Jan “Protheus” Macků: “I’m just a rocker – I’m not going to turn into a campfire folkie”

The man who for years was the face and voice of one of the most successful Czech bands has undergone a major transformation in recent years. He took off the mask, left the well-trodden path behind and set out on a solo career, where he had to prove to both himself and his listeners that his charisma and distinctive lyric-writing style stand on solid foundations regardless of the name attached to them. By 2026, Protheus is no longer merely "the solo project of Dymytry's former frontman". It is a fully fledged, mature band that sells out venues, reaches thousands of fans through its loyal "Family" and brings us quality music. At the same time, Jan Macků is still the same university lecturer and scientist from the Faculty of Forestry who observes the world around him with a cool head and transforms it into lyrics. We spoke without the usual clichés or polished phrases about the band's development, the craft of writing lyrics in Czech, manhood in today's world, and what it is like to balance a personal life with a rock 'n' roll one.

Honza, when you first launched your solo career, fans initially came to your concerts out of curiosity – to see what you looked like without the mask and where your music was heading. Now they see Protheus as an established band on the Czech scene. When did that turning point come, when you felt people were no longer coming to see the "former Dymytry singer", but the new band Protheus?

It happened gradually, really. Of course, at first fans of my former band came along simply out of curiosity. I had been there for twenty years and wrote all the lyrics, after all (laughs). Anyone who came could see that we were serious about it and that it wasn't some kind of revival of my past. Right from the start, I put together a professional band that also looks great and has nothing to hide. On top of that, there's a top-class team that I push to the limit because we want to give people a genuinely big show… I believe people realised that we don't need to hide in the shadow of our older brother…

On the album Svět lidí and at your live shows, there is a clear shift both in the guitar work and in the songwriting. In what ways do your current bandmates challenge you musically or push you in directions you would not have gone on your own?

After leaving, I felt the need to separate myself more and experiment a little with, let's say, pop rock. Probably to show that my past really was the past. It wasn't exactly easy to start again after twenty years of work. But thanks to that, I also realised that I'm simply a rocker and I'm not going to turn into a campfire folkie. So after a few twists and turns that may have surprised our fans a little, we found our path – and we stand by it!

Your lyrics often hit on social issues and people's anger – songs such as Demokrad or Svět lidí. When you write, how do you recognise the line between healthy rebellious criticism and lyrics sliding into cheap, pub-style populist ranting?

I have to leave that judgement to the fans. I write, and I've always written, lyrics as honestly as I know how. The subjects somehow come to me on their own. I've never been one for calculation. And I don't go to the pub to complain, so I have no idea what people are currently moaning about there… (laughs)

You also write lyrics for a number of other bands and artists. Does it ever happen that you write something and think, "Ah, this is too good / too personal – I have to keep this one for myself"?

Never. When I started working on my solo material, that was the biggest fear my former friends had – that I would keep the best things for myself. To me, that is completely unimaginable. Besides, I don't write lyrics just to put them in a drawer. I always write for a specific song, directly to the music. And at that moment, I'm completely immersed in that song and nothing else.

Czech hard rock sometimes has a tendency to fall back on obvious rhymes. Your lyrics, on the other hand, use a rich vocabulary. What does your lyric-writing workshop look like? Do you write down words that catch your attention in everyday speech, or do you keep a notebook full of archaisms and metaphors?

That isn't just Czech hard rock. Simple rhymes are used all over the world. It depends on how much attention you want to give the lyrics. I always write from the heart and I do it honestly. I don't really sit over the lyrics; I tend to walk around and think. Quite often I spend several days just walking and listening to the song, and then suddenly it starts to flow. Unfortunately, let's be real, most listeners only take things in on the surface. When you listen to what dominates pop radio today… there's some serious lyrical diarrhoea out there. But if that's what people want, let them have it. Thank God rock fans are much more thoughtful people when it comes to music.

Your life is divided between family, academia and rock 'n' roll. What is the hardest part of that triangle for the people closest to you? And have you learned to say "NO" to offers to play so that you can be at home?

Sometimes it's one hell of a ride, maybe even too much, but it's still a ride. What you're describing couldn't be managed without a tolerant wife (laughs). I love both of my professions and I live for them. At the same time, I love being with my family and spending time with my children. So I simply have to plan very, very well. And learning to say "no" was probably the biggest nail in the coffin of my relationships with my former colleagues. I said "no" to activities abroad because I wanted to be home for Sunday lunch with my family. That caused a lot of trouble back then and marked the beginning of a very quick end.

Your fans call themselves the "Family" and seek personal contact with you before every concert. How do you maintain personal boundaries so that this huge wave of emotion and other people's life stories does not mentally exhaust you?

I don't see it as something I need to build a barricade against. We're family, and family sticks together. Talking to people or sharing emotions with them doesn't exhaust me at all. My job is to help them through difficult moments with music and to be with them in the most beautiful moments too. I'll say it again – we're not just musician and fan, we're family. It rarely happens that someone gets too close and makes things uncomfortable. And when that happens, our guitarist Filda steps in. He deals with everything very quickly (laughs).

Has a fan ever come up to you and told you that your lyrics literally saved their life or changed a major decision? What weight does a moment like that carry for the guy standing on stage?

It happens to me surprisingly often. Music is real magic. After all, what is around us from the moment we're born? Music. What accompanies us on our final journey? Music. I think people subconsciously sense the connection between us musicians and the fans through music, and a genuinely strong bond forms. More than once, someone has come up to me, looked me in the eye and told me that my music saved their life. That they wanted, for example, to end things, but the lyrics to my song "S nadějí" ("With Hope") somehow stopped them. One mother wrote to me that her son was in a coma and the family played my music to him because they knew he loved it. She was convinced that my music brought him back. I've got goosebumps just talking about it…

Your fans see you under the stage lights, surrounded by noise and crowds. But you are a trained forester. What does your ideal "mental cleansing" look like? Is it solitude in the forest with no signal, where you are not "Protheus", but simply Honza?

