Andrzej Sieczkowski (Pejo) – musician, autodidact, percussionist of L.Stadt band and owner of Lokal and BUFFET restaurants in Łódź. A philologist of Slavic languages by education. With L.Stadt, he has recorded 4 LPs and played hundreds of concerts in Poland and abroad, including at Opener Festival, Male Music Festival (‘Męskie Granie’ in Polish), Off Festival or SXSW. During our conversation, we discussed success and its importance, talked about being a pillar of the band and a restaurateur with a soul of an artists, and about life lessons.
copyright: TETE (Tomasz Tomaszewski)
WO: Our today’s conversation is special as we are living now in a slightly different reality. I’ve interviewed Kajetan Kajetanowicz recently and we agreed that this new time requires some other skills. Let me ask you two or three questions on that subject. In my conversations with musicians or athletes I usually want to find a key word to the story: the combination of things that drive you, i.e. passion, and things you are able to create thanks to your passion, i.e. values. So, passion first, and values created thanks to passion, used to build something for others, for yourself, and if you are lucky, to earn on it. I assume that some skills that you learn in a life of musician, artist or athlete, maybe unknowingly, build your spine and prepare you to face challenge. These conversations are always about the belief that if we do what we believe in and if we do it the same way professionally and privately we will be stronger in all walks of life, whether it’s career, family or individually. I call it ‘transfer knowledge’ or ‘transfer skills’ – the ones we move in-between different sectors. Can we talk about this?
AS: Yes, of course.
WO: To start, a bit like a warm-up, let’s talk about success. I see signs of success in your culinary and your artistic work. Where does this success come from; is it talent or hard work, with blood, sweat, and tears?
AS: I think the two are definitely linked, but in music this is definitely talent. I am one hundred percent sure, especially when looking at people I’ve met. The main founder of our band was Łukasz. He is incredibly talented, knows how to write songs and find the right ingredients. I am the co-creator of the band and this combination works well. It’s hard to say whether it’s sweat and tears. We simply assume that sometimes you need to focus, rework, digest and go through things. It’s like with an athlete who needs to train every day in order to achieve higher scores and become better and better. In music you can put different pieces together and you’ll come up with some effect. So, it’s all more about persistence.
WO: So work, hard work sometimes, and, even more importantly, persistence. I guess that the person who floats an idea is important, but is coincidence relevant as well?
AS: Well, yes. I think that coincidence, or good luck, really helps.
WO: Yes, but lots of different people experience such happenstances. What influences the way you’d consume or materialize them? I don’t know if everyone who experiences good luck is actually able to seize the opportunity and go forward. Do you have any method to determine what is of quality and what is poor. Even if it has emerged by happenstance…
AS: I think, for that intuition is the key. You simple feel where you should go. In my case, when I got a chance to work or to perform with someone, this came as a result of my effort and time, and the network of people I built. If the quality is good, it’s fine, it’s great, and this is a good place to start.
WO: Did you have moments of doubt? I actually think that not every idea is always great. Again, persistence, and being open-minded are of key importance. Surely in-between these “Wow!” or “Aha!” moments you had times that were not so great.
AS: Doubt would set in when you try to get through some hard stuff, and all of a sudden you start to wonder ‘Is it worth it?’. This is an ongoing process in any artistic work, especially in music or in fine arts. You always struggle to know whether what you do is of value, and whether it is worthwhile to keep pushing or maybe change your job?
WO: I believe that, on the subconscious level, this constant need to try and persistence stems from what I call humility. Would you call it the same? The feeling that success is not long-lasting…
AS: Not really. In general, as I see it, success is a function of many factors. There have been successful sportspeople who became famous, and were never heard of again. But their record of success has not vanished, they can still say ‘Okay, I did it’. There is simply a timespan for saying ‘I did it. I’m satisfied. We were successful’. This doesn’t have to mean financial success. These are actually two different things; it comes in because you are successful. Of course, the financial aspect is very important but success can bring other things as well; maybe you’ve climbed the social ladder or you’ve learned something, maybe you’ve made the world move forward or have created something meaningful and lasting.
WO: What about music? What is the most satisfying in your view – the fact that you made the world move forward or you’ve effected a change, or that you’ve learnt something? Or maybe that you’ve made a lot of money?
