I guess it comes as no surprise that Russian Tim is Russian, given
his band's name, but in fact, Russian Tim and the Pavel Bures are way more Russian (and Belarusian) than I'd realized, with four out of five members from Russia and Belarus; plus that they often SING in Russian! There's exactly one native-English-speaking member of the band, whom people with a keen eye might recognize in the following photo:
I had also somehow thought that their band went back much further in Vancouver punk history than they do, as you will see. I felt like I'd been hearing about them since well before Tim Bogdachev came to Canada, which, obviously, I have not been, since he's been here since 2006. If you'd asked me how long they'd been on the Vancouver scene, I'd have said maybe twenty years, but the answer is closer to seven!
(What, everyone but me?).
(Kristy-Lee courtesy Renegade Rock Photography)
So with what may be your only chance to see the mostly-now-inactive band -- who have already announced their plan to break up again after this gig! -- coming up
this Friday at Red Gate (but without Dead Bars or Rebuilder, who both had to drop off the bill) it seemed a good time to catch up with Russian Tim, who has a pretty darn interesting musical history, which begins in Siberia.
Siberia!
But it helps to start somewhere familiar, so I thought a preface with Kristy-Lee would be in order. How the heck did she come to be in the band; what are her favourite shows she's played with them, and what has she learned about Russia (and Belarus) in the process? Here's Kristy-Lee (thanks!):
Tim and I used to work at HMV together, and he wanted to put together a “Me First and the Gimme Gimmes”-style band but with the pop and rock songs of Russia. He wanted someone who could play guitar, trumpet, keyboard, and cover some vocals so he asked me. I’m the only “western spy” in the band, everybody else is from Russia or Belarus.
Favourite show has to be either Pouzza Fest in Montreal, or the show where our destiny was fulfilled and we got to open for Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. I’ve learned some things about Russia and the Russian language playing with these comrades. One thing I like is they don’t waste time with filler garbage words like “the”, and there isn’t a massive distinction between “cousins” and “siblings,” cousins are just a different kind of sibling, which I also like. I have some brother-cousins and sister-cousins for sure. “Kak dela?” means “how are you?”
I learned some bad words but Tim said they were particularly bad and I shouldn’t say them anymore.
If I had asked a follow-up, I would report on those bad words, but you'll just have to ask her at the gig! And note: I am available for a small fee for lessons to any Russians or Belarusians who wish to master the niceties of articles and determiners. Garbage words pshaw! [I have tried to keep the flavour of Tim's English but I have tidied things here and there, and I confess, I have maybe added an article or two].
Commence interview with Russian Tim...
Photo by Renegade Rock Photography
AM: Tell me about Russia? You were born there, you grew up there... was there a punk scene?
TB: I was born in Russia in 1984, and I lived there for 22 years, so pretty much all my childhood and a bit of youth was there. So I lived through the 90s and 2000s in Russia. There was a punk scene, but it's impossible to compare it to North American punk scene, or even UK or anything like that, but there was a punk scene, and when I was active on the punk scene around 2003-2006. I created a little bit of a scene around my band. I did festivals, I organized shows, we had one main concert venue -- like, a club that was similar to old Richards on Richards, built exactly the same; it had that second floor on it. I was the guy who booked punk nights there. For a couple of years I was doing that. I brought bands from St. Petersburg and Moscow and I did local shows. So I was involved!
AM: Did North American bands ever come through? I know D.O.A. kind of famously toured Communist bloc countries like Poland... I mean, obviously, this was after the fall of the USSR, but did you have touring acts, or...?
TB: Unfortunately no. We had some metal bands; we had the guy from Iron Maiden, one of the singers, play.
AM: Paul Di'Anno?
TB: You're absolutely right! And we had a few other ones. We had German punk bands. But in terms of North American bands, no, because I'm from Siberia, which is four hour flight from Moscow/ St. Petersburg. And usually, the common trail for the bands was to go to Scandinavia and then cross from Finland to St. Petersburg then do a train to Moscow and then fly back. That was just easy to do. For them to come to us, it was more, lets fly for four hours to do a few shows in Siberia... which sounds exciting, but could be expensive and was far away.
AM: What city in Siberia?
