"Hey, what kind of music is this you guys got going here?"

"When this club emerged, there was a very special era—one that looks quite enviable from today's blues reality."

Alexei Kalachev, the longtime host of the "Doctor Blues" radio program and founder of the website bluesnews.ru, tells the story of how the legendary blues club in Belyaevo came into being, how it survived, and how it made it through the difficult years of 1994-95.

"Doctor Blues"

I had a show called "Doctor Blues"—I mean, it still exists now—that aired on FM radio. It had its own dedicated audience. In other words, everyone in Moscow who was involved with blues listened to it.

And at some point, the idea came up to start a fan club for this radio show. Back then I had a huge mailbox, a million phone calls—people would even come by specially just to meet me. I approached this venture pretty casually, but before I could blink, an actual, in-person fan club had formed around the radio program, with almost three hundred members.

And this club began holding "sessions." I performed there, gave lectures, musicians played there.

The radio station where this program existed had its own building, a concert hall, and so on. In other words, there was an infrastructure in place for it.

At some point, this club outgrew its venue. And someone suggested that since we no longer fit here—there were almost 80 of us—we should turn this fan club into something with concerts at some other place. To be honest, I don't remember who. One of my good friends, probably, or just some random person.

Gallery

And so I found myself standing before the doors of this art gallery in Belyaevo. It's still there, as far as I know, and I think it's even doing well these days, God bless it.

There was a concert hall underneath that art gallery. And we almost immediately came to an agreement with the lady who was the gallery director about using that hall — I don't know, for how many people, maybe seventy, for these bohemian purposes.

So I'll be organizing weekly club meetings here where I'll perform. There'll be music, a small buffet. Everyone will be very happy. And the proceeds from these evenings will go to the gallery. So we're essentially renting the space on an unofficial basis.

The times were turbulent, but in their own way very interesting, captivating, thrilling—complete chaos and vivid colors all at once.

And, by the way, we made an agreement in good faith, without signing any papers with this gallery, that I would run my fan club there for my show "Doctor Blues."

Sessions

Our meetings were called sessions, but in reality they were full-scale concerts that sometimes lasted three hours.

It had the appearance of an underground Soviet club, a music club or bohemian club like those that existed in the '70s and '80s, where famous rock bands of today used to perform.

I want to emphasize that this was a special, distinct time that will never come again. An absolutely unique era for blues, when it enjoyed such extraordinary favor that whatever you called blues, wherever you wrote it—even on a fence—people would come.

But the thing about this Belyaev basement was that everyone who came to these parties had to have an individual invitation.

Organization

Here's how it was: there were several people who would call every member of the "Doctor Blues" radio show fan club each week. And each person would get an individual invitation, and we could predict almost exactly how many people would show up, how many sandwiches we'd need to make, how long the concert would last. It was absolutely wonderful, utterly thrilling.

And there were several enthusiasts there who essentially kept the club going. My part in it was modest: hosting a radio program that was listened to by tens of thousands of people. At that time, there was a blues boom happening in the world. On top of that, a new format and a new sound had arrived — the compact disc.

And all of this was multiplied by blues being rediscovered as a genre in America and around the world, with all that entailed. And so I found myself riding the wave of a trend, as they say nowadays.

And besides, I had good friends.

Oleg Mansurov, who brought an entire truckload of beer every week. He sold it somewhere at the markets—there were a lot of markets in Moscow back then. He would bring this beer to Belyaevo.

My wife was making sandwiches. My seven-year-old son, even when he was six, helped me with everything and even collected money at the entrance, sold tickets. That happened too.

And then we didn't get anything out of it at all, because at the end of the night I'd pay off the musicians, the gallery, whoever brought the beer, and I'd be left with just enough for a taxi.

But all of this was, I must emphasize, done with passionate enthusiasm and from a musical standpoint brilliantly.

Musicians

We had everyone perform here, starting with Petrovich and Arutyunov, all the stars of Moscow blues. Levan Lomidze had just come back from Europe at that time, playing on a white Fender.

There were a lot of very interesting figures around, not just musicians. People would read poetry, some girls would come and present what they called blues costumes, though I honestly don't even know what blues costumes are supposed to be.

But the real star was Roman Gegart, one of the best diatonic harmonica players in Russian history. And he and his band King Biscuit became our house band. They were so young and brilliant, and I remain deeply grateful to them.

Andrei Evdokimov came by, we gave some speeches there, I read poetry by Langston Hughes himself, so we had a very interesting poetic component to it.

Everyone had Gary Moore in their heads, but gradually a musical community formed that swung in its tastes from Gary Moore to the archaists like Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson. So the music was very diverse.

And the face of this music was defined by several musicians, first and foremost from Moscow: Alexei White Belov, Petrovich with his band, Borya Bulkin, Levan Lomidze, Roma Gegard with his guys.