AS: Unfortunately, not. Our biggest success as a band was that thanks to our music we were able to travel the world. This was very important to us. Our dream was to play concerts and travel – for me this is the key idea behind any music activity. And this dream came true. The band gave us the chance to travel, see great places, live nice experiences, meet people, see the world. We came, we saw, we performed. It was a kind of life-chaning experience, something you can reproduce later on in your mind and say ‘It was great’. We didn’t get stuck in a room or just a few clubs and that’s all. We were able to achieve something through our music, and our music stayed in people’s minds. This is also important. This builds ties, and emotions, even today. The product that we created still triggers emotions.
WO: On the one hand you traveled the world, and you are very attached to Łódź?
AS: Well, yes.
WO: What was the biggest challenge or difficulty on your way to success. Let’s say that success is what you define as knowing the world when touring with concert gigs. I assume that you had concerts because someone invited you and you performed the music which resonated far beyond Łódź. What was the biggest difficulty in becoming this ‘traveling band’? After all, you’ve travelled continents
AS: We were a kind of a band that paved the way for certain institutions and for other artists as well. Maybe because of us, now it is easier for them to move around the world. We were simply a nice export band. We got the support from cultural institutions, which was not easy to arrange.
WO: Some of the difficulties were those of a pioneer, to some extent?
AS: Yes, exactly.
WO: Was this because you didn’t know what was impossible, or were you focused on achieving your goals, and were you simply lucky? Which difficulty you were aware or unaware of? Looking back, how do you see it now?
AS: We kept looking for new solutions and ways of moving forward. It wasn’t even a matter of learning from our own mistakes. We tried to do what we could on our own, even if there were lots of people who gave as a helping hand. But we wanted to do it more our way.
WO: So a kind of a music start-up?
AS: Well, the hard part was that we had no buffer or no soft place to fall, we’d rather do everything on our own. We invested our own money, or we arranged some sort of financial support to attain our goals.
WO: Once back from your international tours, did you have that moment when you had to prove that your success would stay? Some say that at some point people can become prisoners of their own success.
AS: The band is made of four guys and I am one of them. Łukasz is the main driving force behind our works: he has the ability to write fine songs and to convey to us how the final piece should sound. He has that sort of excellent sense. But we also look for solutions together, and this is time-consuming. We’re a band that records relatively few songs because we are never really happy with the final outcome we want to get.
WO: Would you call this humility, or constant searching?
AS: Searching, I think, humility – not so much. We usually think that whatever we produce may be even nicer and better, and it would be good to go an extra mile to do something better because what we have is not as good as it could be.
WO: I do remember that story when Winston Churchill was invited to Harrow School to deliver a speech lasting dozens of minutes. He stood up, went to the rostrum and said: ‘Never, never, never give up’. And that was it.
AS: We often joke about being over forty. Today we do not meet that often but there is no such feeling among us that the band decides ‘OK, we’re done’, and we part our ways. In the back of our minds, the band still exists. It continues to be our life project, you could call it that way. We never say ‘Okay, we’ve built a career in music, so that’s it, thanks’. This time has not come yet. We still enjoy spending time together, and when we perform we create something interesting and novel. We perform rarely today – it’s true – but this is a different story.
WO: What I’ve understood from your many interviews is that you are no longer a drummer, but more of a percussionist. There is one frontrunner in the band, leading the performance, the guitarist or the singer. I’ve always felt that if any member stops playing (guitar, bass, or singer) it is OK. However, when the drummer stops, some awkward silence sets in. In other words, there is a leader in a band but drums are a sort of foundation for everything. Do you play percussion precisely because of the roles you want to take in the band, whether consciously or unconsciously?
AS: It seems to me that I’ve always thought of myself as a man of support, not a frontman, but someone supportive enough to be a necessary pillar in the band. When I played basketball, I was the point guard, someone who passes the ball; I wasn’t the key point earner but thanks to me the team scored high. The same works for music. I felt that I didn’t have that need, not a talent but a need, to play guitar, to perform solos, to sing. Maybe I was not able to sing so gleefully. So, instead, I thought: ‘Drums would be great’. When I was fourteen my friend showed me how to play drums and I just felt that this was something I wanted to do, that that was it!
WO: Can you count on one other as a band? From what you’ve said the band still feels like a team.
