‘Playing in a war zone is not for most people’: British band braves drone strikes and pneumonia to tour Ukraine | music

IIn late October, 10 kilometers from the front line in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, residents lost a completely renovated ambulance. While unlocking your phone and logging into the Maps app may seem like the obvious solution, that would be completely unwise here: Russian drones are circling the skies, searching for any signals.

Inside the truck is a motley crew: an 81-year-old Irish music industry veteran; Texas rock singer turns 72; Australian keyboardist. Ukrainian saxophonist. and three musicians in their twenties from Carlisle, Cumbria. Their destination is a military base where they will perform for Ukrainian forces.

Irishman Dave Robinson likens the rebellious nature of the tour to when he was managing Jimi Hendrix in 1968. Joe “King” Carrasco, an ardent Texan, compares it to “playing for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua when they were fighting the Contras.” For younger, less experienced Ambulance residents, it is a very long distance from Carlisle and Melbourne to this cold and bleak no man’s land.

“We were more excited than anything else,” says Jonny Foster, lead singer and guitarist for Hardwicke Circus — now safely back at his home in Carlisle — along with Robinson and Carrasco, via video call. “We just wanted to do our bit to support the war effort in Ukraine and thought the locals might enjoy hearing a live rock and roll band.”

Hardwicke Circus toured war-torn Ukraine in June this year, the only British musicians to do so. This experience made them determined to return, hence their journey in late October and early November. The band did not undertake these tours to raise money – all proceeds were donated to local Ukrainian charities – nor as a publicity stunt. “We once toured British prisons for the same reason: we believe music is both entertainment and art, and all people should have access to it,” says Foster.

Teen brothers Johnny and Tom Foster formed Hardwicke Circus in 2015, and have since self-released three albums, plus a live LP in Ukraine, One Hour Ahead of the Posse. Their classic rock sound may not be in vogue – their sax-accompanied narrative songs nod to Thin Lizzy or mid-’70s-era Bruce Springsteen – but their regular touring has seen them amass a loyal following. Paul McCartney asked Glastonbury to add them to their 2022 line-up (they closed that year’s festival by playing the Rabbit Hall Theater to an enthusiastic crowd) while Bob Dylan added them to the bill for the Hyde Park concert in 2019.

The Fosters were inspired to tour Ukraine after performing in the Czech Republic earlier this year. “We were naive,” Jonny admits, “and thought Ukraine was just a short drive from the Czech border – it’s 1,000 kilometers across Poland! When we got back to Carlisle, we contacted Derek Eland, an illustrator from Cumbria who has done a lot to support Ukraine. He linked us up with Aukasia, a rock trio in Ukraine, and approached them about a date night together. They loved the idea and it became the quickest tour we’d ever booked!”

Remarkably, the band were not warned about the trip by the British Foreign Office. “We were waiting to hear someone shout, ‘Don’t go!’ but no one did,” Robinson says. “People think we’re as crazy as a box of snakes,” he laughs, “and maybe we are.”

However, they ran into an obstacle: Hardwicke Circus members other than Foster refused to tour Ukraine. “Four members of our group were afraid, and their mothers forbade them from going,” Foster says.

“And that’s understandable,” Robinson adds.

“Yes,” Foster agrees, “Do you want to come and play in a war zone with no money?” “It doesn’t attract most people.”

Instead, the brothers reached out to former member Bill Wylde and Australian keyboardist Conor Morrissey – both based in London – who subsequently recorded. Also joining on guitar was Carrasco, a Texan-Mex musician who has dedicated his life to rock music around the world. “I started playing in bands when I was a teenager, and since then I’ve played everywhere – all over Latin America, Botswana, Zimbabwe, India, Cambodia, Morocco,” he recalls.

Carrasco’s connection came via the band’s manager, Dave Robinson, a music industry veteran best known for co-founding and running Stiff Records, a London-based independent label that launched Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Kirsty MacColl, The Pogues and Madness (whom Robinson signed after they played his wedding, and subsequently directed their groundbreaking videos).

Stiff released Joe “King” Carrasco’s album of the same name in 1980, which failed to match the success of the aforementioned artists. “Joe has always been a great performer and total rock ‘n’ roll,” Robinson says. “The UK was not ready to receive him in 1980, but that did not bother him.”

Carrasco had tasted success in the US: after signing with MCA, he found his videos being played on the fledgling MTV channel, while Michael Jackson sang backing vocals on his 1982 album Synapse Gap (Mundo Total). “We were recording in the same Hollywood studio complex,” Carrasco says. “Michael was a nice guy with amazing microphone technique.” “He had a white Rolls Royce and there were all these teenage girls hanging around his car. Michael looked confused.”

Carrasco’s fame proved fleeting, ensuring that he continued to play in bars and tour where most acts had never ventured. Robinson has invited him to join his youth group playing UK dates in 2022. “A fantastic band, you’re in it for all the right reasons,” Carrasco says of Hardwicke Circus.

“When Joe heard we were planning to tour Ukraine, he said, ‘Join me,’” Foster says. “He’s really committed to singing for the people.”

“And I’m committed to dogs,” Carrasco adds. After discovering in June how Ukraine was now home to so many abandoned dogs, he then raised money to purchase large amounts of pet food for animal shelters. “We took the pet food to a dog shelter just three kilometers from the front line,” he says. “Here we can feel the intensity of the conflict — that this conflict is a war between good and evil — with the Russians and North Koreans very close by.”

