yacht rock revue members peter olson

• Sep 14, 2020

Faces of the 4th | Nick Niespodziani & Pete Olson

One night only. a cover band plays one hit wonders from the 70's in a smoky basement in the virginia highlands. the room is packed, the mood is groovy, and yacht rock revue is born..

Fast forward 11 years and I’m talking to Nick Niespodziani, singer, guitarist, leader of Yacht Rock Revue, and co-owner of Venkman’s, while he’s sitting in a hotel conference room eating a salad. “In the beginning there was an idea to do a night of 70’s one hit wonders. Like songs that everybody knew the words to but nobody knew who the band was. Like forgotten by time, kind of like some of the band members would’ve been if they hadn’t gotten in this band.”

I hear a “hey, hey” in the background, some laughter, and a final “here we are, 11 years later with a retirement plan.”

There sure aren’t any plans to retire anytime soon though. Yacht Rock Revue is still going strong today, as they’re on tour and sidestepping their way through the whole journey. Niespodziani didn’t imagine their success to be as big as it is though. There was a point where he realized that this wouldn’t last forever, and “needed to capitalize on this local C-list celebrity status and cash in on the restaurant.” Now, Venkman’s is born. A modern comfort food spot in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood that “ features eclectic live music curated by partners Nick Niespodziani and Peter Olson, ” vocalist, guitarist and percussionist of YRR.

Venkman’s is all about eating good food while listening to good music. They’re not trying to reinvent the hamburger, they just want you to have a tasty hamburger. The de facto leader’s favorite item on the menu right now is the chicken sandwich, and just as I’m about to make a joke comparing it to the Popeye’s chicken sandwich, he beats me and says “it’s better than Popeye’s” and I take his word for it.

I questioned whether or not the band or the restaurant would find the same success if they were located in a different neighborhood, but it seems as if it was never really a question to begin with. Their band used to practice in what used to be a rehearsal space across from Venkman’s, so they were familiar with the neighborhood and knew that the idea of the Beltline was in line with the values they wanted to keep with the restaurant. He also jokes: “We had our cars broken into in that neighborhood, so we knew.” A right of passage, some might say.

“We were always going to be a part of urban redevelopment in some way. It’s gone about the way that I thought. I didn’t realize we were as far ahead as we were, as challenging as it was in the beginning, but it’s coming around now.” People have since come up to him after YRR shows to talk about Venkman’s and the O4W neighborhood. “It’s a thing now, where before it was a mystery zone.”

Looking at the Venkman’s website, there’s an event that’s happening almost every night. What’s the best practice to balance being in a popular band while also owning a restaurant? “It’s not very balanced. You just kinda try to keep all the balls in the air and hope that they don’t fall.” And he doesn’t forget to give credit where credit is due. They have a great staff that holds it down while they’re on tour, and that’s “not just a PR statement, it’s actually very true.” They found out early on that people were wanting these events within the space they own, centered around the idea that they wanted to bring people together, sing songs, watch movies and eat food.

“That’s the cool thing about Venkman’s. If a venue only does acoustic singer/songwriter stuff, it has a certain type of audience that comes there. But that’s not what Venkman’s is playing. We have country shows, R&B shows, and brunches for kids that bring in soccer moms from the suburbs. It’s a pretty diverse audience. That’s one of the things about Venkman’s that I’m most proud of is that, on any given night you can go in and there can be a totally different vibe, a different age group, or demographic of people.”

As Niespodziani finishes his salad and our conversation comes to an end, we talk breakfast, his favorite being the duck egg hash from his restaurant. He continues to make a light sarcastic comment about Cracker Barrel being “good” to which I genuinely agree, and he responds with “that was a joke.”

Justice for Cracker Barrel!

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Yacht Rock Revue explain why they're charting a new course with original music

Sarah Rodman is the Entertainment Editor, covering TV and music for EW.

After nearly a dozen years confidently steering the S.S. Nostalgia, playing the beloved soft rock hits of the ’70s and ’80s to packed crowds wearing captain’s hats, Yacht Rock Revue are charting a new course by releasing their first album of original material. Hot Dads in Tight Jeans won’t be released until Feb. 21, but EW is bringing you the first single, “Step,” right here.

“We wanted to hit a note that was both retro and could be right now,” says shades-sporting co-frontman Nick Niespodziani of the synthy-smooth jam. “We wanted it to be outside of time.”

That musical mood dovetails nicely with the vibe of a group that began on a lark in 2007 and has steadily grown into an act that crisscrosses the country to play for its own devoted fans. The Atlanta septet can draw thousands of people to sing along to spot-on renditions of hits by Hall & Oates, Toto, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross, and other artists whose names some in the audience have forgotten, or never knew, but whose hits have endured, such as “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl),” by Looking Glass. While there may have been an element of irony for some attendees at the beginning, the shows tend to be unabashedly joyous affairs.

Niespodziani, drummer Mark Cobb, and co-frontman Peter Olson were all in a band called Y-O-U in the early 2000s that enjoyed some regional success but ended up petering out. “We were all splitting off to do other things,” says Niespodziani. “Peter was thinking about moving to Colorado and I had started law school and we were all kind of ready for what was happening after music. Because when you’re 27 and you haven’t made it yet, you’re an ancient guy. And in the midst of that we did this one Yacht Rock show and then all of a sudden it became what it is now. We’ve got an office, and a band, and a 401k.”