AS: We don’t meet often, as we live in different countries now. But when it comes to the band, we are still a team. We don’t meet socially, we may have different friends, but we wish one another the best for holidays, we call each other on our birthdays and on other occasions. We don’t see the band as a thing of the past. We used to spend a lot of time together when touring, so when we do travel now, we don’t complain. Of course we joke about getting older; we are not simply in that place when you are thirty, you move around and this is so much fun. Our lives have gone different ways, we have different experiences, and this is probably why the band operates slightly differently on the market right now.
WO: I’d like to move on to a different world now, the world of restaurants.
AS: We are going through very hard times now (Ed. the COVID-19 epidemic, it’s March 2020).
WO: Yes, times are exceptionally tough now. Before this disaster struck, you had made the decision to open a restaurant. Before you tell us how this idea was born I’m curious to know what role you play there: are you a point guard or a percussionist? When you look at your culinary team: who is the soloist, who is the leader and song writer – or, in this case – who creates new dishes? Is this you? Or maybe when you changed businesses you’ve taken on a new role? I know, there are three different questions in one, but you can tell me the whole story, I would love to hear it.AS: “Lokal” (in Polish: ‘The Place’) is a fully-fledged project, and it’s much more than just a restaurant. It has become a sort of culinary brand now. I came up with the idea to open a restaurant by luck or by coincidence, I’d say. I had a network of contacts but the band contributed to it as well. One day, we met with a group of friends. They were fans of the band and wanted to help us – me and my wife – to find a new lifepath. They told us ‘Look, we have some resources, you have good energy. What if we created a place that would be a combination of an art gallery and a music club?’. They meant a place where we could meet with friends, or play concerts, with a culinary offer. We just had to make it work financially. Back then, we were, or actually I was in such a point in my life where I was looking for something new to fill the slots when I was not performing. I had some more spare time: I had just finished working on the Łódź Design Festival and was looking for a new venture. So, with a pair of friends, a married couple, we thought: ‘Fine, if you think you can help us, we will start looking for a place and think about how to make this work! Maybe this could be a meaningful thing for us’ That’s how ‘Lokal’ was born. I had never run or worked in a restaurant before. You know, lots of people know a lot about restaurants and bars, they work behind the bar, as waiters, as baristas, and they dream of opening their own place. I have always thought that it could be a great idea to have a small coffee shop, for friends, and to serve them coffee, maybe organize an event, create something that would expand into an art gallery or an event hub.
WO: So in fact ‘Lokal’ was never meant to be exclusively a restaurant?
AS: No, food was the just one activity and for a few years we managed to nicely combine the culinary with the artistic. From day one we aimed for high quality. We were able to build a great team, and suddenly we realized that the restaurant business was also profitable! You could see it on the market and among people that this was something they needed.
WO: Did you know that people needed a place like this or was this an accidental discovery?
AS: Well, people heard that a new place was being opened, called ‘Lokal’. What is it? Well, someone called ‘Pejo’, Andrzej Sieczkowski, is opening a place, a restaurant, with some food and maybe something else. Seven years ago, all of a sudden, almost a thousand people showed up for the opening. I thought ‘What the hell is going on?’. This was not a small opening for hundred people who get together to create something cool and fun. Unexpectedly, this became a major social event. Of course, new similar and competitive places popped up soon, and ‘Lokal’ underwent a sort of transformation as a result.
WO: Is your menu in line with what you think people should be eating? Are there any concepts that you reject? What about the food as such?
AS: Our idea was to create a place consistent with our approach to life and health. We wanted the food we serve to be both a little bit artistic and interesting. This is why ‘Lokal’, even today, is not a place with a commercial menu, serving burgers, pasta, and pizza. Our cuisine comes from the passion of its creators and managers. As I’ve mentioned, my role is to recruit people for work. When you run a football team you build it piece by piece, player by player; you look for a forward who will score goals, a good goalie, and a strong midfielder. We look for such people. They are not always able to cook yet but can bring in something that Łódź has not seen before. This worked well at ‘Lokal’ from the onset. Since day one we offered something new on the market. The place was ran by young people with a shared passion. I always gave them a lot of room for action, I still do.
WO: Let’s talk about novelties, about innovation and risk-taking. I think we need all of that both in artistic and culinary activities. Today, risk has a strong presence in our life. You’ve once said that because you used a restricted pool of instruments you forced yourself to be creative and to look for something new. These limitations inevitably push you to invent things. I think that on the Łódź market this is quite common. Is this a golden rule to find new solutions or only one of many existing ones?