And this was the first wave of Russian slingers, guitarists who sang and played electric guitars. First and foremost, Fenders were extremely popular.

Repertoire

They played the blues that Russia heard on compact disc in the early '90s. A wave of music just swept over not only the blues community that formed back then in the early '90s, but also the general public.

As for the breadth of understanding blues—yes, it was the same as it will forever remain in Russia:

Let's say new artists would come to that same Belyaevo. Back then, everything was very simple, no formalities. A musician would call me at the radio station and say: "Look, I've come from Lvov or from Krasnoyarsk, I play blues." Oh, great, great, hello, hello. Fantastic, come by our club on Friday. I'd be happy to. So, what will you be playing? I'll play blues, the way we play it back in Krasnoyarsk or wherever—Chernivtsi or somewhere like that.

And these guys would show up, often really nice fellows, and they'd crank out some Russian chanson mixed in with Hoochie Coochie Man. So you'd get this blues hardcore alongside all the other junk that was on the airwaves. Well, what can you do—you can't stop a concert, so you'd just laugh it off with the audience, who understood perfectly well that this wasn't blues.

But on the other hand, people did make an effort. They'd give them a hundred rubles, thank them, and never call again.

There were so many groups, so many performers who interpreted the blues in their own way or fundamentally misunderstood the very nature of blues itself, but absolutely considered themselves bluesmen, were convinced that what they were doing was blues music—there was one in every two, so to speak.

That's why the breadth of understanding and the term "Russian blues"—it persists to this day and has become established, even though it has nothing to do with blues proper. This was, is, and will always be the case in Russia. That's just how Russia is—a blues country.

The 90s

All of this was happening in 1994-1995, so we had our "encounters" with the police, and with just about anyone. It happened regularly. Sometimes it took on comic forms, sometimes tragicomic ones. But the thing was, we had arranged it all from the start with the gallery, with the art community, and they essentially had our backs.

If a crisis situation arose, I would call the gallery director or her deputy, who was also a very tough, no-nonsense, militaristic fellow who knew how to deal with the official authorities. For instance, a police unit would show up and say, "What's happening here is forbidden by law," blah-blah-blah, and so on.

Then this Sergey appeared on stage, and they'd talk quietly in the corner over there. And everything would get resolved to everyone's satisfaction. In the end, with some money changing hands for these gentlemen's benefit, they'd leave.

But sometimes it went differently: when a few bouncers in red jackets would show up in the middle of the hall, stone-faced, and say, "So, what's going on here, guys, what's this music you're playing?"

They were somewhat bewildered, didn't know how to behave, because the audience was clearly young, predominantly students. That was also in the spirit of that era, that time. The blues audience was mainly young because blues burst into Russian reality like a young music from behind the Iron Curtain. And immediately young girls and guys fell in love with it, got wedged into this music. For a short time, though, unfortunately.

And yeah, the cops can see it's clearly some kind of student party. The hall is packed to the gills. Well, I went out and started talking to these gentlemen. Well, they, as is customary in that bandit genre, were generally taciturn and stern. I talked to them, handed out some money for beer.

They would wag their finger at us and say, "Now listen here, keep it down!" And then they'd leave.

There were unpleasant incidents with violence, but we had our own resources for such cases: several military personnel in the audience.

There was this Afghan guy who was involved in the security system at these parties. There was Oleg, my buddy, a really imposing athlete, a wrestler.

You didn't have to look far for muscles, if they were needed.

There were a lot of drunk people, drug addicts. They got rid of such people: they'd mark them and kick them out of the fan club.

There were delicate situations, there were issues with fire safety. Once a person lost consciousness, but thank God there was a doctor in the audience, and we were able to revive the visitor.

Children

There was this one time when some kids came by, and of course we let them in for free, gave them seats, handed out sandwiches. They were looking around with wide eyes, curious about everything, nobody bothered them. And then one of them came up to me and said, "Uncle Lesha, can we come back again?"

I'm saying, come on, come by, and bring your parents along too. They exchanged glances and never showed up again.

Closure

Every project that is both culturally edifying and entertaining has its own expiration date, after all. It exists for some period of time, and then various leaden details start surfacing. Every project has its own threshold of exhaustion.

I don't remember how the story with the club in Belyaevo ended. I think I changed jobs, my circumstances changed. And since time was moving so quickly back then, everything was changing rapidly, and the program moved to a different radio station, and people started to scatter and become interested in other music.

Time itself, in a way, drew a line under it all. You simply can't keep burning out on pure enthusiasm and continue with such large-scale undertakings that carry well-known risks—organizational ones, and legal ones too.

So it ended on schedule, naturally. There was no conflict, no breakup, no cancellation, nothing like that. The club simply didn't open for the next season. Some people moved on to other jobs, some left for different cities, some got married. And that was it. That's how it all ended.