Soon they will have that album of original material as well as a documentary detailing their unlikely route to success as they rose from bar band to amphitheater band.

In addition to sharing “Step,” the group also curated the ultimate Yacht Rock Spotify playlist for EW, and we chatted with Niespodziani about the band’s step toward original songwriting and mixing up the smooth classics in their set.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You’ve finally decided to make original music, again. How much anxiety do you have about fan reception since they’re used to you playing songs they love? NICK NIESPODZIANI: We played it for the first time at our big Atlanta show in August at Chastain Park Amphitheater in front of 7,000 people. I was pretty nervous because all these songs that we play, everybody knows every word. Like, every song we play would be the encore for whatever artist it is that we’re covering. So how do you put up a song that people have never heard before, at all, against those songs? I was originally super nervous about it, but our fans really surprised me. I expected everybody to leave for the bathroom or the bros to start booing. But they stayed and they got into it, and the reception everywhere we’ve been with it has been awesome. People are into it. So I’m much less nervous now than I was before.

The album itself is not a “yacht rock” record but is obviously in a similar wheelhouse and has a cheeky humor to it. Do you get the sense that you’ve built up enough goodwill from the fans since you’ve been playing for so long that they’re open to original songs? Yeah, and I’ve noticed, especially over the last three or four years, when we go places, whether it’s the people at the venue or the fans that we’ve talked to, they treat us like artists. In the beginning, I felt like a glorified stripper where people just wanted to pull my hair and see if it was real and it was more of a novelty thing. But now I feel like we’ve earned that respect from our fans and they’re open to it, or at least they have been so far. I’m hoping that that streak continues.

How did you decide that now was the time for you guys to try this? I was kind of going through my midlife crisis checklist, choices like “I could wreck a red sports car” or “I could have an affair with a busty nurse.” And I was like, “You know what I really should do is make an album with my ’70s soft rock band.” So we threw the idea around and were like, “Why not try it,” talking about that goodwill we built up with our fans. The cool thing for me especially is that I’ve made a lot of records over the years, little side projects that had no budget and no hope for people to hear them. And this experience has been the opposite of that. We were able to get an incredible producer and make a cool video all with the power of the Yacht Rock machine that we’ve built behind it. And it’s been really inspiring and fun.

Who produced it? Ben Allen, he’s from here in Atlanta. He produced Walk The Moon and Animal Collective’s big records and he just did the new Kaiser Chiefs record, which is [a hit] in the UK right now. He did Gnarls Barkley. He’s a close friend of mine and I was kind of nervous, even though we hang out and go to the gym together, to ask him about making a record with Yacht Rock because I thought there would be this stigma because he produces Deerhunter and all these super hipster bands. And he was immediately like, “Yeah, let’s do it. That sounds really fun.”

A song like “Step” could probably slip into your sets with relative ease since it has that blue-eyed soul falsetto thing happening that spans from disco, like a sliver of Giorgio Moroder, to a group like Hall & Oates to something like Beck’s song “Debra.” Yeah, we definitely leaned on more on that ’80s side of the coin, Hall & Oates and even some ’80s David Bowie and some of the synthier stuff like Giorgio Moroder. That just strikes closer to our personal taste and I think it’s easier to see how that fits in with modern music. Whereas if you make something that’s just like a Steely Dan rip, that’s really a very segmented thing off to the side.

We didn’t want to come out with something that could maybe be viewed as a novelty single for the first thing. When you’re a cover band coming out with original music, getting taken seriously is the first hurdle that you have to leap over. So “Step” felt like the right choice because it’s a mission statement for the whole album in a way. It’s about deciding who you want to be and making the space for that in your life.

I guess in my view everyone is putting on an act of some sort. We pretend to be these coked-up ’70 dudes, but we are who we are inside and I’m inspired by people like Lizzo and Pete Buttigieg and Puddles The Clown. It’s definitely an act that all of them are doing, but the heart of what they’re doing is true. The center of it emotionally is honest and unapologetic. And that’s what “Step” is about. And that’s what this whole album is about for us. Because we are a bunch of 40-year-old dads who are trying to make our first record that people listen to, why not just bear hug it instead of run away from it?

Do you ever think how wild it is that you all have built a career out of this, particularly since you’re not a straight tribute band of one group? All the time. It’s crazy. If you would’ve told me when we did the first show “that this is going to be your career,” I would have slapped you in the face. There’s just no way. I never imagined doing something like this. And it’s funny because I feel like in that early band, I thought music was all about what’s inside of you as an artist and that if I can find inside myself this great, soul-wrenching truth that will be the reason that I become famous and whatever. And I think over the years with Yacht Rock — grudgingly at first — I started to realize that music is actually about the shared experience and being there in the room together, having fun, and just escaping from life for a while. And I feel like it’s been this 11-year penance that I’ve gone through, and now I’ve come out on the other side and I have a completely different view of what music is and what it should be. That’s what inspired this record and it makes me so happy to do what I do now.

