jumping ahead slightly – shortly after getting back from Hungary and I went home, things didn’t work out with the band we met through and played with in Hungary. He was now free and I was free, so a few months later I just decided to move down south to Wazza – a huge move for me at the time, but one I was oddly comfortable and determined to make (F sorted me out, he moved out of his own room to another place, and let me have it) and we took it all from there (I also knew that my now wife V who I met through F on that tour was coming to live in Warrington but that’s a different story!)!! Once again with the whole fate thing, Kier was right there as soon as I came down and he soon came aboard – massively instrumental to sculpting who we were and who we would be – and then we recruited Timbo at a house party some time after. Our motivation was now to return to Lesz Feszt in 2016 together, and this time take our own band, our own music. We were delighted to be invited that year so we put together a shaky EP to punt at the festival and somehow managed to make up an hour set with a lot of mad experimentation.
Our first actual gig was in the front garden of the Brewhouse / Old Town House in Wazza on Sunday the 3rd of July 2016 (F and me feeling very rough after a mad Saturday evening) (there is a picture of how blistered Fetza’s hands were after that set), to warm us up for playing in a big festival tent at a big Hungarian festival !! This was just mental for a band that had just started out.
Since then we’ve played all over the place with each other, up and down the UK, something like 7 countries on the mainland, even played Lesz Feszt and seen it grow for the another 2 years, and in 2019 we were proud to have the Bishop bring new life into the band. It’s been a journey to get to who we are today and Fetza and his genius riddims and beats has not only been instrumental on our journey thus far, but we really did start this thing together. We’re fortunate to have had such beautiful and peculiar beginnings, full of storytelling, mystical poetry, ideas, takeaways and debauchery.
It’s really strange to think of carrying on without him. Sacrifices made for this band ultimately positioned us here in Warrington, in the North West of England. It can be tough at times, but me and F have stuck it out. Sometimes, however, you really do have to make decisions that break your heart but give your soul peace. F feels it that it is time to go. We will be carrying on this band and I will continue to make these sacrifices, and to do justice to me and F’s vision. Fetza is going on a well deserved adventure. We love him and are so proud of him for taking this important step for himself. He’s been right there with me for more or less all of the most important milestones in my life in the last 7 years. It is sad to go separate ways now, but exciting for what the future holds for F and for us. We will always be family. Possibly you have to have a band yourself, to be on this strange endeavour of the trials and tribulations for at least as many years to understand how emotional this is to compose this, let alone for our brother to go a different way. Typing it down to announce this is real really does make it very real.
I love you, we all at BOSSMAGS love you, and we’re so grateful, we and everyone who has been along with us either from the start or joined us along the way wish you good luck on what comes next!
Egészségedre!
Stickah
