As a part of her “Phone a Friend” series, Morning Show host Jill Riley has been checking in with various musicians over the phone. She made an international call to Poland to chat with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski of the indie rock band Trupa Trupa about how the coronavirus affected the release cycle for their new EP, I’ll Find, as well as the history of their hometown, and their plans for the future.
Jill Riley: Grzegorz, are you there?
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski: Yeah, yeah. Hello. Nice to hear you. Nice to meet you. Circumstances are really weird, but I’m really happy that we can talk about this strange time.
I’ve never made a phone call to Poland before, so I’m really happy to be connected with you here on The Current’s Morning Show. Can you start by talking about Trupa Trupa and how the global pandemic has affected you and your band?
In one way we are lucky, and on the other hand we don’t know what the future will bring. One or two weeks before the virus outbreak we released our EP, so we’ve got new stuff and we just showed it to the world. We’ve got a lot of airplay all around the world, and a lot of great reviews. One one hand, we were a bit faster than this big crisis; on the other hand, we still plan to make the USA tour at the end of June, and we will also visit Minneapolis. The plan is that we’ll record a radio session, actually, but who knows what will happen at the end of June? No one knows. We are trying to relax a bit, and have a lot of power in future steps.
Grzegorz, what part of Poland are you in right now? Where does the band call home?
We live in Gdańsk. It is a city in North Poland. It’s a very beautiful place by the Baltic Sea, and it’s a very historical place, in the way that the second World War started in the city of Gdańsk. Also, the Solidarity movement which destroyed Communism was established in Gdańsk. It’s a very great place. It’s a very tragic place. I think it is a good place to have perspective. For example, I really think that because of this whole tragic situation with the virus, maybe we’ll establish a better community in the future, or even right now. Very often, this kind of very tragic situation brings some light, some hope, and some solutions for the whole world.
If there’s one thing about the Polish, it’s that they’re very resilient people.
After every accident which happens the the band, I think we are really better after the accident, better than earlier. I think that we should have optimism. We shouldn’t be pessimistic about the future, even if it’s dark. I’m sure that because of this darkness, we can produce some light.
