Travellers

Travellers was formed in 2011 by Wojtek Szadkowski, known for his past involvement with such acclaimed bands as Collage, Satellite, and Strawberry Fields. As Wojtek explains, Travellers music is a mixture of prog, ethnic music, the 80’s music, a lot of magic and space, and all of this crowned by (lead singer) Robin’s fantastic voice…

Wojtek Szadkowski describes the origins of Travellers: I got the idea about forming Travellers by accident. I was checking various ideas which had been recorded throughout the several previous months and it turned out that some of them formed a certain consistent whole. They shared a certain specific mood, a bit ephemeral, a bit ethnic. I gathered them in a separate place and started adding in some ethnic loops. I remembered that, in the first version of one of Strawberry Fields songs, Robin sang in a very high-pitched voice. Her voice was a little bit reminiscent of Enya then… so I thought that it would be a perfect voice for this kind of project. But I had no idea who could play the guitar. I knew that it had to be someone that could feel the vibe of the 80’s and of rock classics. I didn’t want it to be a typical, obvious, progressive guitar in the vein of Steve Hackett’s style - that would destroy all the mood. Incidentally, I met a friend of mine in the street, whom I hadn’t seen for many, many years.

I knew Grzesiek from the times of record boot sales. I knew he played something or other, I knew he had some sort of a band. But we hadn’t seen each other for some 10-15 years! I told him about Travellers and he wanted to try. He sent me guitar tracks for the song Dreaming. When I heard them, I had no doubt that no one else would fit that mood better than he did. He played perfectly. He chose a perfect sound, he added a new quality to the song and that was exactly what I wanted. We worked on the guitar tracks via the Internet - he would send me his tracks and I would say what was OK and what was to be corrected. Sometimes I would suggest some other solutions but these were merely cosmetic changes. I approved most of the guitar tracks without any changes whatsoever.

Sometimes I would modify a song, the order of particular parts, the beginning after I’d heard the guitars - to make things work better. It was different with the bass tracks. I’m no good at playing the bass but, accidentally, Krzysiek, after hearing the songs, offered that he would play the bass lines on the synthesizer. In this way, the last jigsaw piece fell into place all by itself. Initially, because of my laziness, I wanted Robin to write the lyrics but eventually it was decided that I would do it.

Travellers? début album ?A Journey Into The Sun Within? was released in Europe on 6th June 2011, and in the USA on 12th July 2011.

With thanks to Metal Mind Productions for the provision of the biography information.

Bob McBeath (Easy livin), Scotland