American Debut Of Some Small Towns

Apolinary POlek

Apolinary POlek Returns To Heck Of A Guy Concert Hall

Ongoing readers may well recognize Apolinary POlek, an especially generous visitor to this web site. In March 2007, he alerted Heck Of A Guy viewers to the Warsaw Leonard Cohen Presents Anjani concert¹ and later shared his recordings of the broadcast of that concert with listeners here.

Since then, he has been a frequent contributor, often providing information and insights about the music of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Most recently, a Heck Of A Guy post celebrated the opening of Apolinary’s blog, Blog Nocnego Grajka (“Night-busker blog”).

Today, however, Apolinary POlek eschews such Clark Kent roles to appear in his primary identity, singer-songwriter.

The Music

“Some Small Towns” was originally written in Polish and recently translated into English,² a decision made, in part, to increase the appeal of the song when performed at performances in France,  England and Holland. The only difficulty I detect that can be attributed to the English translation is relatively trivial. As  Apolinary notes,

To sound really well, I should soften [the recording] by adding some very quiet background vocals, but singing it again … to make three exactly synchronized tracks in English is too much for my abilities.

I was impressed upon hearing “Some Small Towns” and asked permission to present it here. Now, I am excited to offer the American debut  of this outstanding piece.

Backing Apolinary  is Tatyana Bunyak on percussion and Karolina Czerska on bass (pictured below)

Some Small Towns – Apolinary POlek With Rhythm Section

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1. Anjani Interview and Concert Online Today was the first of six Heck Of A Guy posts that covered the Warsaw Concert and Interview, which took place 31 March 2007. That post also contains information about and links to the other pertinent blog entries. [↩]
2. Through an exchange of emails I provided some minor assistance with the nuances of idiomatic English en route to the final version of the lyrics – unless “Some Small Towns” becomes a hit, in which case, I completely rewrote the piece from the ground up. [↩]