"I wanted to make something that would really get me high myself"

"I wanted to make something that would get me high myself."

The term "blues" itself is, in my opinion, quite narrow and rigid. One centimeter to the right or left, and no—that's it, it's not blues anymore. Look, I'm not going to argue about terminology, it's just that my tastes are somewhat broader than the narrow, orthodox definition of the word "blues."

"Dom u Dorogi" ceased to exist in 2017, but to this day, musicians throughout the CIS, when they hear the word "Moscow," automatically ask: how is "Dom u Dorogi" doing? Yuri Ivanovich Kostin, the founder and ideologue of the most important club in the history of Russian blues, talks about how the first incarnation of "DuDa" came about, why medical workers fell in love with the club, and how the legendary jam sessions took place.

The Beginning

In 1993, an establishment called "Armadillo Bar" opened in the Gostinyy Dvor. It was, essentially, the very dawn of this kind of market-driven bar-restaurant business.

You could talk about Armadillo for weeks, too. It was an interesting place in its time. The fact is, there were concerts there. Petrovitch, for example, played there too. I mean Mikhail Petrovich Sokolov—his group was called Stainless Blues Band back then, I think. Then Voronov performed there, and that's actually where he and I got to know each other. Later Kolya Arutyunov performed there with the "Blues League."

It seems there was Levan Lomidze back then, he played with his cousin. That's why they called themselves Blues Cousins.

So I basically saw live musicians for the first time around 93-94. And it really got to me.

At "Armadillo" I worked for a few years, and then with the same group of founders—let's call them that—we opened a bar-restaurant on Sokol, Jack Rabbit Slims. That was around '96, I think.

And there I also wanted to do something musical like that. And back in the day, we met a legendary person who few people know about, named Sasha Nikishin.

He was a musician, a sound engineer, you know, he knew everything about equipment, played himself, had bands. He started even back in Soviet times, I think he managed to catch that era.

And so we started doing events with him at Sokol, at that Jack Rabbit place, I think on Thursdays. And that's where I met Mishuris, and Agranovsky, and a lot of other people too.

And then I got really tired of the whole thing, to be honest. I really wanted to do things the way I wanted, not the way someone else wanted me to.

And in 2002 I told the guys that I couldn't do it anymore, that I wanted to do what I actually wanted to do. Come with me if you want to, if not, that's it, I'm out.

And with a comrade too, another longtime comrade, we found a place right on Dovator Street, near the "Sportivnaya" station, and we set up this establishment there.

John Primer at the House by the Road

House by the Road

Initially, there was no goal to "make blues" — I just wanted to create a good place with music that I liked. That is, diverse music.

And what was included in it? Well, let's say... Well, all the artists I've already mentioned, they basically played there. The same Agranovsky, Petrovich, Sasha Nikishin with his band... Then I got in touch with Fyodor Romanenko, he recommended some other people to me, and, as they say, the repertoire started expanding gradually.

And so somehow it just took off... Everything was held together not by doing things the "right way." First of all, nobody knew what the right way was, and second, nobody could tell you, even though of course there were plenty of advisors who knew how it should be done. But I really wanted to do it in a way that would get me off, you know?

So there was Fedya Romanenko, and Andrey Evdokimov—we met him right away too, back in 2003, he was living right nearby.

Fame came gradually, and, honestly, there was never a goal—there wasn't one even at the very end, when it was all already over—to create some kind of club that would be incredibly cool, important, the main one.

There was a desire to make it so that it would be cool.

Bob Brozman at Dom u Dorogi

I figured it this way: I'd do what I like, and Moscow is a huge city. Surely among those 15 to 20 million people there, I don't know, a thousand people or however many, there would be some who'd like this too. And those are exactly the ones who'd come.

There was no goal to make it appealing to anyone. And gradually it just happened that people gathered—musicians and guests—who felt good being there. That's all.

Discovery

I'll say it again, nobody tried to turn the opening into some kind of big event. It was just like in a cartoon, you know? "We built and built and built, and finally we built it."

We spent half a year doing renovations there. It was hard—we didn't have any experience with that kind of work. We got taken advantage of once or twice. It was all pretty difficult. Money was tight, dealing with the local authorities was tough. And finally, we got it all done.

And so we had the staff, we had everything. We just gathered our friends and acquaintances, opened the doors, wide open, and that was it.

I'd already worked in plenty of places before that and seen some strange things when a venue is supposedly ready to open. There's this big grand opening that nobody's actually prepared for. And the whole thing falls apart that same evening—completely. The service is bad, the kitchen's a mess, everything technically goes wrong. So I wasn't about to set myself that kind of task—making some big splashy opening.

We'll start gradually, get our bearings, let people get used to us, and we'll get used to them. And we'll just keep practicing like this.

District

So, Khamovniki is a fairly well-to-do neighborhood, let's say. And there was a hospital nearby. I somehow ended up connecting with the doctors from that hospital, you know. Young people, surgeons especially. They'd come to us. It's hard work for them, constant stress.

