The Budapest Sessions - EP Available Now, Free!

The Budapest Sessions will be released on January 10th, 2011 for “pay what you want download” at johnstatz.bandcamp.com.

In the early months of 2009, singer-songwriter John Statz embarked on his first European tour, playing shows in five European cities, including Budapest, Hungary. He was fortunate there to meet Adam Szabo, a local producer (Budabeat Studios), and during the few days in town they recorded some new songs, hoping to use them on a future album release. In November of that year, tracking started back in Wisconsin for Ghost Towns, John’s first full-band album. Though that project was already underway, another recording session was undertaken at Budabeat with Adam, from which two tracks made it on to Ghost Towns: “Julija” and “Night Train to Sarajevo”. After that album’s release, there remained six unreleased tracks from the “Budapest Sessions”, comprised of two new songs, unheard on any other recordings, and four alternate, acoustic versions of released tracks.

Though the recordings are sparse in production, a couple of them feature some local Hungarian musicians on electric guitar and percussion, and even a child’s harmonies on one tune. Budapest is an amazingly resilient and beautiful city, having been utterly destroyed in World War II, yet rebuilt, lovely on the banks of the Danube, and fascinating in its differences to most other places in Europe. Those influences were constantly internalized during the two visits, and projected outwardly during The Budapest Sessions.

Track Listing:

1.Call Me Last (new song) – 2010 session
2.Jackson Hole (Budapest version) – 2009 session
3.Our Love Was Made For Canada (Budapest version) – 2010 session
4.Dear Friend (new song) – 2009 session
5.Disclaimer (Budapest version) – 2009 session
6.Everything To Me (Budapest version) – 2009 session

*cover artwork by Heidi Keyes (www.heidikeyesart.com)

Serious Budapest

My host Adam had seen "Avatar" in Hungarian, but wanted to see it again in English, and I had never seen it, so we went to a real Budapest shopping mall and donned our 3D glasses.  The movie looked really cool, though I can't say much for the plot or the dialogue.  Too bad I couldn't keep the glasses.


My gig in Budapest: at iF Kavezo, played here last time as well.  Adam took this shot from a balcony up above.


Adam has a studio built in his basement (Budabeat Studios), and so we did some recording there for an EP that I hope to release sometime this spring.  We recorded some brand new songs, including one that I started writing in Slovenia and just finished that very morning before the session, "Julija".  Also, a Neil Young cover, "Long May You Run".


Recording vocals and guitar together.  You can already check out a demo version of the new song, "Julija" at Adam's website, Budabeat.hu, so take a listen if you wish!  The song is about a famous Slovenian muse I learned about last year when I was in Ljubljana, and the name Julija is actually pronounced like "Yoo-Lee-Ya".  And the cheesy toy keyboard solos you hear in the song were made by...


...this cheesy toy keyboard!  I thought that the sounds were pretty cool.  I don't know that we will leave them in the final version, but it was fun for the session, anyways.  Let me know what you think!