AS: When we create music we start from tiny pieces, for example a rattle. We limit the number of percussion instruments, noisy things, to have just a base for the multi-tiered rhythm. As for the restaurant, we also have technical and equipment limitations. We established these constraints ourselves to highlight the creativity of menu authors. We reduce our room for action to produce something new with very simple methods.
WO: We keep shifting smoothly between music and food. As a child, did you play music using pots and pans?
AS: I remember that as a child, I would jump on the bed as music energized me. I don’t think I had a set of percussion pots and pans. But making home videos of our performances was fun; we used mops and brooms to replace guitars. As kids we often played creating ‘music videos’.
WO: It seems to me that artists often have trouble being fully satisfied with their work. They feel that things can always be done better. Let’s just imagine a good day at ‘Lokal’. What it is going to take for you to say ‘I’m happy, it was a good day’?
AS: In the restaurant, whatever the number of guests, all it takes to make us happy is when someone says nice words or tells us that we’ve made their day, that they feel better now or that this space or stay at ‘Lokal’ has changed something…
WO: So again, we’re back to experience?
AS: … this is just great.
WO: This comment sounds somehow like after a good recording, a successful concert performance or a release of a good album. If you had to choose between music or restaurant, what would you do? Is it possible to make that choice?
AS: It’s a hard choice but for me music is a strong emotion trigger. The restaurant is a meeting place and that is great, this is also something I need. It’s a place for meeting my friends.
WO: With music and food you can expand a network of people who, together with you – I don’t mean to sound pompous – build a kind of community?
AS: Yes, exactly. The band also builds a community of fans, but it’s more like you are ‘pulled out’ of the crowd as the musician on stage. In the restaurant this works the other way round: you host someone, it’s part of your home. That’s how I see it. You invite people in, to your place. On stage, you open up to people, you express yourself, you convey your energy. In the restaurant it’s guests who give you that energy, the feeling that the place is great, they are happy to see you here. You know that this is your doing. The relationships work the other way round.
WO: Did you have a model to follow or a mentor to ask them ‘what would you do if you were in my shoes?’ when building your role in the band, the band itself or the restaurant? Maybe it was more intuitive, like the outcome of some groundwork and learning from mistakes?
AS: No, we had no models to follow. We really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into with this culinary adventure, so we had no idea of what to expect. Our place not only served food, but also offered interesting meetings and events, some shared experiences. This was a brand new thing in our local community in Łódź. The ‘Owoce i Warzywa”’(Polish for ‘Fruit and Vegetables’) café wanted to be a place like this: they offered coffee, a bar with alcohol drinks, sandwiches and cakes, together with a fully-fledged cultural program. This was a pioneering venture in Łódź.
WO: We are now touching upon being brave to do things that nobody had dared to do before. It’s like ‘I’ll give it a try. I have people to support me, to talk things over and agree. I’ll just try something new’. Do you have any ideas of what comes next? ‘Buffet’ and ‘Format’ places happened in the meantime. Do you wish to continue trying, especially now, when the situation is so unusual? Or perhaps I should first ask you about the ideas you had in mind before the outbreak of the pandemic.
AS: Of course it’s a struggle to keep the place going and be able to either bring your ideas to life or look for some new and more interesting ones. ‘Buffet’ or other places were short-term projects. Right now, in this particularly tough moments, I’m wondering what the future will bring for the restaurant business. I’m taking a dual-track approach: should I keep the place because it’s still needed, or maybe relocate it or maybe close it and use the lessons learnt to build something brand new.
WO: So you are still on the road, aren’t you? Ideas are there, and it’s just about the hope for a better moment. Is this courage to test new things part of Andrzej Sieczkowski’s DNA?
AS: I am a self-taught musician, so I often laugh and say that I don’t feel like a whole person who could create a band on his own and take on a leader’s role in it. I have always been one of the supporting pillars.
WO: ‘Pillar’ is a strong word.
AS: When performing I’ve often heard that only when I’m on stage music really comes to life. In my restaurant path I’m not a businessman. I really wish to create or experience something rather than just make money. I want to have something of value in this place. I’d like people to look at the projects I do and say ‘This is fun, this is cool’, just like with the band. This is not just one more band that got a gold record and played forty gigs in Łódź, in a music club like “Wytwórnia”. It’s a group which has released a record that people will enjoy listening to also in 15 years.
