Made In Poland

Some songs choose their release date. Made In Poland — the new single from CITOVITZ AND THE FIREFLIES OF FEBRUARY — arrived on August 1st, 2026. Warsaw Rising Day. The day Poland honours the 1944 Uprising — one of the most devastating and most defiant acts of resistance in European history. The day a city chose to fight knowing the odds and fought anyway.

It was not planned. It was simply right.

“I did not sit down and decide to release on August 1st because it was symbolic. The song was ready, and when I looked at the date, I understood that the song had always known when it wanted to arrive. Some things choose their own timing.” — Andrzej Citowicz

‘Made In Poland’ is available as an official lyric video on YouTube:

THE SONG: ROOTS, BLUES, AND A FATHER’S HANDS

Made In Poland is a blues-soaked hard rock song built from the most personal materials Andrzej Citowicz has ever assembled. Born in Wałbrzych, Poland, and now based in Cairo, Egypt, Andrzej has spent decades carrying his homeland inside him — through every city, every studio, every late night with a guitar that still speaks the language of the place that made him.

The song is not about geography. It is about inheritance. About the specific, irreplaceable things a father passes to a son not with words but with his hands. About what it means to be made somewhere — to carry that place in your body, your instincts, your musical DNA — long after you have physically left it behind.

At the heart of the lyric sits one of the most quietly devastating passages Andrzej has ever written:

My father built my first analog amp from an old radio.
Old valves, dusty wires, a speaker with one more song to give.
He didn’t hand me money — he handed me a reason.
Every guitar I’ve played since still begins in that little box.

Arkadiusz Citowicz left when his son was 16 years old. Too soon. But what he left behind — a handmade amplifier built from old radio parts, valves, and dusty wires, assembled by a father who had no formal engineering training and every reason to try — became the foundation of everything that followed. Every chord. Every album. Every song released from a home studio in Cairo thirty years later.

“I have released many songs. But I have never written a line that felt as true as that one. He didn’t hand me money — he handed me a reason. Every guitar I have ever played still begins in that little box. That is not poetry. That is just what happened.” — Andrzej Citowicz

THE POLISH CONNECTION: SAMBORA, WAŁBRZYCH, AND THE BLUES

Made In Poland draws direct inspiration from Richie Sambora’s 1991 solo debut Stranger In This Town — a blues-drenched, deeply personal record that Andrzej counts among the most formative listening experiences of his life. What he did not know as a teenager hearing that record for the first time was that the man playing those guitars carried Poland in his blood.

Richie Sambora is of Polish descent on both sides of his family. His paternal grandfather Jan Sambora emigrated from Jodłowa, Poland. His maternal grandfather Alexander Sienila was also a Polish immigrant. The surname Sambora itself is Polish. The boy from New Jersey who became one of rock’s most celebrated guitarists was, in the most literal sense, shaped by the same soil that shaped the boy from Wałbrzych listening to him on a television screen decades later.

“I did not know Sambora was Polish when I first heard Stranger In This Town. When I found out, something clicked into place that I had always half-understood but could not name. The blues he played — that specific emotional directness, that refusal to hide behind technique — it felt familiar in a way I could not explain. Now I think I understand why.” — Andrzej Citowicz

That blues tradition — emotional, direct, built on the guitar as a voice rather than a tool — runs through every note of Made In Poland. The song is not a tribute to Sambora. It is a conversation with him. One Polish soul speaking to another across decades and oceans, through the shared language of six strings and honest feeling.

AUGUST 1ST: THE DAY THAT CHOSE THE SONG

The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 began on August 1st. For 63 days, the Polish Home Army fought the German occupation of Warsaw — outnumbered, outgunned, and ultimately unsupported by the Allied forces whose help they had been promised. Over 200,000 Polish civilians died. The city was systematically destroyed. And yet the uprising has never been remembered as a defeat. It has always been remembered as a choice — the choice to stand, to resist, to insist on dignity even when the outcome was already written.

Andrzej Citowicz released Made In Poland on this day not to make a political statement but to make a personal one. He is Polish. He was born in Wałbrzych, in the south of Poland, in a country that has spent its entire history surviving things that were supposed to destroy it. That survival — stubborn, proud, never quite explained to those who did not grow up inside it — is in the music whether he intends it to be or not.

“Being Polish means something specific that is very difficult to translate. It is not nationalism. It is not nostalgia. It is the particular weight of belonging to a place that has always had to fight for the right to exist — and has always found a way to keep existing anyway. That is in every note I play. I cannot take it out even if I wanted to.” — Andrzej Citowicz

RETURNING HOME

Made In Poland arrives as Andrzej prepares to return to Poland for the first time in years — with his wife Shereen and, for the first time, with his daughter Esther. A year that brought loss and miracle in equal measure. A year that stripped everything back to what actually matters. A year in which the distance between Cairo and Wałbrzych stopped feeling like geography and started feeling like time — time he wants back, or at least time he wants to finally close.

The song is a homecoming before the homecoming. A declaration made in music because some things need to be said in the language you trust most.

“I am made in Poland. That does not change because I live somewhere else. The guitar my father made possible, the music Sambora showed me was in me, the blues that arrived through a television screen in Wałbrzych when I was young — all of it is Polish. All of it is mine. Made In Poland is just the first time I have said that out loud.” — Andrzej Citowicz

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Andrzej Citowicz is a Polish-born guitarist, composer, and songwriter based in Cairo, Egypt, recording under the name Citovitz and The Fireflies of February. A former recording artist on Down Boys Records — the label co-owned by Erik Turner and Jerry Dixon of Warrant — he has built an extensive independent catalogue including the Living Room Rockstar series (Album of the Year 2025, Metal Impact Radio), Beautiful Damage: 1990–1996, For The Hawk, and the upcoming album Acoustism, due in autumn 2026. His work has been covered by Metal Shock Finland, Metal Hammer Italy, Rock Queen Reviews, MetalPedia MX, Metalheads Forever, and Breathing The Core, among others.

Made In Poland is available as an official lyric video on YouTube. Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf7xbIc68d4

SINGLE DETAILS
Single: Made In Poland
Music, Guitars & Lyrics: Andrzej Citowicz
Released: August 1st, 2026 — Warsaw Rising Day
From the upcoming album: Acoustism — Autumn 2026
Artist: Citovitz and The Fireflies of February
Inspired by: Stranger In This Town — Richie Sambora (1991)

STREAM & WATCH
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AndrzejCitowicz
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7aIeg5DyI7xwkYLsBgJNWf
Instagram: https://instagram.com/citovitz
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/citovitz/