FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — It’s a warm and breezy night in a large Florida theatre, where the parking lot is packed without much conventional advertising. But the folks filling all the seats do have the internet — and they have friends. Those friends are exacting and detailed musicians from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus who have perfected ‘70′s and ‘80′s hits and album cuts of Chicago; Earth, Wind & Fire; Tower of Power; and others. And they’ve taken YouTube by storm.
You might call it, uh, Yakht Rock.
At the epicenter is always-smiling bass player Leonid Vorobyev, 68, who somehow calmly snaps through the difficult bass lines of Chicago’s Peter Cetera; Earth, Wind & Fire’s Verdine White; or the insane pulse of Tower of Power’s Francis Rocco Prestia. How does a guy from Moscow pick up those skills and nuances from half a funk world away? There were no music charts.
Credit: Reed Galin
Credit: Reed Galin
“I will make it myself, by ear. It makes fun for me,” he says backstage. “It is my favorite activity — to transcribe something that I am so immersed into it. I’ve been working in studio for almost 25 years. And I knew all the good musicians.”
Vorobyev did all the notes. All the instruments. All voices. And now that he had those white-hot original charts under his arm, the next step seemed obvious.
Credit: Reed Galin
Credit: Reed Galin
“On my 60th birthday, I asked some of them, can you give me a birthday gift? For free? I knew they would not refuse me. So I got them together to make a studio video. And we did it without any expectations, any calculations. And I honestly thought, American audiences, especially Chicago fans, will scorn us, ‘oh those Russians, oh who do they think they are.’ But I did it for myself. Like a gift. And I put it on YouTube. And a couple of weeks later it was already on Chicago’s official website.”
Tens of millions of YouTube views followed, and were spiking past the original bands’ videos. This tour now includes equal or larger venues than the original bands are playing.
“This is our fourth time seeing them,” says Lily Perez, who drove up from Miami with her friend. “They perfect the songs I grew up with and they are playing them, impeccably. There’s no flaws in them, right off the record, and their voices.”
The band’s roots actually started out with members from Moscow, Ukraine, Belarus and far-flung parts of the Eastern bloc, and although a few band members have drifted in and out, as much as they play together, their homelands are in the midst of non-harmonious struggle.
With the situation looming back at home, a reporter is cautioned that the band is in no position to step outside their musical lane, especially now. The band knows it, their YouTube savvy fans know it. It’s the elephant on the stage, but these musicians simply play louder and upstage it.
Drummer Igor Javad-Zane, 60, from Tajikistan, who is always set up just an arms-length to the right of Vorobyev, says through an interpreter: “Yeah, it’s something we cannot close our eyes or ignore, because no matter what I decide to think about it, it’s in the air, 24/7, of course we worry, and it’s on all of us.”
Credit: Reed Galin
Credit: Reed Galin
Nobody in the audience takes the stereotypical bathroom or drink break during Javad-Zane’s six-minute drum solo, which evokes the speed of Chicago’s Danny Seraphine or crazy syncopation of Tower of Power’s David Garibaldi. His seemingly effortless skill level pounds home the world-class playing that Vorobyev has skimmed off the top of the musicians behind the old Iron Curtain, who easily have the chops of LA session players. Javad-Zane, for some reason, prefers to wear hats and T-shirts that have anything to do with the state of Ohio. He shrugs.
Roman Vorobyev, the band’s energetic manager and jack of many trades, runs around backstage during the show, coordinating stuff. He is Leonid’s son. Suddenly he sprints onstage, center stage spotlight, and becomes an emcee, hype man, and announcer. He is thanking the fans for online and in-person support (“My English is a little bit better than the band”), urging everyone to tell their friends. After YouTube and social media, friend-telling is the method that’s taking Leonid and Friends far beyond the 15-minute flash of some singing neophyte on TikTok.
Clara Arbelaez, who lives in Colombia, says she now times her vacations to South Florida with Leonid and Friends shows, “Every year since the first time I saw them five years ago, we come every time they come,” said Arbelaez, a typical friend of a friend, whose friend first told her of the YouTube videos. “I don’t care where they’ve come from. They sound amazing, that’s all that matters.”
Credit: Reed Galin
Credit: Reed Galin
“Yes, friends, Leonid is planning bigger things and more touring for you, our family! This is … ‘Only The Beginning’.” Roman shouts, and sprints off stage as Ulyanovsk, Russia’s, own local guitar virtuoso Konstantin Kovachev cranks into the acoustic opening chords of the Chicago hit.
In the third row, Eddie and Paula Caldwell flew first to Key West, Florida, from their home in Dallas to see the Friends’ first show of the the tour, then flew to Fort Lauderdale. They were among the first to arrive at the Parker Playhouse.
Credit: Reed Galin
Credit: Reed Galin
“A friend of mine posted on Facebook the video ‘I’ve Been Searching So Long,’ and I watched it and was blown away. So I listened to every YouTube, every video they have. And I think this is our sixth or seventh show,” Paula Caldwell said. “Their music is fantastic. They sound just like the original if not better, and to know the background story of how Leonid did it? It’s fabulous. Eddie will have them on in the car and I will have to ask him, ‘Is it real or Is it Russian?’ And the only thing I can tell is every now and then there is a little different diction, and that is it.”
“We were really uncertain, should we really go on tour,” said Roman Vorobyev. “And we decided we gotta be brave enough, because we have families to feed. We got a purpose, which is uniting people, despite anything that’s going on, and we have families and friends on both sides.”
The band’s lead singers and horn section often rotate off stage during different songs. Just out of the audience view but inches from the music, the same thing happens each time. They embrace.
CONCERT PREVIEW
Leonid and Friends
8 p.m. May 5. $49-$85. Variety Playhouse, 1099 Euclid Ave. NE, Atlanta. variety-playhouse.com.
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