They used to come to us in the evenings pretty often to let loose. And I gave all the medical workers a 30% discount on alcohol. So they felt like they were being treated with respect, and really, that's how it was. And they basically just unwound there.

Other people would come by, people who lived nearby. But the people who started coming there specifically for that, I'm talking about a noticeable number of people, they appeared about five months after we opened.

When the musicians who performed here realized that this wasn't just some random concert in some random place. That it was actually good for them too, and good for the people, that real communication was happening and all that. That's when they started inviting their friends, their fans to the concerts.

And so gradually, through shortwave radio, all of this was happening. Of course, the Blues.ru website helped—it was still active back then. And we made arrangements with both Fyodor and Evdokimov.

I started posting our flyers there. Andrey was helping me work on the copy, making it catchy. It's difficult because I'm picky about that sort of thing. I can suddenly knock out a couple of lines in six seconds that are just fire, as they say. But Andrey Evdokimov is a pro, and we basically had to fight it out. He'd produce these huge, lengthy screeds, and I needed something punchy and gripping.

An Evening at the Club

Dovator Street—people not only lived there, but a lot of people worked there too. All sorts of offices, small offices in the basements and on the ground floors. And on weekdays the whole street was lined with cars on both sides.

I just made business cards with text like "Present this for a 20% discount..." I can't even remember what for anymore. And every day, maybe we'd go out on the street and shove these cards under car windshield wipers.

We did this for probably several months, maybe until winter. But I remember very clearly how, about three years later, a man came to us with this business card. "Does it work?" "Of course it works, since we promised it would."

Jam

We started out doing concerts there on Saturdays and Sundays. Then we added Thursdays once more people found out about us and started coming.

There was this guy, and he probably still exists, we just haven't been in touch for a long time, drummer Phil Pagnotti. I don't remember who brought him to us.

He's an Italian-American who settled here and basically disappeared into Russia. As far as I understand, he's still living here with us.

He says, listen, there's this popular thing they do all over the world—jam sessions. You've got nobody coming in on Sundays anyway. So let's start doing jams, we'll put together a house band, invite everyone, the whole thing. I thought, well, there's nothing to lose really, the day's empty anyway. The costs are minimal because the musicians have nothing better to do either. And the guys in the house band—instead of just hanging around doing nothing, they can have a good time playing and make a little money on top of it. Not much, but something.

And we launched this thing, and it took off pretty quickly. Though the first jam was kind of funny. Phil, he's quite a scandalous guy, you know. And he was the drummer in the house band. And he just couldn't get along with anyone. So we ran these jams for maybe two or three months, and we'd get a few more people showing up each time, but it was all pretty mediocre, honestly.

At one point I noticed that Phil was constantly having conflicts with the musicians. And I was already completely fired up by the idea. I said, "Phil, that's enough, okay, thanks for the idea, you're great, but no, we can't do it this way."

And we called in some other drummer, I can't remember who it was now. Two weeks later we had a packed house for the jam sessions. And every Sunday we had a full hall. That's what one person can do.

Principles

I didn't go out anywhere to compare who had it better or worse. I just lived my own way. If there was something I didn't like, I tried to change it. It's hard for me to say what set our jam sessions apart from others. Principles? There was one strict principle: we didn't perform Russian-language music.

Then there was a technically strict rule for guitarists not to clutter the stage with dozens of effects pedals, because in that case the pause stretches to 10-15 minutes between musicians changing over. Everything just breaks down. What else was there? It wasn't too harsh, but there was also a rule so people wouldn't go on stage without permission.

I had a plan in mind. I roughly understood who would come. But it didn't necessarily work out that way.

Some people came to the beginning, and you have to start with whoever is there. And then figure out along the way who goes with whom. When you're inside all of this, there are a lot of things that aren't obvious to an outsider. How well people get along with each other in a musical sense. Just how well people get along with themselves, whether they respect each other, whether they treat each other normally.

All the time you see it happen: two or three brilliant musicians who just can't play together. "Who do you think you are?" "And who are *you*?" It's this constant navigation on the fly, trying to make it all work. And I can't say it always came together.

For myself, I had a fundamental principle.

The jam sessions were long for us: we'd start at six in the evening and play until eleven. Five hours. Of course, things could go wrong. And they did happen. Someone would have one too many, say something they shouldn't.

But the most important thing is that the finale has to be cool, really great. Because that's what people remember. You've got a crowd—listeners, musicians, everyone. And you want them all to leave with the impression that it was wonderful, fantastic, memorable.

Basically, anyone could go on stage — whether they played well or not so well. Beginners or masters. Of course, sometimes the musicians themselves would grumble about it. The experienced and established ones, you know. "Why do we need this..." Often the experienced ones forget that they were inexperienced once too.

Photo from the Blues.ru website archive