TB: It's called Novosibirsk, which means "new Siberia." There are about six quite large cities around that. My city is over 2,000,000 in population, so it's the size of Vancouver; it's not a small town! And there's two other ones, Krasnoyarsk, which is also 1.7 or 1.9, so quite large, and there are a couple of others like Omsk, which is about a million. So what actually we used to do when we would bring bands from Moscow/ St. Petersburg, I had a business partner who also booked a night in that same club, but he was doing metal bands, and we would do either punk or metal Siberian tours, and we would do three, four, five, six shows across that area, across those five or six big cities. But the city is called New Siberia because it is quite a new city -- it is only about a hundred and twenty years old.
AM: Of course, by Canadian standards, that's a fairly old city, but okay. So what was the name of your band, then?
TB: It was called Prividenie S Motorom (in Cyrillic: Привидение с Мотором), which means a ghost with an engine. It's a cartoon character, a fictional character who was very wild, but kind of kind. People describe me like this: wild but kind. And that's kind of that character: he lived on the roof, and had a propeller, and when people saw this flying character with a propeller, they would go "Oh, that's not real." But he was funny, and he loved honey and sweet stuff and would steal that. And there's a whole cartoon story about him.
AM: Was the music you were playing then similar to Russian Tim and the Pavel Bures?
TB: Quite similar, but more on the ska side of things -- it was my Rancid/ Operation Ivy type of thing, the California style of ska. Punk rock is my love number one, musically, but I love reggae and ska. I love old Jamaican reggae, I like dub music -- you can even hear in my voice, I get excited talking about it. I love all the Jamaican culture, all those crazy producers, Lee Scratch Perry, King Tubby, the Skatalites... that's what I really love, and mixing that with a little bit of punk, it's good times. It's wild but kind.
(Russian Tim stage diving "from back in those days," courtesy Russian Tim)
AM: You'll be playing some ska this Friday?
TB: We will have some ska parts, but this time we decided... because originally we were playing with Dead Bars and Rebuilder, punk bands, we were leaning more towards a punk set, but for example when we headlined Xmas in Skaville show in 2023 at the WISE Hall -- a big sold-out show -- we had enough ska songs to pretty much have 50 to 60% ska. So we have songs where we have some ska, some punk rock; it depends on the show; we can mix it up.
AM: So I don't want to ask anything I shouldn't -- I know people can leave countries for a lot of reasons... but why did you come to Vancouver in 2006?
TB: There's nothing sensitive -- so feel free to ask, that's all good. But in the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union broke up, Russia was a little bit of a, y'know, crazy place, very disorganized place, and there was no future. Which is quite punk rock, actually! But my parents didn't see much future in the country at that time, so they started thinking of immigration. We decided to move to Canada. My Mom really didn't see a future and she wanted a better future for the family and specifically for me. When she told me -- like, I was involved in that, because we did all of the immigration steps, so I knew that was happening. She said, "Let's finish university," and while I was in university, we got all the documents to move to Canada. And when we did that -- my Mom said, "Okay, you've finished university, are you ready go to Canada," my thinking was -- I was 22 years old, and very naive -- "I want to be in a place where I can see NOFX every year." NOFX is my favourite band! Before that, I had never seen them. And [I was also enthusiastic about] everything that went around that -- going to local shows, seeing other bands, but also being a bit closer to the punk rock which I loved, which I grew up listening to.
And I didn't know what to expect. I'd been to Canada a couple of times, but visiting is always different from living, and even though I was young, I understood that. But within two weeks of arriving, I went to see my first show at Richards on Richards; it was an Australian band called
the Living End, a punk band. So I started going to shows right away; I started going to local shows, bigger shows, and I really got into the local scene.
So to summarize my answer, it was originally a bit political, because of the overall state of Russia after the Soviet Union broke down, but really, when I was faced with the choice, I just saw the opportunity to see more punk bands, the punk bands which I'd dreamt of and loved.
AM: You've seen NOFX a few times now, I assume?
TB: Y'know, I've kind of lost count, because when they did their final tour, they played three days in a row, kind of like a mini-festival, and they played every night. So I need to count that, but when I'd lived in Canada for thirteen years [ie., in 2019], I had seen the band fourteen times. I was one year ahead of myself! [It should be different by now] because they broke up but then there were nights when they did like, two nights in a row, so... I'm doing well on that front.