Which is funny on one level because probably for 90 percent of what you’re performing, the original artist is sick to death of playing that song. But you all have now performed some of these songs so many times that it is entirely possible that you are as sick of singing something like “Africa” as Toto is. And yet you always legitimately seem like you are having fun. It’s funny you mention “Africa.” That’s the only song we have to play at every show. And I think it kind of goes through waves. It’s like a Saturday Night Live joke where they keep repeating the same thing and it gets really monotonous and not funny. And then if you repeat it for long enough, it becomes funny again. It got to where it got old for a while and now it’s really fun to sing that song, even though I’ve probably sung it 2,000 times, literally. It’s not a problem.

Coldplay has to sing “Yellow” every night no matter what. There are five or six other songs they have to sing every night no matter what. We don’t have to do that. We have thousands of songs to choose from. So, in some ways, it’s been a blessing that we can stay fresher because we can always change out songs and add new songs.

Let’s talk about this playlist. You have a pretty wide range here, including yacht rock staples like Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin'” but also songs from Lake Street Dive and “Juice” by Lizzo. How do you all even define yacht rock now? For me, yacht rock is more of a vibe and an energy than necessarily “soft rock music made in Los Angeles between 1976 and 1984.” It’s more about when the song comes on, does it put a smile on your face in the first 10 seconds? If you use that as your first barrier to entry, then what can be considered yacht rock becomes a lot more wide. If you’re out cruising on your boat on Saturday afternoon, what’s going to feel good?

“Juice” is going to feel good. Yeah. And it feels like the transition from “I Keep Forgettin'” into “Juice” doesn’t feel like a hard left turn. It feels natural. I guess our perspective is that people are going to need yacht rock now and in the future, and what it can be is a lot wider than the strict dictionary definition. Lake Street Dive, they’re a genre-bender for me. I think that they have a lot of different influences. And again, it’s the positive energy behind it is what makes it yacht rock.

How did you pick the classic ones to intersperse in there? We wanted to make sure that anybody who hasn’t gotten familiar with the yacht rock yet — which I don’t know who that might be at this stage — got a good dose of the healthy vitamins of what real, 100-percent yacht rock is. So we picked the ones that felt right to us and then also had something in common with our record.

You’re in your forties now. Is this sustainable? Can you do this until you retire? That’s a great question. If “Bad Tequila” [from the upcoming album] ends up being like “Steal Away” was for Robbie Dupree, then I definitely can. That’s what this move is, just to see if we could have one song that makes people feel the same way that I felt when I danced with my wife to “Steal Away” at my wedding. And I’ve talked to Robbie about that. And he has this relationship with that song where he got tired of it and he loves it again. But for us, in the next 20 years, I don’t want to get morbid about it, but a lot of these bands that we love and the classic rock artists are going to age out of touring. And there’s going to be a void there and I hope that we will be positioned to help fill it. It’s weird to think about but it is true. It gives us a little bit of job security.

In the last few years, several other bands in this vein have popped up. How do you feel about that? I imagine it’s hard to be mad about other cover bands when you’re a cover band. It’s great that this music has become so popular and imitation is finest form of flattery, right? So when I see these bands doing our dance moves, or wearing the sailor outfits like we used to 10 years ago or adding the same songs to their setlists, that’s cool. Part of me wants to say, “Go get your own unoriginal idea.” But like you said, there’s no honor among thieves, really. So it’s fine. I got nothing but love for any of them. I think what we do stands on its own.

Yacht Rock Revue will hit the road for the Hot Dads in Tight Jeans tour Jan. 9 and will be pulling into ports across the country, from Boston to Los Angeles.

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How Yacht Rock Revue stopped worrying about being a cover band and made original music

A good-time persona accented by tight jeans and mirrored sunglasses wasn't always a natural fit for Nicholas J. Niespodziani, the Yacht Rock Revue vocalist who grew up in Columbus, Indiana.

Niespodziani thought his Bloomington band Y-O-U would find indie-rock success after moving to Atlanta in 2002. Although Y-O-U enjoyed moderate success, the band didn't become a career for Niespodziani and fellow Hoosiers Peter Olson and "Question" Mark Cobb.

A music career arrived by accident. The members of Y-O-U devoted a one-off show in 2007 to "smooth music" that ruled the pop charts from 1975 to 1982. The just-for-laughs experiment turned into a weekly residency at an Atlanta nightclub.

"The next thing you know we have 401(k)s and an office," Niespodziani said.

Yacht Rock Revue is now a thriving concert draw that schedules two-night stands in many cities, including Indianapolis this weekend .

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But in the beginning, Niespodziani considered covers of songs popularized by Toto, Boz Skaggs and Kenny Loggins to be the opposite of his musical aesthetic.

"My view of selling out was informed by the bands I listened to growing up, which were Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Beastie Boys," he said. “It was really weird for me. I was pretty defiant about it, honestly. I thought I was too cool to be doing yacht rock for a long time. I was very reluctant. As it got bigger and bigger, I had a darker and darker attitude about it.”

The former law school student eventually appreciated Yacht Rock Revue as a better option than practicing law.

“I had a series of moments over a few years where I realized that getting to make a living in music is such a special gift,” he said. “I came to enjoy it.”

On Feb. 21, the transition from Y-O-U comes full circle with the release of an album filled with original Yacht Rock Revue songs: "Hot Dads in Tight Jeans."

Sailing in uncharted waters

The seven members of Yacht Rock Revue previewed "Hot Dads in Tight Jeans" by releasing the song "Step" in October.

