Katapult frontman Oldřich Říha performed with his group on February 9, 2018 in Stochov, Kladno.
Prague – After a forced break due to the coronavirus pandemic, the popular band Katapult is returning to the music scene. The album called Nostalgia, which will be released in mid-April, is full of boyish rock and roll and can be called Katapult's first album, as it was recorded by a new line-up. Guitarist and singer Oldřich Říha said this in an interview with ČTK.
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“I was guided to it by people who told me that it is not the next, but the first Katapult album. Because what I created, according to them, authorizes me to reconstruct Katapult in full splendor,” said Říha.
The new lineup of Katapult with Říha consists of bassist Karel “Bigman Kodl” Dvořák and guest drummer Václav Zima. In addition to the album release, the band will also go on tour. The first concerts will take place on June 2 in the Falconry in Chlumec nad Cidlinou and a day later in the Summer Cinema in Lysá nad Labem.
The title of the new recording and concert tour Nostalgia, according to Říha, does not mean any “weepy remembrance”. “Under the name Nostalgia, I meant that I would draw from my youth, when music was played without effects and computer processing. I want to offer an energetic show, play a proper big beat and rock and roll,” he said.
Říha will celebrate 60 years on stage this year and her 75th birthday on May 18. He had to overcome many difficult periods in the history of Catapult. He was left alone from the strongest and most famous line-up. In 2007, Katapult drummer Anatoli “Tolja” Kohout died unexpectedly at the age of 61. Several drummers have passed through the catapult during its existence, the permanent core, always with Říha, was the bassist Jiří “Dědek” Šindelář, who died in January 2009, two days after his 60th birthday. At that time, Czech big beat legend Karel “Káša” Jahn was drumming in Katapult, who died a month later at the premature age of 60, paradoxically on the day when Říha started a series of memorial concerts for “Dědka”. Other Katapult drummers, Jaroslav Kadlec and Milan Balcar, also died prematurely.
In mid-2009, Ríha introduced new teammates, with whom he recorded the album Kladivo na život in 2016 and the single Zahrajem vam rock and roll in April 2020. A year later, due to the anti-pandemic measures at the time and the rescheduling of concerts, Říha put Katapult into a state he described as “hibernation”. He thus referred to a specific reaction, when animals wait out an unfavorable period in a state of rest and with the attenuation of physiological processes. At that time, however, his teammates left the band and Říha was left alone for a while.
“I was able to come back. It's actually a story of a guy who didn't give up because he still wants to play,” stated the band leader of the reconstructed Katapult.
Throughout their career, Katapult never left simple rock. The group was also accompanied by bans and hostility from some music critics. The band performed, among other things, as a frontman for Deep Purple or Status Quo and also performed on the New Stage of the National Theater in Prague.