AM: So in terms of local bands... I will confess that I have never seen you before, so I don't know if there were local bands you liked, that you shared a bill with often... who were your favourites...? The Rebel Spell?
TB: You named it, the Rebel Spell were one of my favourite bands. Unfortunately we never got to play with them. But I also do a radio show on CiTR, I've been doing it since 2010, and I had Todd come to their studio a couple of times, when their new albums came out, and we were buddies and I went to their shows and I liked their band.
Joe Keithley with Russian Tim and the Pavel Bures, by Don Denton, not to be reused without permission
TB, continued: But one of the highlights of our band was that, out of nowhere, Joey Keithley sent me an email saying "Listen, I'm playing an acoustic show at SBC, would you like to open for us?" I said, "Uh, yeah! We would love to!" I think it was 2018 -- it was definitely before COVID. And that was insane, because Joey did a solo thing where he did some of his songs on an acoustic guitar, and we played our electric set, and in the email where we were exchanging all the details, organizational things, he said, "Hey, would you like if at the end of your set, I come and join you for a D.O.A. song?" I said, "What? Yeeaah!" [Tim's voice carries information not represented by his words, but imagine this as conveyed with enthusiasm/ disbelief, with an overall tone of "Obviously yes, are you kidding?" and a Russian accent]. I said, "Is it okay if we gonna do 'Prisoner'?" Because it's one of their biggest songs. So talked between ourselves -- we didn't have much time to learn it, but Joey said yes, and we learned it, we liked it, and then it was crazy: the last song, he joined us, and me and him sang "The Prisoner," with my band backing us up [video exists!]. Which is insane, given where we came from. None of us, the band, are from this city; we have two Russians, two Belarusians, and Kristy-Lee is from Montreal. And we were sharing a stage with someone who was that legendary. I've heard different stories about Joey, different opinions, but to us, he was absolutely incredible, professional, on time, paid us way too much money -- "Oh, this is fair," and he gave us a few hundred bucks! And he asked to buy our band shirt! We didn't have his size, but for his son, we had the size, so: "Please, take this, don't give us money." It was absolutely insane. But that was one of our highlights.
Joe Keithley with Russian Tim and the Pavel Bures, by Don Denton, not to be reused without permission
TB, continued: And D.O.A., I had heard of even before moving here. When I moved here, I discovered bands like the Rebel Spell, Los Furios, quite a few local bands, which were especially active in the early 2000s and the start of 2010, which was when I started going to shows, discovering the local scene. Then I discovered bands like Needles//Pins, and loved them; then in 2014, I started doing my own shows, organizing shows, and inviting some younger bands to play, some of which are now a good draw like You Big Idiot or Contra Code. But some of them played one of their first shows when I started doing shows back in 2014.
(Renegade Rock Photography)
AM: It confuses me a little here, because I feel like I remember your band from years ago, but your bandcamp starts at, like, 2018... what was the first show you played with Russian Tim and the Pavel Bures?
TB: Well, the first show we played as a band was in 2017. But before that I'd been doing some other things. I was quite active; I was doing shows with other bands, and doing the radio show, so I was around. That's why you probably heard my name. Plus I used to do punk rock trivia at the Biltmore. And for example -- you know the band Descendents?
AM: Yep!
TB: They released
Filmage, the documentary, and the guy who did it reached out to me about the first filming [I think Tim means "screening"]; we did it at the Biltmore. We had the film, we had a couple bands play, so... I've been doing shit since 2010, but this band, it's been since 2017.
AM: I am not a hockey guy, but was Pavel Bure active in 2017?
TB: No, I think he finished in the late 2000s, but y'know, the cool thing, his wife follows our band on Instagram and I'm pretty sure he knows that we exist, because I talked to her a little bit. But her name is Alina Bure, and I started just following her, and made a couple of comments, and then she followed me back. So it was pretty wild. The band name was just to connect myself, being from Russia, with Vancouver; who is the most famous Russian in Vancouver? So that was kind of a joke, it wasn't something I wanted Pavel Bure to notice. I knew of him, but I wouldn't say he was my idol growing up. I was aware of him, I had watched the Canucks play, but... it was kind of a joke.
