"High and Drive" — How the First "Bridges" Festival Was Created and How It Went

A crowbar, a drill, a hammer, and a ladder — all these tools are necessary to hold a blues festival. Where did the "Mosty" festival come from, what made it memorable, and why did it become iconic?

Blues of Peoples' Friendship

Bob Margolin never sends the program in advance. The musicians who accompany him in Italy, Finland, and now in Russia pick up the guitarist-vocalist right on stage — a former member of Muddy Waters' band. Accompanying him is exactly the kind of situation where you're "shooting Dzerzhinsky's Mauser."

One time in Estonia we played with Bob at a festival for ten thousand people. That's when some real nervousness showed up. A huge crowd, and we didn't even know which song to 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 crucial internet questions like "Is Gary Moore blues or not," Cats quickly became a notable fixture on the Moscow scene, and after securing a Tuesday residency at what we can boldly call the iconic "Dom u Dorogi," they began periodically bringing foreign musicians to Russia.

"The first time we invited my friend, Norwegian musician Jakim 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 proved to be a landmark event for the band — enormous new experience, new skills, and most importantly — the camaraderie and tremendous high from playing together. And so the tireless Rusinov decided to invite John Nemeth to Russia, already renowned then and now the holder of every conceivable accolade as an American soul-blues musician.

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 was getting tired of the city and decided to return to my native St. Petersburg," Vladimir says. "The city had changed a lot—it became much more vibrant, with young people everywhere and life bubbling up in every form. I traveled around the city, listened to music, and at some point it all came together: I had to create a festival."

An open-air festival from scratch in the city is an interesting challenge: choosing the venue, assembling the team, selecting the performers. Many would have given up at the first step.

The director of one of the museums, a very sweet woman, assumed that all festival guests would be "high," and when asked why, she replied that she had been to a The Wailers concert and that's what it was like there

And then Vladimir's friends suggested that a new venue called Sevkabel was preparing to open, and perhaps they would be interested in hosting such a festival. As it turned out, Sevkabel was run by people they knew.

The venue itself wasn't even finished back then, Vladimir recalls. And we suddenly faced a whole set of unexpected problems: for instance, we had to build a passageway out of metal factory cabinets to keep the audience from wandering where they shouldn't, or dismantle thirty massive 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 other tools.

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

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

"We even learned a few new words," says Rusinov. "We were told that the festival needed a pukhtо. A what's needed? — we clarified. It turned out to be a garbage container. There were large and small pukhtos to choose from. We took the large one. It only fit on a Kamaz."

And while prominent creative forces in St. Petersburg were busy with screws, inflatable structures, and wooden constructions, 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. Want Chicago blues? No problem. And here's rock and roll, and here's Argentine tango that sounds just like it should—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 crazy in every sense of the word at once. We got to know each other, and I invited Chino to Russia. And he had just broken up with his Russian girlfriend and decided to come look for a wife."

So Chino Swinglide became one of us in Russia, and of course there was no way we couldn't invite him to "Mosty."

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

On his first visit, carrying some stereotypes about Russia left over from the Cold War era, Margolin didn't even bring a guitar just in case. Now he was traveling to see friends.

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

Negotiations with Gina McLane, the band's agent, were difficult, and the fee they quoted matched the band perfectly, but it significantly increased the festival budget, Vladimir says. But we understood that with a lineup like that, it would be a bomb.

Russia at the festival was represented by the Jumping Cats, the architects of "Bridges," who bore the full brunt of things, as well as Backstage, led by Yuri Novgorodsky, playing a mix of Southern rock and guitar blues. The Moscow band Folkline, playing early American folk-blues, and the country musicians SPB City Ramblers were responsible for the acoustics (and that's a separate subject altogether).

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

"Bridges"

Vladimir Rusinov: "We had no regrets about what we'd gotten ourselves into. Yes, there were mistakes—who doesn't make them the first time? We miscalculated the electricity for the ice cream, it happens. Yes, the people preparing burgers had to work nine hours straight.

Most importantly, we built those very "Bridges" — bridges of love, mutual understanding, friendship, and culture. And think of all the 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 shops and enthusiasts.

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