„It’s always nice to get together – with dad, Eimantas, Danu, and Viktoras. Very fun, lots of humor, good emotions. It recharges you. That feeling you’re always looking for. Like a drug – that’s why we do it all,“ says Andrius Mamontovas Jr.
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Maybe that’s why he looks forward to the end of summer concerts with special joy. From August 21–23, the band will play at Klaipėda Castle, by Lake Druskonis, and at the Kaunas Yacht Club. Here will sound “Best Songs. Part I.”
Paradoxically, more intimate concerts make Andrius Jr. more nervous than thousands of people. He has been playing at his dad’s big concerts for several years – this year he appeared in arenas and at Kalnų Park, last year – a show in Kaunas. “When you play in a small space and people are close, you see every face – it causes more tension than thousands of people.”
When the band is almost family
The current chemistry of the band has been developing for many years. “I’ve known my dad all my life,” he laughs. He calls Eimantas Belickas almost a family member: “He knew my dad even before I was born. We have shared stories from when I was little.” He has known Viktor, who plays bass guitar, for about a decade. When you know people so well, says Andrius, a lot happens naturally in music.
Dad’s songs are also almost memorized by Andrius. “Since childhood, I’ve probably seen hundreds of my dad’s concerts and heard all those songs thousands of times. When you hear something so many times, you pretty much know everything,” he says.
Playing them himself, Andrius tries to keep the song as it was written, but does not aim to replicate old recordings or previous concert versions note for note.
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Still, he observes certain limits. “I can’t allow myself to change the song’s structure or play something completely different. I don’t want dad to turn around and look at me angrily,” he laughs. And immediately clarifies: that never happens. A. Mamontovas, as the band leader, says the son, is not very strict. If something sounds bad, he will say so, but leaves a lot of freedom to the musicians. “He wants that new sound, new experience. There is freedom to take a chord differently, choose another timbre. I think he wants that new feeling.”
Another person close to Andrius joined the band for this year’s concerts – his fiancée Embla. The idea came from A. Mamontovas himself. “Once, dad and I were driving back from rehearsal, and he asked if Embla could sing backing vocals. I immediately said yes,” recalls Andrius. Embla, who doesn’t speak Lithuanian, was a bit nervous but only had to learn one phrase – “would that be you.” – “I taught her and that was it,” he says.
The closeness of family did not solve one mystery – how dad’s songs are born.
“I keep thinking, how did you get to this – that you wrote these words, melody, chords. Sometimes it seems that if I played or wrote the same, it wouldn’t be like that, but when they do it, there is some charm in it. There is always that mystique,” he says.
By the way, Andrius Jr. likes his dad’s less frequently heard songs the most. Among them are “Wind,” “Yellow Shores,” “You Stayed in the Rain,” “Footprints on a Wet Stone,” “Only by Candlelight,” “Empty Palms,” “Angel of Sadness,” “Iron Heart,” and others. “Their interpretation depends on the person listening to them. It’s very hard to say what those songs are really about. I think there is always a metaphorical meaning that he had in mind when he wrote the song, but a person with a completely different life experience perceives it differently,” says the performer.
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