"Kicks and Adrenaline" — how the first "Mosty" festival was created and how it went down

A pry bar, a power drill, a hammer, and a ladder — all these tools are necessary for running a blues festival. Where did the "Mosty" festival come from, what made it memorable, and why did it become iconic?

Blues of the Peoples' Friendship

Bob Margolin never sends the program in advance. Musicians who accompany him in Italy, Finland, and now in Russia, pick up the guitarist-vocalist right there on stage—the former member of Muddy Waters' band. Accompanying him is exactly one of those situations where you have to shoot from Dzerzhinsky's Mauser.

«Once in Estonia we played with Bob at a festival in front of ten thousand people. That's when some real nerves kicked in. A huge crowd, and we didn't even know which song we'd start with», recalls Jumping Cats frontman Vladimir Rusinov.

Jumping Cats is a very unconventional band, especially for Russian blues. Having come together once upon debating essential questions online—like "Is Gary Moore blues or not?"—Cats became a notable fixture on the Moscow scene fairly quickly, and after securing a Tuesday residency at what we can safely call the iconic "Dom u Dorogi," they periodically began bringing foreign musicians to Russia.

"The first time we invited my friend, Norwegian musician Joakim Tinderholt, to Moscow, he agreed and sent us his program: 35 shuffles. And that's when I realized we didn't know how to play like that," says Vladimir Rusinov. "In the end, we rented a rehearsal space for a month, and for thirty days straight we rehearsed the program."

The concert with Tinderholt turned out to be a landmark event for the band — a huge new experience, new skills, and most importantly, the communication and tremendous high from playing together. And so the tireless Rusinov decided to invite John Nemeth to Russia, already well-known at that time and now the holder of every possible credential as a soul-bluesman from the USA.

Over ten years, the count of Western musicians brought in by the group ran into the dozens. Agents of Western performers already knew and respected Jumping Cats, and some even insisted that their clients be backed by Rusinov and company.

So sooner or later it was bound to happen.

"Screws and Pukh"

"After 17 years in Moscow, I got pretty tired of the city and decided to return to my native St. Petersburg," Vladimir says. "The city has changed a lot—it's become much more alive, there are young people everywhere and life is thriving in all its forms. I traveled around the city, listened to music, and at some point it clicked: I need to organize a festival."

A grassroots city open-air festival—that's an interesting challenge: choosing the venue, assembling the team, selecting performers. Many would have given up at the very first point.

«The director of one of the museums, a very sweet lady, suggested that all the festival guests would be "high," and when asked why, she answered that she had been to a The Wailers concert and that's how it was there».

And then Vladimir's friends tipped him off that a new venue called Sevcabel was preparing to open and that they might be interested in hosting such a festival. As it turned out, Sevcabel was run by the right people.

"The venue itself wasn't even finished at that point," Vladimir recalls. "And we faced a whole series of unexpected challenges: for example, we had to build a passage out of industrial metal cabinets so the audience wouldn't wander where they shouldn't, or dismantle thirty enormous wooden structures that were standing on the grounds."

The festival's sound engineer Dmitry Leis took charge of the construction, inviting three friends and arming themselves with crowbars and various other tools.

"In 13 hours they managed to dismantle all these structures, but it turned out that after the wooden platforms were taken apart, there was an incredible number of screws left behind".

To combat the screws, the famous science fiction writer Leonid Kaganov was called in, and he managed to collect more than eight kilos of these very screws. You can read about how it all happened in vivid detail here.

We even learned a few new words, says Rusinov. We were told that we needed a pukhto for the festival. A what? we asked to clarify. It turned out to be a garbage container. There was a choice of large and small pukhto. We went with the large one. It only fit on a Kamaz truck.

And while prominent creative forces in St. Petersburg were busy with screws, sound systems, and wooden structures, another part of the team was working on bringing in musicians.

Musicians

Chino Swingslide is a man of incredible charm. The guitar in his hands is capable of anything. Do you want Chicago blues? No problem. And here's some rock and roll, and here's Argentine tango that sounds like it belongs right there and then.

We met in Barcelona, where Chino lives, at his concert. — Vladimir says. — He was playing in this speakeasy bar where the audience was literally going wild in every sense of the word. We got to know each other, and I invited Chino to Russia. And he had just split up with his Russian girlfriend and decided to come find a wife.

So Chino Swinglide became one of the guys in Russia, and of course there was no way not to invite him to "Mosty."

With such a trump card as the possibility of inviting Bob Margolin, how could you resist? Especially since the Jumping Cats had already managed to play with him not only in Russia and Ukraine, but also tour around Europe. Including the aforementioned festival in Estonia.

On his first visit, carrying some stereotypes about Russia in his head—legacies from Cold War times—Margolin didn't even bring a guitar just in case. Now he was going to see friends.

And then it turns out that the Blues Music Awards laureates, Welch Ledbetter Connection, are performing in Norway exactly a day before the festival. And how much flight time is it from Norway to St. Petersburg? About two hours.

Negotiations with Gina McLane, the band's agent, were difficult, and the fee they quoted was perfectly suited to the group, but it significantly inflated the festival budget, Vladimir explains. But we understood that with a lineup like that, it was going to be a bomb.

Russia was represented at the festival by Jumping Cats, the initiators of the "Bridges" festival who bore the brunt of the load, as well as Backstage, Yury Novgorodsky's band playing a mix of Southern rock and guitar blues. The Moscow group Folkline, who play early American folk-blues, and the country musicians SPB City Ramblers were responsible for the acoustic set (which is a separate topic altogether).

"What's cool is that we managed to build bridges, including between Petersburg and Moscow," says Rusinov. "Thanks to the efforts of Araik Akopyan, artistic director of the Alexei Kozlov Club and a great musical advocate, we held an afterparty for 'Bridges' in Moscow. And what an afterparty it was! All the festival headliners performed on stage!"

"Bridges"

Vladimir Rusinov: "I have no regrets about what we got ourselves into. Yes, there were mistakes—who doesn't make them the first time around? We miscalculated the electricity for the ice cream, these things happen. Yes, the people making burgers had to work nine hours straight.

Most importantly, we built those very "Bridges" — bridges of love, mutual understanding, friendship, and culture. And how many friends we made. The festival was anything but official: dancers who, simply by their presence, visually transformed everything into an even greater celebration. People who handled the catering. A vinyl market run by record shops and enthusiasts.

And the musicians! The high and the drive, walks through favorite spots, favorite hangouts, the joy of knowing that on the other side of the planet people understand and embrace this music just as much. So there was only one option — to keep going.