AM: I mean, because of the Hanson Brothers, there is kind of a tradition of people wearing uniforms onstage and connecting punk rock and hockey, here. I've seen footage of you guys in uniforms with the number 61... is that regular feature of your shows?
TB: I wouldn't say we have a hockey theme, but we have a "sports element"-theme, like, we have the same outfits... I also am a massive fan of soccer, and I grew up playing soccer, almost to a professional level. That's my sport; I'm obsessed with it, I love it. And I have that mentality of teamwork, and I see the similarities of being in a band and working hard together with being in a team and playing for the win and training together. I see the similarities, and because punk rock and soccer are my two passions, I combined them, and overall, I see the good side of sports, where you're working together towards something. In Russia we have a saying that you can give someone a shoulder to lean on, meaning to support each other; I see that in a band setting.
And I always liked the idea -- that's a great example you mentioned -- of the Hanson Brothers, and there's a band called
Isotopes where all the songs are baseball-themed. I like that! I like it when a band has a shtick. Even the Real McKenzies and the whole Scottish thing; I like that! I sometimes see the disadvantages and maybe boring side of punk rock, where four dudes in black shirts kinda just stand there onstage and play their songs. Unless the songs are fucking genius, it's kind of boring! And punk rock -- I'll be honest with you, I'm a punk rocker, I love this genre, but it's a kind of simplistic genre of music. You have a guitar and you go dju-dju-dju-dju-dju [imitating simplistic riffing]. It's kind of simplistic! So in order to blow somebody away, your songs need to be phenomenal, and if they're not very phenomenal, at least entertaining. At least have an outfit, some fancy moves. And if your songs are good, that's a bonus! That's kind of how I see that. And we always perform in those outfits, which say Bure, and the number 61, which is my favourite number. I didn't want to use Bure's number, because that's his number...
(Guessing also Renegade?)
AM: I'm curious if you get lots of hockey comments? I mean, I'm not the Allan MacInnis who played for the Calgary Flames, but pretty much every time I've interviewed Joe, he's commented on it some way, like: "Hey Al, how's your slap shot?"
TB: You know it's actually crazy, because we're in Canada, and Canada is absolutely obsessive about hockey -- and I say that in a very admiring way, because the people love sports and I love that, because I love sports as well. And everywhere we go -- we talked with Joe and he joked about Pavel Bure, and many people who are like, "What's up with Pavel Bure?" But one of the craziest things was, we played in Lethbridge, and somebody showed up to the show in actual old Pavel Bure jersey, like, from the time when he played. And I love it -- we came to Lethbridge for first time, nobody knew us, but he wore the jersey, he showed support. We played a good show, and he loved it. He also was a little bit drunk! He comes up to me to the merch table and says, "Let's exchange this jersey with your merch!" "Are you sure? Your jersey costs, I don't know, maybe a couple hundred dollars! And this shirt is just $20! Are you sure?" He's like, "I love this band, I want to do this." I asked him a couple of times -- "Are you sure?" And then I gave him every single shirt we had in his size, a few different designs: "Please take it!" Which I still have, and I love. And it's in one of our live videos, because I played a couple of shows in this jersey. That's a story of how like, people connect Pavel Bure, hockey, punk rock and come to our shows, and even give us a jersey from the 1990s or whatever. I was blown away.
(Renegade!)
AM: I bet, that's really cool. Okay, so -- who is Slava? You have a couple of references in your lyrics to Slava, like, "
Slava is Your Uncle."
Slava, we presume!
TB: Slava is my very good friend from back in Novosibirsk. We were in that band, Ghost with an Engine together. We are very good friends, and we wrote a lot of songs, a lot of music together, and even though right now we live in different places, when I visit Russia a couple of times, me and him made sure we recorded some songs. Long story short, Slava wrote some songs for the Pavel Bures, quite a few songs, and we incorporated them in our setlist, and in order to give him that mention, we named one of the songs "Slava Is Your Uncle." But that story is kind of irrelevant to the lyrics of the song! We have Kristy in the band, who is the only Canadian, the only "normal" person in the band, not an immigrant, and we had a discussion one day about English phrases. And one was "Bob's Your Uncle." And all of us, we're immigrants, and we were like, "Who is Bob? What does that mean, why is Bob your uncle?" So when we named the song, we were like, "Let's call it 'Slava Is Your Uncle.'" It was just an inside joke. But Slava is a guy from my Siberian band and we honoured him with "Slava Is Your Uncle."