WO: Or a band that paved the way for other Polish bands in Southwestern city, in Texas. You were the first Polish band to perform at SXSW, weren’t you (South by Southwest)?
AS: Yes. It was a sort of explosion, or a small-scale export of Polish culture abroad. We were in fact the first band to be sent there. We always worked hard to be noticed, and lots of institutions helped us. So, I think of what I do in a wider context, of how to build things that will leave a lasting impression in people’s minds.
WO: Regarding lasting impressions, I got a thought: Lemmy Kilmister, unfortunately only after his death, had a Jack Daniels drink created for him, named “Lemmy” , Sammy Hagar produced tequila and Iron Maiden owns Trooper beer brand. Have you ever considered creating a dish called L.Stadt or Pejo, or maybe a drink made with your favorite, simple and very inconspicuous instrument – the shaker?
AS: No, I have a distanced approach to alcohol, I’m not a full-blooded rock-and-roller to create my own drink. But the ‘Lokal’ menu does have a non-alcoholic drink called ‘Infusion by Pejo’. It’s an infusion that I love: simply ginger with honey and mint.
WO: It’s great for this time of the year when you need to warm up and feel strong!
AS: Exactly! I think it’s a great drink to build strength and immunity. But, in general, I’ve never had any ideas of that kind. I was more focused on building a brand, maybe a drink called Lokal or L.Stadt, something in that vein. But these are all extras, not a base to build on.
WO: Were there any moments of regret in you band or restaurant experience, the ones when you thought ‘I should have done something different’? A sort of a lesson that later on made you take completely different decisions?
AS: It’s hard to say. It was a long road for me. I think that as a band we could have gone more with the flow, and done things more aggressively. But does ‘faster’ mean ‘better’? It’s hard to say.
WO: There will never be two parallel realities.
AS: I believe that as the band we could have gone faster with certain things. We were afraid of some decisions, and in the end we lost the drive.
WO: One more question regarding ‘Lokal’, the ecology, and the rules you live by in your relationships with people. Are there any rules that helped you build this space you identify with today? Do you have any gauge of sound decision-making or an inward compass to guide you? Are there any values that may at times come as a hurdle but at other times help you make the right decision?
AS: I’ve always felt that sincerity and honesty are precisely such values. If you feel that your project is executed fairly, that the message it conveys is honest and right and that you give off yourself, it will pay off. Whether it’s the macro or the micro scale, I always think that what you do should be real and emanate from what’s deep inside you. With this, some luck, coincidence and persistence, you will build something successful.
WO: Here we go again: self-consistency and credibility…
AS: People who are exceptionally sincere and honest with themselves have a certain inward consistency. You know, success doesn’t necessarily mean a career or good financial standing. I think the world is right now reassessing its values. We’ll see how all of this will go on.
WO: The world is reassessing its values, and Andrzej Sieczkowski is ‘stuck at home’, colloquially speaking. What is the lesson of this ‘staying at home’ experience?
AS: Well, you know, this time at home is in a way forced on us. I have plenty of time to do other things. I love it, it’s like living through an early retirement. Running a restaurant is a time-consuming job. You have to give up a lot of things, coordinate a lot, do many things at once, and this is very absorbing. Working in the restaurant business is like a constant battle in an emergency.
WO: For some people this is precisely what being a drummer looks like: it’s like battling an emergency where each limb moves in a different direction.
AS: Now that I think about it, I am starting to have more control over things. For example, the percussion. This is really key because you manage the core and how the whole band will sound depends on you.
WO: You have restaurant experience and music band experience, you’ve played drums. Does Andrzej Sieczkowski want to pass something on to his children?
AS: Now I teach my son how to be persistent. He is very impatient and wants to see the results right away. I think that it’s persistence and patience that will make him successful. Plus something that life has shown me and continues to show: what really is of value is that process of waiting for things, and hard work.
WO: So a small step ahead is always better than a plan that has been fine-tuned to perfection but is never implemented?
AS: Yes, you can say that. I’ve always believed that if you push things forward gently, I mean the valuable ones, they will come through in the end, sooner or later.
Passion2Value The concept of conversations and projects based on the combination of passions and values from various fields. By working in a specific setting, exercising or developing your passions, e.g. in sports or music, based on broader knowledge and skills from other disciplines, you can learn something as an academic discipline. You can create valuable things and enjoy yourself, at the same time.