“Already our first single has been heard by more people than listened to Y-O-U in the 10 years we were in that band,” Niespodziani  said. ‘It kind of feels like a comeback story.”

The band released four original songs on a 2013 EP, but "Hot Dads" will stand as Yacht Rock Revue's debut album.

The synthesizer-and-saxophone texture of "Step" resembles yacht rock without sounding dated.

"I wouldn’t say our album is purely yacht rock," Niespodziani said. "It’s somewhere in between yacht rock and more modern stuff we love like Air and Tame Impala and LCD Soundsystem."

An Indiana influence

When Yacht Rock Revue performs Jan. 10-11 at the Egyptian Room in Old National Centre, Niespodziani will play a room he once frequented as an audience member.

He recalls catching Bela Fleck at the Egyptian Room, as well as the Flaming Lips at Broad Ripple's Vogue nightclub and Stone Temple Pilots in an agriculture building at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in 1993.

“My love for rock ‘n’ roll began in Indianapolis, I think,” Niespodziani said.

Five members of Yacht Rock Revue — Niespodziani, fellow vocalist Olson, drummer Cobb, keyboard player Mark Bencuya and saxophone player David B. Freeman — attended Indiana University.

Niespodziani moonlights in a musical project known as Indianapolis Jones, and Indianapolis sports-talk radio personality JMV is the presenting sponsor of the Jan. 10 performance. 

More than Christopher Cross

Niespodziani credits an online video series titled "Yacht Rock" for giving a modern label to yesteryear's smooth music, not to mention his band's name.

From 2005 to 2010, a dozen "Yacht Rock" short films crafted tongue-in-cheek mythology for Michael McDonald, Daryl Hall & John Oates and other soft-rock stars. 

Niespodziani said he associates yacht rock with sonic elements such as the "milky tone" of a Fender Rhodes electric piano and an "unaggressive approach" to playing drums.

He said detached emotional expression often accompanies the breezy lyrics of yacht rock.

Although the creators of the "Yacht Rock" short films maintain a website to give "yacht or nyacht" opinions about songs, Niespodziani and his Yacht Rock Revue band mates aren't sticklers about their repertoire.

"It’s in my best interest for yacht rock to have as broad of a definition as possible," Niespodziani said. "When you’re playing live and you get to the end of the show, you could play 'Sailing' by Christopher Cross or you could play 'More Than a Feeling' by Boston. The reaction you’re going to get from the crowd for the Boston song is many levels higher."

Yacht Rock Revue

>> WHEN: 8 p.m. Jan. 10-11.

>> WHERE: Egyptian Room in Old National Centre, 502 N. New Jersey St.

>> TICKETS: $20.

>> INFO: Visit livenation.com or call 800-745-3000.

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Contact IndyStar reporter David Lindquist at [email protected] or 317-444-6404. Follow him on Twitter: @317Lindquist .

Yacht rock forever! No longer a fad, genre shows staying power

Yacht Rock Revue perform in Montclair, Dec. 4, as well as in Huntington, N.Y., Dec. 2-3.

YRR will coast into the Garden State on Dec. 4 for a concert at The Wellmont Theater in Montclair. They also will perform at The Paramount in Huntington, N.Y., Dec. 2-3.

Yackt Rock Revue released its “Hot Dads in Tight Jeans” album in 2020.

YACHT ROCK REVUE

Peter Olson believes Toto’s “Africa” is the ultimate yacht rock song.

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Is there room for interpretation and personal preference when defining the yacht rock genre, or should there be strict guidelines in place to determine what songs or artists can be considered yacht rock? How important is it for a band like Yacht Rock Review to push the boundaries and challenge traditional notions of yacht rock?”, “refusal

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'Yacht rock is a vibe:' Yacht Rock Revue brings chill tunes to Massachusetts

If the words “yacht rock” bring anything to mind, it’s probably the dulcet tones of Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins, or West Coast-centric, boat-owning, soft-rocking, good time tunes.

“But more than that, yacht rock is a vibe,” Nicholas Niespodziani, who sings in the band Yacht Rock Revue, told GBH’s Morning Edition co-host Jeremy Siegel. “You know, you're drinking a piña colada on the beach, chilling out, this is the music to put on.”

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Yacht Rock Revue, icons of the nostalgia-heavy soft-rock genre popular in the 1970s and ’80s, are in Hyannis Thursday evening and at the Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston Friday.

“The exchange of energy between the band and the audience is incredible at our shows, particularly in Boston,” Niespodziani said. “We recorded our first live album in Boston and there's just something about Massachusetts, Smooth-achusetts, if you will, that that really connects.”

Niespodziani and Peter Olson, who also sings in the band, met growing up in Indiana. They formed a band called Y-O-U in the ’90s and started playing shows in Atlanta.

“We had an indie rock band but never really made it, and we were kind of on the back end of that, in our late 20s trying to figure out what was next,” Olson said.

The band did a yacht rock-themed show almost at random, playing a one-off for one-hit wonders of the 1970s, Olson said.

“We did one show and it sold out, and then we did another show and it sold out. And then all of a sudden it's becoming more popular and we're quitting our jobs and getting an office and buying a van and becoming a real band,” Olson said. “And it's been a wild journey. We keep wondering, when is it going to fade out? But it's only getting stronger 15 years in.”