(Kristy-Lee and Russian Tim from Jesse Lebourdais' birthday gig at the Painted Ship a couple days ago!)
AM: So one thing I noticed was that some of the lyrics on
your bandcamp are translated into English, but a bunch of them are in Cyrillic. Why? Are there songs you don't want us to know the lyrics for, or something?
TB: No, that's just me being lazy. It actually takes so much work! I did it for a couple of releases, and I didn't estimate the amount of work it would end up being. There's no secret that you can Google translate all those songs from Russian to English -- it's not so hard to do -- but I wanted to translate it as close as possible, and maybe even rhyme it, and that's so hard. But the other thing is because we started playing and, y'know, we had quite a few songs in Russian, because that's what Slava wrote, that's what I wrote, we were comfortable writing in Russian language, and people started coming up: "What the fuck are you singing about? Can you explain?" So when we started releasing recorded music, I was, "At least let me give it in Cyrillic, so they can Google translate it."
But some songs I actually translated into English, because I wanted to bring across a message. Because you know -- it's interesting, in the beginning, before people knew us, they were not sure about us, especially when the Russia-Ukraine war happened. I would not say we were cancelled, but we got some questions: "What side are you on? What are you singing about?" So that was kind of a sensitive moment for us. We obviously didn't support the war, we were against it, but again, a couple of times I had to explain myself. That was later in time, but... that became kind of my idea: let me translate a couple of these songs, just do what I can do, to give people the idea we are not celebrating Stalin or, like, Gulags, because there are some stereotypes about Russian people...
Russian Tim and the Pavel Bures by David Jacklin, not to be reused without permission
AM: It's kind of funny that you mention it, because there's a Russian folk-metal band I follow called
Arkona. I love their music, but I had a t-shirt of theirs I gave away, because it had a
sunwheel on it. It's probably just meant it as an old Pagan symbol, but I don't actually really know what it means to them, or how other people will take it, because, like, it's a kind of swastika, right? So I gave it away [Note:
Redditors have commented that the band is explicitly anti-Nazi. I still don't want to wear a swastika!].
TB: I get it absolutely. There's a very fine line between that, between being a folk band and with all those stories and actually having some of those views. Because some of those Nazi [groups] -- they celebrate being Russian a little too much. I don't know exactly about Arkona; I've heard of them but I know of the genre. I don't know where they stand, but if they use that swastika, or rune or something, that's also used by Russian Nazis, so that's a little bit questionable!
AM: Do you have songs that are more political, or protest songs? Was that kind of suppressed in Russia back in the day. You were probably listening to punk rock when there was a fair bit of control over these things...?
TB: Actually, most of Slava's songs are quite political, and I share the views, that's why I have no problems singing those songs, talking about the problems in Russia and the president and stuff. But -- it's funny how there's a misconception about Soviet Union: punk rock became quite a bit bigger and more public in the 1990s and 2000s, and compared to now, there was maybe more freedom of speech! Maybe nobody really cared or the president wasn't that obsessed with that. But now there's this aura of, like, celebrating Russia, and it's more like... people are more afraid to talk against Russia and sing those songs. Again, maybe if you are playing small shows, but if you're playing big events... And when the war against Ukraine started, the bands that were saying "No," they were getting their shows cancelled! I know many many examples, and for some of those bands, this was livelihood, this was their income. And when your income is gone, because you are being cancelled because of your views, then most of them move to different countries. We have recently we had a show by the band
Pornofilmi, which is "porn movie" in Russian, and they're very political, extremely political, and they had to leave country, now they're touring Europe and North America just for income, because they're a professional punk rock band...
