Brad Spurgeon's Blog

SOCHI, Russia – My three visits to Russia have been the most fruitless three visits to any country in the world as far as my open mic journey goes. I’m on my last day in Sochi today, and I leave after midnight for an all night return to Paris. The only place I have played in Sochi on this trip is in my hotel room. I’m not totally depressed about that, though, because not only was it great to play, but I actually wrote a first draft of a new song! Still, Sochi has proved to be the least successful place for me on any of my world travels. But I think there is a good reason for this – part of it to do with me, part to do with Sochi.

First, let me make it clear: I have played once in a bar in Sochi, as I note in my post from 2014 about playing in the beer garden near my hotel in Sochi. That place is still there this year, and I have eaten all my meals there, but there was no music, no band, this time. Second, I would like to add that I have done many searches for open mics or open jams in or near Sochi online, even asking for a Russian speaker to help me, and I have found nothing. So it is NOT an easy thing to do, even if you are a Russian speaker.

In fact, adding to the above point, I must say that on this trip, I actually have a Russian acquaintance from Paris, who ran an open mic in Paris – and so is quite attuned to the music scene – who had a month or two warning in which he said he would help me find a place to play in Sochi, and he came up with nothing! And I forgot to mention that the reason he said this, is because he himself is here in Sochi right now! So even my Russian acquaintance from Paris who is currently in Sochi, knows music scenes, and works in the travel business, even HE could not find a place to play here!

Still, having said all of that, I must add that I myself did NOT do what I have done in just about every other country I have visited: I did not just walk the streets all over town and try to find a live music joint, other musicians, and see if I could act like a magnet and draw the music scene to me. But that, unfortunately, is partly because of the nature of Sochi itself: The immediate surroundings of where I am staying is in the former Olympic Village. It is nothing but hotels, beach, amusement park, race circuit, restaurants set up for the Olympics and then the conversion to the F1 race and tourism.

Don’t get me wrong, there IS a place called Sochi outside of the Olympic Village. In fact, the place I’m in strictly speaking is called Adler. But the Sochi we all talk about happens also to cover 145 kilometers of oceanfront, in a long, long strip of vacation industry kinds of places. Sochi is the leading holiday resort for Russians, and so this is not an easy place to walk around in like some of the major cities where I have managed to find music despite language barriers and a dispersed musical culture. I can walk the streets of Nagoya or Tokyo or Istanbul or Sao Paulo or Kuala Lumpur and many many other major cities where the F1 takes me, and I can find the music. Here in “Sochi” I cannot so easily do this. In fact, I can’t really do it at all.

Or rather, maybe I should be hiking down 145 kilometers of coastline trying to find an open mic or bar that has an open mic or open jam. But this is not so easy when I have a job to do also. And as I learned last year as I jogged down a portion of the boardwalk, there’s the added problem of wild dogs in Sochi, and in my experience, wild dogs dislike guitar carrying vagrants as much as they dislike joggers.

Excuses, excuses. Anyway, that, so far, is the extent of my adventures in Russia this year, and so far, on all of my three visits to the country since 2014. I must try to book a stopover in Moscow sometime, as I’m about 98 percent sure that must be a different story all together.

Oh, and I really must add that the part about playing in my hotel room here is really far more positive than what my state of mind was in last year’s visit to Sochi: Readers may recall that last year I discovered at the last minute that Turkish Airlines would not allow me to take my guitar on the flight to Sochi without me paying extra – about a third the cost of the guitar – and so for the first time in 7 years I did not take my guitar with me on a trip. This year, I was horrified a couple weeks before going to Sochi to learn that my Turkish Airlines flight had been cancelled, and I had to find a last minute replacement with Aeroflot. It was only after I booked that that I recalled my fiasco with Turkish Airlines, and felt lucky I could bring my guitar again this time on the much more friendly Aeroflot!