The band has since grown to 10 members who tour nationwide for much of the year.

In Yacht Rock Revue’s early days, audiences seemed to be drawn to the music a bit more ironically, Olson said. He’d see people elbowing one another when Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” came on.

"If you pay close attention, once you know what yacht rock is, you'll realize that it's everywhere." -Nicholas Niespodziani

But yacht rock’s power comes from its ever-presence, Niespodziani said.

“These are wonderfully crafted songs, and there's something about them that actually never left,” Niespodziani said. “It's almost like they'd been in the subconscious part of our brains in that they've actually been spinning in like, your grocery store and your dentist's office and at your hardware store. If you pay close attention, once you know what yacht rock is, you'll realize that it's everywhere.”

It’s also just fun, Olson said.

“You don't have to feel guilty about enjoying the songs,” Olson said. “They're fun to listen to. They're fun to vibe out to or to rock out to. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing to be ashamed of with that.”

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Yacht Rock Revue pays tribute to smooth rock classics that are more relevant than ever

Providing entertainment and relaxation for their audience is always top of mind for the members of Yacht Rock Revue. The smooth rock tribute band has been jamming in front of live audiences for nearly two decades, and it shows no signs of chilling out — unlike its music.

These purveyors of pure relaxation will bring their nostalgic sound to Coralville’s 4thFest on July 3. Ahead of its concert, Yacht Rock Revue frontman and singer Nicholas Niespodziani expressed how exciting it is to play for large crowds. When the band formed in Atlanta in 2007, it was mostly restricted to clubs and small venues.

“We were playing in places that are sweaty and drunk, it was a debaucherous time,” Niespodziani said. “Now we’re older and distinguished and playing big venues with massive audiences, and people treat us like artists.”

The band wasn’t always strictly a yacht rock group. Several band members, including another founding member and frontman Peter Olson, formed an indie rock band first. It wasn’t until a gig which was initially intended to be a one-off show that Yacht Rock Revue was formed.

To fit the style of the club they were performing at, the band members played a few soft rock classics and immediately noticed a reaction from the crowd. Choosing the genre the band would adhere to wasn’t a long deliberation process. It happened then and there.

“It was pretty much an accident,” Niespodziani said. “People loved it so much that the club owner told us we needed to come back, and so we did.”

The band was made up entirely of Atlanta musicians at the time, many of whom were in school. Although they had experienced minor success with their indie rock venture, with songs in local commercials and going on small tours, the band shifted to yacht rock completely and renamed itself “’70s AM Gold,” a name which would not last long as they quickly learned the term “yacht rock” drew much more attention.

Niespodziani dropped out of law school, and the band became real. Now bolstering a roster of 10 band members, Yacht Rock Revue has only grown since its humble beginnings in 2007.

Throughout their career, they’ve played alongside various artists whose music they tribute every night. When being joined on stage by the very legends who inspire them, they find they’re met with skepticism at first.

“We’re on stage with old-timers who say, ‘What is this? Who is this tribute band?’ But as as they realize how serious we are about the music, we win them over,” Niespodziani explained. The band’s dedication to revitalizing the music has landed it an opening act spot on tour with Train and REO Speedwagon this summer.

“It’s going to be nuts. We’re playing in giant amphitheaters on a level we’ve never experienced before,” Niespodziani said excitedly. As soon as the band leaves 4thFest, it’ll be hopping in tour buses to play to larger crowds than it’s ever seen. “We’re hopeful we can win over REO Speedwagon too.”

Both their 4thFest appearance and nationwide tour are stops in their usually 80-100-show year. Despite the high number of performances, Niespodziani never finds himself growing tired of it. In a time when yacht rock seems to be growing in popularity once again, the band is experiencing more and more success.

“We’re trying to bring that yacht vibe back to 2024,” Niespodziani explained. “It’s music of escape; it’s made to get away from the troubles of the world.”

At a time when people need an escape from the world more than ever, Yacht Rock Revue will bring its nostalgic sound and calming atmosphere to Coralville’s 4th Fest. Niespodziani is as excited as the audience is to experience the concert.

“I love what I do, singing songs that make people happy,” said Niespodziani. “It’s a great way to unplug, sing silly songs, and have fun. That’s why the music is so timeless.”

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Confessions of a Cover Band: Yacht Rock Revue croons the hits you love to hate

"I never would've guessed I'd be doing what I'm doing now. The 23-year-old me would punch me in the face."

One night in 2012, a man in a Ronald Reagan mask paused beneath a stop sign in the Old Fourth Ward. Armed with a stencil and a can of white spray paint, he transformed the sign into a tribute to a 1978 hit by a mostly forgotten Canadian pop crooner named Gino Vannelli: “I just wanna STOP & tell you what I feel about you, babe.”

“I Just Wanna Stop” is the kind of song whose words most Americans over 40 know despite never consciously choosing to listen to it. After peaking at no. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978, the tune never quite disappeared, becoming the aural equivalent of a recurring wart. The song found a second life—an endless one, as it turns out—in the musical nether region where the smooth, soft-rock hits of yesteryear remain in heavy rotation. Yes, that’s “Africa” you’re hearing in the dentist’s office. And “What a Fool Believes” in line at CVS. And that faint melody burrowing into your brain while on hold for the next available customer service agent? That’s “Steal Away.” Songs like these, disparaged by critics in their time then jokingly christened “yacht rock” by a comedy web series in 2005, are now the soundtrack to American tedium.