I like the life I live. About 90% of the things I do are things I enjoy, and I take the rest as a necessary evil. So I don't really need to rest in the sense of, "I can't wait for a holiday." Mental cleansing is something different; we all need it, and I'm amazed it isn't taught from first grade. Just as we are taught from childhood, "wash your hands before eating and brush your teeth at night", we should also be taught to give ourselves a daily mental cleanse. All the crap… that gets dumped on a person every day needs to be washed away every day too. I take a lot of brisk walks in the forest. We live in a beautiful part of our beautiful country, so I step outside the house and the mental cleansing can begin straight away…

These days there is a lot of discussion about a crisis of masculinity and what it actually means to "be a man". Your songs often carry strong masculine energy. In your view, what makes a man a real man in 2026?

The same things as always, in every era. I'm a traditionalist in this respect, because nature designed it that way, tested it and fine-tuned it over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. A man protects the family, provides food and a safe shelter, and the woman looks after the children in that nest. A man teaches the children to hunt, fight and face the dangers of life. A woman teaches them tenderness and emotion. For some bizarre reason, children are now being pushed to believe that this is not how it is. That they can feel like, say, a horse and marry a lamp. That the prince in a fairy tale falls in love with the brother of the princess he rescued. And to me, that is simply nonsense. That ballet is somehow a normal job for a man and mining coal for a woman. Sure, everyone has the right to live their life with joy and reasonable prosperity if they take responsibility for it themselves, but this is too much. The only result is that Western civilisation is quite obviously, and with plenty of evidence, going to hell. But hey, at least we have Euro-fifty cars that eat rainbows and poop butterflies. And "evil" China is laughing its head off. You only have to go there and see how "backward" they supposedly are, as the propaganda here keeps telling us. Those days are gone…

You put an enormous amount of energy into your concerts – running, screaming, sweating blood. How has your preparation for touring changed as the years go by? Is it more about physiotherapy, vocal hygiene and sleep these days, or do you still just power through on willpower and adrenaline?

Unfortunately, my parents were right when they told me, "Up to forty, you can get by on what you've naturally got; after forty, you have to exercise" (laughs). I've almost stopped drinking alcohol, and I stay a mile away from other substances. I walk a lot, try to exercise, stretch my stiff rocker's back, and I go to singing lessons at least twice a week. I've also stopped "screaming and forcing it" – something I used to have to do a lot. In my band, nobody forces it and nobody screams. We sing and enjoy life. My big advantage is that I did the full rock 'n' roll years, with everything that came with them, so nobody can say I don't know what sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll are. That was one phase of my life years ago. Now I'm a grown man who looks after his family, loves music and life, and works hard to make sure both stay with him until at least ninety. Universe willing, of course.

Has your voice ever failed you on stage so badly that you had to somehow breathe your way through the concert on pure improvisation? How do you find your way through a song in a moment like that so the fans don't notice?

There was a period in my past when former friends with whom I had built something for many years suddenly turned their backs on me because things were not going their way and their egos simply couldn't handle it. I felt enormous pressure and a lot of bad energy, and it started affecting my health and how comfortable I felt with my voice. I went through a period when I lost my sense of confidence and was almost afraid to go on stage. I did the stupidest possible thing – I tried to drink my way through it. That could have ended very badly. Fortunately, I realised what was happening in time and got rid of that pressure.

You have been on the scene long enough to see how the music market is changing. How do you see young Czech rock bands today? Do they have it harder because of algorithms, or easier because they no longer need major record labels?

The market keeps changing, and none of us musicians should be surprised by that. We can't expect what worked in the 1990s or the 2000s to stay the same forever. To me, the biggest change is that people are losing interest in the traditional kind of rock night out. They want something more. So my guess is that within a few seasons, the classic tours of local cultural halls will disappear completely. On one side, you'll have clubs for a handful of fans, with cheap tickets for "small bands"; on the other, spectacular arena shows. And of course there will still be the traditional summer festivals and events with lots of bands and lots of people. I've already started preparing Protheus intensively for that. For example, we won't tour at all this autumn. I don't want us to overplay and become too familiar.

And unfortunately, rock music in general is losing a little momentum at the moment. But that is simply a normal part of development. In the same way that classic rockers cried when Nirvana arrived and young people started wearing baggy sweaters and stopped going to rock shows, now they're going to see rappers instead. Just… rappers (laughs).

But you know what? Rock was here then, it's here now, and it will be here in the future too…

What would you like to say to the fans and readers of Rebel Sound?

A huge thank you to everyone for supporting not only my band, but music in general. It is the most beautiful mistress – the one that never leaves us. And life is beautiful because of it…

Looking at Protheus as a person, one thing is clear: he does not pretend to be anything he is not. There are no rehearsed answers from PR manuals, no rock-star pose designed to keep people at a distance. Whether he is standing in front of a board at the university, writing lyrics for his own band and fellow musicians, or roaring into a microphone in front of a packed hall, he remains a man who has honestly worked for his place on the scene. With a band in full motion behind him and a clear vision for the future, he proves that the best chapters of his musical story are being written right now. We thank Honza for his openness and for giving us his time despite his packed schedule, and we wish him the same clarity and honesty both on stage and in his personal life.

Lenka Svatoňová