From Russia With Chops

It’s a well-known fact that those seeking to observe the latest developments in cloning research need look no further than Nashville’s major label system, where the art of replication has all but been mastered. Hunky hat acts? Female trios? Piping prepubescents? Rest assured, if Label A has one, then Label B has one to match it—or is about to sign one.

That’s what makes MCA’s Bering Strait so remarkable—there’s no one else like them in Nashville (or anywhere else). This group of seven fresh-faced young Russians cut their teeth on American bluegrass music and have since evolved a modern country sound that owes something to Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, ABBA, The Beatles and Bela Fleck—in short, a truly one-of-a-kind recipe.

It all began a decade or so ago in the city of Obninsk, 60 miles outside Moscow, a little-known place that does have the distinction of being home to the world’s first nuclear reactor. (It has also been a sister city to Oak Ridge, Tenn., since 1992.) Somehow, thousands of miles and many cultural gaps away from Appalachia, a group of precocious music students formed an American-style bluegrass band, originally called Siberian Heatwave, that attracted a lot of notice in Russia and Europe. America beckoned, and the group began to travel here in the mid-’90s, settling in Nashville a few years ago.

Bering Strait have, within a few short years, become well-acquainted with the often heartbreaking vagaries of major-label politics. Sony came this close to signing them in the mid-’90s. When that died on the negotiating table, Arista did sign them, thanks mainly to the interest of veteran record man Tim Dubois. When Arista folded its Nashville operation in 2000, the group followed Dubois to his new home at Gaylord Entertainment, where he was to launch a brand-new label. When that plan almost immediately withered on the vine, MCA stepped in and made its offer earlier this year. With a self-titled album now in the can and awaiting release early next year (in conjunction with filmmaker Nina Golden Seavey’s documentary about the group), it looks as though the nomadic Bering Strait have at last found a home.

It’s fitting that a group as exotic as this one would have an equally exceptional manager. Mike Kinnamon, a fiftysomething Floridian, literally ran away to join the circus when he was 14, becoming a somewhat renowned aerialist. After that, he got into music, honing some heavy chops as a drummer and trying his hand at booking and management. But by the time he came to Nashville, Kinnamon had soured on the music business. Bering Strait would change all that.

“A friend of mine called me and said, ‘Mike, I got this band you need to hear, a group of young kids. Man, they’re incredible!’ I said, ‘No, I don’t want to see anybody; I’m out of the business.’ ” But the friend, Bill Myers, persisted; as predicted, Kinnamon was smitten and signed on as the group’s manager in 1997. Acting as surrogate father, mentor, guru and social director, he has at times housed all seven band members at the Dickson farm he shares with his lawyer wife.

The son of a nuclear scientist, 23-year-old Ilya Toshinski is Bering Strait’s charismatic banjoist and lead guitarist. His command of American musical idioms is as uncanny as his enthusiasm is infectious. He explains how he and his bandmates first became fascinated with bluegrass: “During the late ’80s, there was a whole movement where America became so cool in Russia. There was still a Soviet Union, but it really loosened up a whole bunch and people started traveling back and forth. So our friends were bringing Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe, all those great bluegrass records into Russia.”

Only 11 years old at the time, Toshinski picked up the banjo and worked hard to master the instrument. “I still have this really old tape recorder where you can press a button and slow it down from normal speed to half speed, and you can listen to every note they play and write them down. Also, we got the Earl Scruggs tablature book; my teacher found it in Moscow, at the Lenin Library.

“I had played classical guitar before for about half a year, and I thought it was all right. But when I first heard banjo, it really had a huge impact on my life. On a deeper level, I think bluegrass and Russian folk music cross somewhere.”

Toshinski attended music school in Obninsk, and his music teacher, a bluegrass enthusiast, decided to form a group from among his students. For three years, they won fame as a bluegrass ensemble, doing concerts and appearing on various television shows with a repertoire of mostly instrumentals. “We traveled all across the former Soviet Union,” Toshinski says. “Then we got a steady gig in Moscow at this one club. Actually, it was a Mexican restaurant. It was a really good venue, attracted a lot of Americans.