They’ve also become the source of a very good—if conflicted—living for the man who defaced the stop sign: Nick Niespodziani, the singer, guitarist, and de facto leader of the wildly popular cover band Yacht Rock Revue , which tours the country, headlines 1,000-plus capacity venues, and occasionally even plays with the original artists behind these hits.

At the time of the Vannelli vandalism, Yacht Rock Revue had begun to graduate from a local curiosity to a national one. Niespodziani’s sister videotaped the incident and posted it on YouTube. They then printed T-shirts of the sign and, when Vannelli performed at the Variety Playhouse, they got one to him.

On a gray Monday afternoon not long ago, Niespodziani was standing at this crossroads, looking at the sign, trying to explain the motivation behind the prank. “We had this idea, so we videotaped,” he said. “It was definitely guerrilla marketing.” Also, he was pretty drunk.

The episode seems to capture something ineffable about Yacht Rock Revue—part fandom, part joke, part self-promotion, each element infused with irony. When YRR takes the stage at Venkman’s, an Old Fourth Ward restaurant and nightclub co-owned by Niespodziani and bandmate Pete Olson, the band is fully in character, complete with gaudy shirts and sunglasses. They crack jokes about each other’s moms and theatrically highlight multi-instrumentalist Dave Freeman’s one-note triangle solo during America’s “You Can Do Magic.”

“This music isn’t easy to perform,” Olson says. Yacht rock songs tend to be filled with complicated chord changes. All seven band members are accomplished musicians, and Niespodziani, who trained for a spell as an opera singer, is a rangy vocalist, capable of gliding through the high notes in Hall & Oates’s “Rich Girl,” Michael McDonald’s gruff tenor in “I Keep Forgetting,” and Dolly Parton’s amiable twang in “Islands in the Stream,” without seeming to strain. He, Olson, and drummer Mark Cobb first played together in Y-O-U, a band they formed at Indiana University in the late ’90s. They found scant support for original music there, so they relocated to Atlanta in 2002.

Photograph by Mike Colletta

Y-O-U built a buzz in Atlanta, thanks to Niespodziani’s catchy, Beatles-esque songs and the group’s playful gimmicks. They performed, straight-faced, as Three Dog Stevens, a sad-sack trio playing what they called “sandal-rock” (a made-up, synth-heavy genre defined by its purveyors’ predilection for wearing sandals with socks); they covered Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” entirely on keyboards while dressed as the Royal Tenenbaums; they created a YouTube mockumentary series about a competitive jump-roping team. “Comedy has always been part of what we do,” Niespodziani said. “We were doing anything to get noticed because we felt we had good songs but just couldn’t break through with them.”

“I said, ‘That sounds like hell on Earth.’ He was like, ‘But you’re going to make a lot of money.’ So we did it.”

In 2008, Y-O-U was booked every Thursday at the 10 High club in Virginia-Highland. They’d stage “Rock Fights,” playing dueling sets of covers by artists like Bob Seger, John Mellencamp, and INXS, or rejigger Y-O-U songs as soul rave-ups with horns and backing singers, or do a standup comedy night. Yacht Rock Revue was just another of these goofs: Put on silly clothes, and play songs everybody knows but nobody really likes—or claims not to. It was Cobb and guitarist Mark Dannells who came up with the idea. Dannells thought about calling it “A.M. Gold” but Cobb had recently seen a viral web series called Yacht Rock and felt like the term would resonate. Niespodziani went along because his friends needed his vocals. Two band members wore wigs to that first show, and, at one point, Niespodziani stripped off his shirt. People loved it. The club’s booker invited them back the next Thursday. The gig sold out. He asked them to do it every Thursday.

“I said, ‘That sounds like hell on Earth,’” Niespodziani recalls. “He was like, ‘But you’re going to make a lot of money.’ So we did it.”

Most cover bands are awful. But because they play well-known songs, they often secure regular, paying gigs that bands playing original music can’t. Even for the good ones, there’s a ceiling. Few ever perform further than 20 miles from wherever they played their first gig. What’s more, performing other people’s music for a living carries a degree of shame. Cobb has heard the mutterings about Yacht Rock Revue: “Why are these guys playing covers? They could write their own songs. They don’t need to hide behind a gimmick.”

Most of the guys in Yacht Rock Revue—which also includes bassist/vocalist Greg Lee and keyboardist/vocalist Mark Bencuya—had already spent half a lifetime dragging gear into dank basement bars to play for a few bucks and even fewer people. They did this in an era when the music business was cratering. The rise of the internet taught a generation of consumers that music is free, devaluing the dream to which musicians dedicate their lives.