So we do have political songs; most of them are Slava's songs. I am more writing kind of humourous style, that's kinda more my style, that's where I feel more comfortable, but because I share these views with Slava, we have those songs. And in terms of me growing up, there were quite a few political songs. It's funny, one of the bands that was influential in my personal politics was the band
Leftöver Crack, and they're very radical. I don't really like it when it's too radical, but because I was a little kid, when I lived back in Russia still, they talked about homophobia, religion... and especially homophobia, because by nature, Russia is a quite homophobic country. You probably have heard stories. And they talked about being anti-homophobic, like the band Leftöver Crack. And I grew up in this homophobic society where all the words that describe gay people were very bad swear words. And it was normal to make fun of them. And then I heard something different opinion! I was open to punk rock, and maybe, "I don't want to be a hater, I don't want to make fun of people because of their sexuality." And other things, [they're also against] organized, fanatical religion. And like I said, I think maybe this band is still too radical, but that radicalism gave me a different perspective, and helped me shape [myself as] a better person. Punk rock played a big role in my life.
AM: I'm curious about another song, "
Metallica Inc." I read through the lyrics quickly and couldn't figure out why it was called "Metallica Inc."
TB: You know, that's my fault, I take the blame and I feel I could have done better. When the band started, I didn't take it seriously. I took seriously being in a band, but for me, when we had lyrics of songs, because we had Kristy-Lee, who doesn't speak Russian, when I would bring the songs to the jamspace, we had a working title. And that song had a couple of licks from Metallica, in the first song we have those accents... and I pretty much used all the working titles, because I had to explain to Kristy-Lee which songs we were playing! So: "This song has Metallica [licks], let's call it 'Metallica, Inc.'"
AM: I mean, I would come see your band just to see her again -- I've been delighted watching her in
Dead Bob and
Rong. She's fantastic. I had no clue she was a Pavel Bure. So what happened to Dead Bars?
(Renegade Rock Photography)
DB: They had some personal thing...
AM: Aha! I just wondered if the current political situation with the US had something to do with it.
DB: I don't think so.. Actually, the guy from the band from Boston that was playing, Rebuilder, they were a little bit worried. When I brought Rebuilder here back in 2017, usually it's a smooth crossing, but in order to make it easier, I faxed the documents and the contracts between the band and the promoter to the border, so there were no extra questions asked. It just helped. And then I stopped doing that because a few bands said, "nobody even asked us about it, you sent it to the border and you sent it to the band and they were like, 'Okay, I don't care what you have, just cross the border and behave well.'" And I stopped doing that. And this time, they were adamant: "Could you send all the documents so we can prove at the border that we're going to play a show!" I said, "I don't really do it anymore." "No, please do." So Boston was worried about the situation.
AM: Okay, so I think I have everything, except for one thing. On the poster for the show, you say right there, "We're back again, but we're going to break up again right after." I've never seen a band do it quite that way before! Are you getting
TB: See it's again me not being serious. Maybe I'm not taking this too serious at all, because I'm saying we broke up and we're going to break up again. I like to joke about that! But the true story is, we have a couple in the band, the drummer Sergei and the guitarist Julia, they're a married couple, and they just had a baby a year ago in February. And y'know, when you have a baby and you are just one band member, the other spouse can be with the baby, but they're both, so we can't really practice, we can't really play shows, plus Kristy-Lee is really busy with Dead Bob, she's touring pretty much a lot. And at the same time, I didn't want to, y'know, bring their personal life forward. When Julia was pregnant, I didn't want to do that, but when they said that they won't be able to do it... we're making jokes about reunion shows, break up shows, I'm making jokes about that... because I take the being the band very seriously, in terms of practice, but I don't take the band seriously, because I think it's just an entertaining joke, and when you see us onstage, you'll see how: it's fun, it's entertainment. And I like this not taking it too serious, because sometimes I think music can be too serious, in my opinion. So that's why I'm joking... But I'll probably explain myself a bit more seriously at the show, because we're still friends in the band and everybody is having a great time, but when you have a child, in my mind, family always comes first!
But I still want to play, so I have a couple of things in mind. I'm working with
Balkan Shmalkan, there's another fun band, I do some shows with them, and I'm planning to start a bit of a new project.
And once again, I didn't finish the story: the reason we're playing right now, Julia's parents, they came to visit for three months, so they can sit with the baby while we practice! So the next time they visit, we're going to play again a reunion show!
Tickets here! And also probably some at the door. You're gonna get to see Lana's band, too! Not sure who Precursor are but come out Friday and you'll figure it out... thanks, Tim! See you there.
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