{"id":22882,"date":"2022-05-11T05:30:12","date_gmt":"2022-05-11T09:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22882"},"modified":"2022-05-03T08:24:38","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T12:24:38","slug":"last-plane-out-jc-smiths-escape-from-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/11\/last-plane-out-jc-smiths-escape-from-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Plane Out: JC Smith\u2019s Escape from Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The life of a touring musician is perilous enough: the general hazards of the road make everyday existence a constant challenge. Add to that the threat of war, and it\u2019s enough to rattle the nerves of even the most road-hardened artist. Popular and award-winning Bay Area bluesman JC Smith knows all this firsthand: he was on tour in Russia earlier this year when that country launched its war of aggression upon Ukraine. Honoring his commitment to his fans, he stuck around for additional show dates. When things got too hot, he made the difficult decision to come home. He almost didn\u2019t get out of Russia. Once he got home, he began putting together a benefit concert to help the people of Ukraine. Yellow & Blues: A Benefit for Ukraine happened onstage and via livestreaming Saturday, April 30 at the Tabard Theatre in San Jose.<\/p>\n

Smith was no newcomer to Russia; the tour was his tenth there in as many years. And he didn\u2019t sense danger ahead of time. \u201cThere were undertones of the war possibly happening,\u201d he says, \u201cbut nobody expected it to really go down.\u201d In Moscow a week into his tour, he met his keyboard player for breakfast and found her crying. \u201cShe said that the invasion had happened,\u201d Smith explains. Everyone he spoke to voiced their opposition to Vladimir Putin\u2019s attack on the neighboring country.<\/p>\n

The band set off from Moscow for the 1100-mile journey to Yekaterinburg, a city on the Siberian frontier. \u201cBy the time we got there, [the war] was full on,\u201d he says. A groundswell of opposition to Putin\u2019s war came face-to-face with the government’s severe crackdown on dissent; thousands of Russian civilians were arrested. And lines of communication to the outside world were coming down. \u201cThere was no anti-American sentiment, Smith emphasizes. \u201cBut things like Facebook started shutting down there. People started getting really scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the news blackout in Russia, Smith didn\u2019t know the true scope of the conflagration in Ukraine. He got word that a dozen or more countries were prohibiting flights from Russia, but was confident he could find a way out when the time came. At one point he got a call through to his wife, asking her about the official word from the U.S. State Department. He laughs now when he recalls her reply: \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have went there in the first place!\u201d Halfway through the tour, he made the decision to leave.<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s wife booked him on five different flights, but all were canceled. Eventually he found one \u2013 $2800 for an economy seat \u2013 but it required a 20-hour train journey just to get to the airport. Friends presented him with an upgraded fare for the train, and saw him off from the depot. And the sentiment they shared was one he heard again and again: \u201cWe\u2019re not in favor of this war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt got really sad for me, knowing that I may never see any of these people \u2013 fans and really, really good friends \u2013 again,\u201d Smith says. One friend asked him if he was able to collect his earnings from the aborted tour; Smith said no. He was advised not to worry about it. \u201cThe ruble just got devalued to under a penny,\u201d he was told.<\/p>\n

But Smith did have about $200 worth of rubles in hand, thanks to merch table CD sales. So with a few hours left before his flight, he told his Russian friends, \u201cBoys, we\u2019re going to have a good time today.\u201d He bought them full slabs of ribs, chicken wings and as much wine as they wanted. \u201cThen we went outside and had a couple of cigars,\u201d he recalls with emotion. \u201cWe just took time to be together, and we tried not to be sad about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith made it on board one of the last flights between Russia and the U.S. Once home, he got to work organizing a concert to help those in Ukraine. Yellow and Blues: A Benefit for Ukraine featured the JC Smith Band plus Legally Blue, Robert Berry and Rome Yamilov.<\/p>\n

Smith hand-picked all of the performers. \u201cI wanted [artists] who really wanted to be there to be<\/i> there,\u201d he says. A full 100% of the proceeds go to international nonprofit Doctors Without Borders and its efforts in Ukraine. \u201cAnd if people want to donate and not come to the show, they can do that, too,\u201d he adds. \u201cBlues music can be a vehicle to celebrate, or to pull you out of [bad] things.\u201d With the benefit concert, it will serve both of those purposes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The life of a touring musician is perilous enough: the general hazards of the road make everyday existence a constant challenge. Add to that the threat of war, and it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22884,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41],"tags":[4824],"class_list":["post-22882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","tag-jc-smith","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22885,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22882\/revisions\/22885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}