When Yacht Rock Revue started in 2008, Dannells was nearly 40. “It’s not like the world is beating down the door of 40-year-old rock stars,” he says. Today, Yacht Rock is a business, owing its success partially to the corners of the business that haven’t collapsed: live music and merchandising. Besides their public shows, Yacht Rock Revue plays a steady stream of well-paying corporate gigs. They also sell lots of captain’s hats, T-shirts, and other swag. The success of the franchise means it’s been more than five years since any of them had a day job. Niespodziani and Olson created a company, Please Rock , that provides the bandmembers and their families with health insurance, 401Ks, and all the other trappings of comfortable, upper-middle-class stability few musicians ever achieve. All this grants bandmembers some real creative freedoms. “I just released a whole record of orchestral music,” Dannells says. “I don’t care if it sells. I just do it for enjoyment.”

Niespodziani shuttered Y-O-U years ago but still writes elegant power-pop songs for his other band, Indianapolis Jones . But the difference between his two bands’ profiles is stark. Troy Bieser, who has been working on a documentary about Yacht Rock Revue, says he’s seen this in the juxtaposition of the footage he’s compiled. “I’ve seen Nick going through the journey of being thankful for the success but it also feeling ill-fitting,” Bieser says. “That existential dilemma has followed him.”

Niespodziani knows whenever Yacht Rock plays anywhere, that’s a slot a band like Indianapolis Jones can’t get. “We’re a big part of the problem,” he says. As a 39-year-old father of one, who’s worked hard to get what he has, he isn’t about to give it up, but he’s also honest about the compromises he’s made and doesn’t hide from the question that is a natural byproduct of his own success: When a joke becomes your life, how do you keep your life from becoming a joke?

“I never would’ve guessed I’d be doing what I’m doing now,” he says. “The 23-year-old me would punch me in the face and leave me for dead.”

Yacht rock was mostly made in the late ’70s and early ’80s, but the genre wasn’t named until 2005 when JD Ryznar, a writer and actor, created the Yacht Rock web series with a few friends. The video shorts imagined the origins of songs like the Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes,” Toto’s “Rosanna,” and Steely Dan’s “FM.” The music, Ryznar says, was well-crafted, like a yacht, and recurring nautical imagery in songs like Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” or on Loggins and Messina’s album Full Sail made the term fit. According to Ryznar, true yacht rock has jazz and R&B influences, is usually produced in California, and frequently involves a rotating group of interconnected studio musicians. The term was never intended to be a pejorative—“we never thought it was silly music,” Ryznar says—but the web series is most definitely comedy, and feelings about the music itself tend to be buried under layers of hipster irony, warm nostalgia, and veiled contempt. Yacht rock songs are finely constructed: They’ve got indelible pop hooks, but they’re decidedly professional, not ragged and cool like punk or early hip-hop, which were canonized among the music of that era.

For the first Yacht Rock Revue gig, much of the set list came from a compilation CD that Cobb had burned titled The Dentist’s Office Mix. It included songs like Player’s “Baby Come Back,” Ambrosia’s “The Biggest Part of Me,” and Rupert Holmes’s “Escape (The Piña Colada Song).” “I’d put it on at parties and just see what the reactions would be,” Cobb says. “It was a weird, guilty pleasure.”

Niespodziani’s initial feelings about the music were uncomplicated. “I wasn’t a fan,” he says. “I was really into music that made people feel something, that had some grit and humanity to it. The ethos I thought was important in rock ’n’ roll was rebellious fun crossed with a heart-on-your-sleeve kind of thing. Yacht rock doesn’t do any of that. It doesn’t rebel.” He found a lot of yacht rock to be technical, clinical, and sterile. “Sophisticated for the sake of being sophisticated.”

Onstage, Niespodziani is the picture of unapproachable retro cool. Tall, with shaggy hair and an angular face, he hides behind large, dark sunglasses and frequently surrenders a thin half-smile. In other words, he personifies the classic, arrogant, coked-up, late-’70s rock frontman. In person, he gives off nearly the opposite impression. Over coffee, he’s thoughtful, earnest, and self-deprecating. His sharp facial features are accentuated by wide-lensed prescription glasses, and, having traded the polyester shirts he favors onstage for a camouflage green hoodie, the vibe Niespodziani exudes is hardcore music geek. Olson, who has known Niespodziani since they were in fourth grade in Columbus, Indiana, says when they met, “Nick was the nerdy kid who was good at math and jump-roping.”

Photograph by Emily Butler

Yacht Rock Revue, for Niespodziani, is a part he plays: “I’m almost more an actor than a musician.” He and his bandmates spend hours prowling vintage stores looking for the retro leisure wear that they don onstage—and then a not inconsiderable amount of money getting those old clothes tailored to fit. “It’s a war of attrition,” he says. “You find something that might work, and then it’s itchy or it smells or holes develop because the shirt is older than I am. You have to be shopping at all times.” They once did a gig in street clothes, but it felt wrong. “Polyester,” he says, “is our armor.”

Sometimes that armor hasn’t been enough for Niespodziani. During the band’s first few years, they played weekly at the 10 High. “I would drink a lot and almost sabotage myself, sometimes onstage, and make fun of it,” he says. “People would ask me about the band, and I’d talk down about it and act like I was too cool. I didn’t lash out at people, but it was strange to get well-known for something that didn’t make me feel good about myself. I’d get drunk onstage to deal with it.”

His bandmates certainly noticed, but, for the most part, they let their friend work through it. “He’s been the moodiest about it,” Cobb says. “He just hates Rupert Holmes’s ‘Escape (The Piña Colada Song).’ Hates it. But he knows it goes over well.” So when Niespodziani’s got to play it, he’ll often deadpan an introduction comparing Holmes to da Vinci and Picasso. “By talking about how great it is, it helps me shed that song’s terribleness.”

