David Koller feels content in his house with garden and vineyard – News

But time flies even for rockers, and after years of joyful use, including recording in the studio, he discovers that living – and recording – at two addresses (the second one is in Prague) can be not only inspiring, but also exhausting.

“I discovered it here probably thirty years ago thanks to my friend and teammate from Jasná páka, Michal Ambrož. His sister moved here and I slept with them during my visits. I always liked it here until I decided to buy a weekend house here through a real estate agent. It won’t be easy for me to say goodbye to this environment one day,” he muses as he leads us across the stone terraces behind the house to the vineyard. The trees were already blooming here, bees were flying around and everything at the foot of the Holy Hill only enhanced the magic of the view.

Not so long ago, David Koller thought that he would solve the distance between Prague and Brno on the erratic highway by flying over with a helicopter.

“I actually got my pilot’s license for a small helicopter. Also for romantic reasons, but when martens bit my car cables on the hill at my friend’s garage, where the helicopter fits, I understood that this is not a reliable way either. And so I only go flying in a borrowed helicopter.”

It soon became clear that the reconstruction of the old terraced house – actually close to the center – made no sense. “The project was made for me by a well-known Mikulov architect, with whom I discussed what I needed to have here. When they approved the plans at the office, they didn’t really understand why we have five toilets and bathrooms here,” smiles the father of four sons – a thirty-five-year-old, an eighteen-year-old, a sixteen-year-old and a three-year-old… One studies in Brno and also considers it his favorite base here.

In the ground floor room is the music direction with mixing consoles and speakers. And a recording studio next door. The last album DK-LP XXIII was also created here – after eight years. For three years, David and the band put the songs in a drawer, and today he has video clips for all nine. Including the song Satisfied.

Music direction is another “pearl” of the project. It is actually a specially concreted room within a room with double doors. When you close them, you can’t hear a note from inside. For a change, the studio is entered from a pleasant winter garden – into a room with a fireplace! And through another door leading to the kitchen, which can also be an electrical workshop adjacent to the bathroom and sauna, one walks into the original underground cellar. With a stone floor reminiscent of Habana.

“The director of the Mikulov castle told me that something was found everywhere here. Only on the Dancing Hill (Tanzberg), as it used to be called, because there were only fires and dancing and sacrifices, nothing. Until the Catholics, to show who is the master here, turned it into the Holy Hill.’

The ground floor of the house is actually reserved for musicians and visitors. On the floor built next to the original attic extension and with a stone gable, there are rooms for family members – from a bedroom with a cot to a student room with a climbing wall. And a kitchen with a dining table and direct access to the terrace.

It is a few meters along the stone path to the summer kitchen embedded in the slope. Then it goes up to a modern guest house – a cube assembled and habitable in a few hours… Next to it there is also a place for a hot tub. And behind the gate opens a perhaps unsuspected and remembered paradise! Local friends help David with his wine variety.

“I also planted vegetable beds, and new soil was brought in by trucks through the neighbor’s garden. Compost first and then twenty centimeters of good soil. I don’t worry about my hands and I don’t chop wood drunk.”

“At first we only thought of a cottage here. They painted the original building, dehumidified it, made a few adjustments, and after the first winter it looked like it did when I bought it. So I had the roof torn down and built a floor on top of the original wall. And in the end, the two middle sons went to elementary school here. But sometimes the lady comes here to clean nothing, because no one was here. It’s not just tempering here today either, and selling something now isn’t the right thing either. I’m in no rush, but we already have it in our heads. Not to mention that in a few years the youngest son will go to school as well,” states the singer and songwriter with a memory:

“Back then, at the end of the nineties, I was already fed up with Prague. I was thinking of the Šumava, but I feel cold there even in the summer. I also like the local warmth and we have actually lived here permanently for the past ten years. As soon as I leave Brno behind on the way here, I feel stressed.

But otherwise, my things fit in one suitcase for years and I can go on. I have that suitcase in Prague. We musicians are a bit nomadic. And as long as I have a live band, we’ll go and play.”