Words about Vasko The Patch

For you, Patch:
... You are very useful to Bulgarian music with your talent and you will remain in history with this "bad thing".

Milena,
the Queen of BG Rock

When I heard Vasko the Patch for the first time, I burst into tears. Original, natural, genuine. He was born from the street and from people's grief and he has made millions happy! I love you!

Bogdana Karadocheva,
a pop singer

Vasko, don't tune your guitar! People will think you are not playing live.

Valdi,
"Sturtsite" rock group

A colorful musician, who touched the hearts of the free Bulgarians...

Petar Slavov,
FSB, percussionist

There are not more than three Bulgarians in this world, who can tell the people(?), living on the banks of Mississippi, a blues story. Vasko the Patch is one of them. He has sung about our crazy life for the last twelve years with the means of three chords and twelve steps(?). He has sung about it in a way that only a natural talent with an honest heart and a good soul can do it. He has only lied to us about one thing (he didn't mean to do it) - that communism is going away. He lied to himself too - maybe because he wanted it that much. It hurts him deep now and out of the pain blues is being born again. Blues from the suburbs, dog-like, with patches of love, hatred and hope. Because without hope there is no point in blues, and in our life too.
Vasko is my friend. And I feel good when I think about it.

Rumen Yanev,
journalist

If Sandor Petofi had known Vasko The Patch his great distich:
"I would sacrifice freedom for love,
nor would I give love for freedom.."
these most precious conditions of human spirit - love and freedom - don’t exist on their own for Vasko The Patch. He can’t sacrifice one of them for the other , because they are one and the same thing.
There are no chains for the spirit of a musician who loves. There are no limitations for the love of a singer, whose spirit is free.
With patched jeans and colorful "bus full of blues" Vasko made the way of blues in the waste land, in unploughed wild fields of bulgarian music space.

Vanya Kostova,
singer

A drummer, a harp player, a singer, a songwriter, always expressive and freedom-loving, both topical and non-conformist, a musician living with his people's problems and with his country's developments... It is not a coincidence that blues is the 'coat' that wraps around his feelings, thoughts and talent. It is the style that suits his spirit and perceptions. Poduene Blues Band and Vasko the Patch charge everybody around with disobedience, sadness and optimism. His singing and his improvisations give strenght to people's faith, they admire him and trust him. Vasko and his rebelious blues - they are so needed and welcome. Nobody else has ever brought so many street singers and musicians to the Balkanton recording studios - giving the sound engineer headache, but bringing the street's spirit to the professional recording...

Vasko Stefanov,
sound engineer

If there was a 'Grammy' for a bluesman who created songs awakening the masses, Vasko the Patch would carry that award with honour!

Philip Dimitrov,
ex-prime minister ex-ambassador to the USA

A situation - no matter good or bad - needs to be patched up. And how can it be patched up? With the help of a patch and suitable threads. That’s what blues is-the thread that matches the mood, the color, the clothes, the joy and grief, which is the other side of the coin. For so many years Vasko Krupkata (The Patch) has managed to bi the patch of Bulgarian blues, it’s most suitable and appropriate thread.

Ivailo Kitsov-editor,
Chief of Bulgarian music magazine "Rhythm"

Vasko the Patch – one of the few who dared to create blues of the protest in a country in which doing so was very inappropriate, and doing so he painted Bulgaria’s musical culture in colors and brought his country together with the world. Traveling around Europe with his band, Poduene Blues Band, he became a true envoy of freedom, for a world without boundaries. I would be very happy to see Vasko’s name on the world’s blues scene some day.

Prof. Simeon Shterev
Professor of flute and improvisations,
Jazz & Pop Faculty,
National Musical Academy
Sofia

"Poduene" is a myth, which Vasko created out of music, gave it a face, and we experienced if like blues and like the confession of our generation. Boys and girls at the edge of the fortieth illusion with lost of colorful patches on their souls abscessed by the doglike grief of the suburbs, we were strong about being trees bushes. At any rate. "Poduene" is for us a religion, the voice of the street, a guitar strumming our emotions to the bottom of our hearts… Or the small candle on the pavement of our revolution. The Bulgarian carnival of freedom.

Liudmila Buchinska, journalist