The June tour of Ukraine, which saw the band play eight dates from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the northeast, by agreement of the three, was life-affirming. “We knew we weren’t going to end the war, but seeing people smiling and singing, the stress draining from their faces, made it all worth it,” says Robinson. “Our most popular number was one we originally wrote about Tyson Fury, but for the tour, we changed it to be about Oleksandr Usyk.”

Afternoon acoustic concerts in hospitals and schools added another dimension to the tour. “We wanted to bring some comfort to people who have been through a lot,” Foster says. “One afternoon, we played a piece of music at an amputee hospital, and there was a soldier, lying on a stretcher, who had recently had his left leg amputated – and blood was seeping through his bandages. He was singing with us and clapping. It was incredibly moving.”

At another location, a school workshop, they met an autistic teenage girl who had been traumatized by living for so long under Russian occupation. “She really responded when we played music. So much so that we invited her to sing with us, her teacher later said that our performance made her start to come out of her shell.”

The impact that the June tour had on Hardwicke Circus confirmed that they were determined to do it again. “We thought about waiting until winter was over, but we thought, ‘No, let’s show our support now.’ And off we went,” Robinson says.

This time the tour involved a lot of preparation: the support of several Carlyle companies and general fundraising saw the purchase of two emergency evacuation vehicles for donation to the Ukrainian military. After leaving Carlisle, the band took five days to drive the SUV, along with the band truck — “Johnny bought a whole sausage for the garnish,” Robinson notes — to Lviv, where they were greeted by warning signs of the coming eastern winter. “It was very cold, there was heavy rain, and the Russians were doing their best before winter really started,” he says.

An early accident nearly ended the tour and their lives. “I was driving down a steep mountain road on a very rainy night, and the truck’s steering power went out,” Robinson recalls. “I had to make a quick decision, so I headed down the forest road. When we got out we saw we were about to drop 200 metres. If we had gone over that, we would have joined Buddy Holly in rock ‘n’ roll heaven.”

After the group’s truck became unsafe to drive, Adrian Simpson, a British citizen whose organization Aid Mission Ukraine provided advice and support, intervened. “Adrian lent us a refurbished ambulance,” says Robinson. “As we headed to Donetsk, he advised us to remove the Red Cross while Russian drones search for ambulances – what Putin is doing is unethical. So I took out my knife and scratched it.”

Hardwicke Circus could have left the SUVs in Lviv to be collected, but instead they were determined to deliver the vehicles to military bases near the front line. And singing for the soldiers. “We wanted to show our solidarity with those who were fighting,” Foster says. “When we handed over a vehicle to 81 Brigade, it was one of those ‘at a loss for words’ moments. We had spent months fundraising, and here we were handing over the vehicle to those who needed it. They had signed our British flag and we had signed their brigade flag, and the whole thing was very moving.”

Travel by ambulance proved beneficial as Robinson soon died of pneumonia. “I woke up in hospital not knowing where I was, and they kept me there for a week. It was the worst food I had ever eaten – but they fixed me,” he says. After eight days of recovery, he traveled to Krakow, Poland and then home.

Meanwhile, the band’s guitarist Wilde came down with a flu so bad he couldn’t feel his limbs and was put on a bus to Poland. Not long afterward, Ukrainian saxophonist Ptashka Khromchenko needed to be hospitalized for bronchitis. The Foster Brothers and keyboardist Morrissey came down with the flu, which meant that only Carrasco, who had participated in many of the tours, was unharmed.

“The weather was extreme and we were playing concerts in hospitals, so we picked up viruses,” Foster says. “We kept going – when you’re in a country under attack, you don’t complain about feeling bad.”

The concerts – which took place in Ternopil, Cherkasy, Dnipro, Poltava and Kiev – were often held in underground venues and had to end before the midnight curfew, and attracted a largely female audience, with most men being on the front line.

“Walking around meant sirens going off, staying in hotels with bunkers, hearing missiles and drones overhead, and being woken up by explosions,” says Robinson, who felt emboldened even after being hospitalized. “It was an intense and incredible time.”

“It was dangerous, yes, and there was no guideline, but we had a lot of information we could share if people wanted to take their artwork to Ukraine,” Foster says.

“This is what people in the West need to do,” Robinson says. “Go out and support the Ukrainians. Look how they live their lives in wartime.”

“The Ukrainians are fighting hard and are not putting up with anything,” says Carrasco. “They sleep in their bathtubs to avoid splashing broken glass and don’t complain. Instead, they wake up every morning and keep fighting. Spirit of the Alamo!”

After 18 days of touring Ukraine and seeing this spirit, it’s time for the surviving Hardwicke Circus members to return home. After instructing the rest of the squad to follow Robinson flying out of Krakow, Foster stayed behind to pick up their now-repaired semi truck. He packed it with band equipment and drove five days back to Carlisle.

“I kind of collapsed when I got home,” he says. “Exhaustion – five and a half thousand miles round trip! But it was worth it. We are all aiming to return to Ukraine in 2026.”

“More tours without a safety net,” Robinson says. The three veterans of the Hardwicke Circus campaign in Ukraine laugh in appreciation.

Hardwicke Circus continues to fundraise for Ukraine at Crowdfunder.co.uk/p/hardwicke-circus