Niespodziani believes the ironic distance he puts between the guy he is onstage and the guy drinking coffee at Ponce City Market is fundamental to the band’s success. “Because we thought—or at least I thought—I was too cool to be doing this, everything has keyed off what the audience reacts to, whether it’s the clothes we wear, the sidestep dance we do, whatever. The audience has been the head of the snake. We’ve just been following it.” It helps that with more than 500 songs in their repertoire, the band doesn ’ t burn out too badly on any tune. “The only song we have to play is ‘Africa.’” The 1982 hit by Toto, by a band made up of talented but largely anonymous studio musicians, has become something of an Internet meme itself, with multiple think pieces devoted to untangling its allure. “Part of it may be the audacity of the synthesizer sound,” Niespodziani says. “They’re just so cheesy. The chords are fairly complex and pretty unexpected. The way it goes to the minor key in the chorus is kind of a cognitive disconnect. And when you listen to the words, it’s not really about anything. Maybe that’s why it’s so quintessentially yacht rock. It’s not so much what the words are saying, it’s how they make you feel, this combination of pure joy crossed with reminiscing.”

Despite his ambivalence about the music, Niespodziani is first among equals within the band. He sings lead on more songs than anyone else, and it’s his judgment they trust when adding songs to their catalog. He has a system: “Generally, the more a song annoys me, the more likely it makes sorority girls want to eat each other’s brains. Also, almost every song would be an encore for the band we’re covering. So, those are the basics: Does it annoy me? Are girls going to like it? Would it be an encore for the band we’re covering?”

“I’m almost more an actor than a musician.”

Others in the band are more unabashed about the music. “I’ve always loved all this stuff,” says Lee, the bassist. “You have to love it before you can play with it in that comedy sense and do it right.” This ability to walk that line between having fun with the music and making fun of the music has won over many of the original artists. When the band first reached out to guys like Dupree, Gary Wright (“Dream Weaver”), and Player’s Peter Beckett, some artists disdained the term “yacht rock” and feared being treated as a joke. Dupree was an early convert and evangelized about the band to his peers, touting their musicianship and enthusiasm. He says those who eventually performed with Yacht Rock Revue were “staggered that they were playing in front of 4,000 people who knew every word to their songs.”

The genre’s rise as a cultural touchstone—Jimmy Fallon has been a big booster, inviting Dupree, Cross, McDonald, and others to perform on TV, and there’s now a SiriusXM station devoted to it—has benefited these artists. Their Spotify and YouTube streaming numbers have risen noticeably. “It’s made a big impact financially,” Dupree says. “Even the skeptics have seen the power of it.”

For a while, the band had a bit of a good-natured Twitter beef with the creators of the Yacht Rock web series. Ryznar admits he initially felt like the band had hijacked his idea, but now his only real gripe is Yacht Rock Revue’s liberal definition of yacht rock. “Half their set is incredible yacht rock,” Ryznar says. “The other half, they play way too much Eagles, America, and Fleetwood Mac. Those aren’t yacht rock bands.”

The band makes no apologies. As Niespodziani puts it, “Yacht rock is what we say it is now.” That’s not just bravado. Yacht Rock Revue trademarked the term “yacht rock” for live performances, so other acts can’t use it without permission. The maneuver helped snuff out competition from other cover bands but occasionally puts them in conflict with some of the genre’s originators. When Cross’s manager tried to assemble a “Yacht Rock” tour featuring Cross, Orleans, and Firefall, it ran afoul of the trademark.

“We said, ‘If you want to call it Yacht Rock, we’ve got to be the [backing] band,’” Olson says. That compromise collapsed when Cross’s manager “wanted a piece of the trademark and of all our earnings over three years.” Yacht Rock Revue sent a cease-and-desist letter instead.

The band’s set list is anchored in the classic late ’70s, early ’80s yacht-rock era but can stretch to include songs as old as the late ’60s or as recent as the early ’90s. Of course, there’s a balance to be struck: If they go too far afield, they risk becoming just another cover band, but there are other considerations to take into account, too. As Cobb explains, “Nothing about Whitney Houston is in the genre, but when we play ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody,’ the chicks go crazy, everybody orders another round, the bar sells out of Tito’s and Red Bull, and they’re like, ‘When can you come back? You broke alcohol records.’”

The band’s audiences have evolved over time. The earliest shows were heavy on hipsters and fellow musicians. Then, those fans brought their parents. At a Buckhead Theatre gig in March, the crowd leaned toward balding guys in button-down shirts and platinum-blond women wearing expensive-looking jewelry. Niespodziani once called yacht rock “the music of the overprivileged,” which was a joke, but also not. Getting older, wealthier fans out to shows is an impressive accomplishment most artists would envy, but it has changed something fundamental about Yacht Rock’s appeal. “When we started, it was people elbowing each other, laughing at this music,” Niespodziani says. “Now, there’s no irony.”

On a night off during a Vegas stand in 2015, the entire band went to see Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band perform at the Pearl Theater in the Palms Casino. Starr began doing these tours in 1989, fronting a band of aging rockers like Gary Wright, Steve Lukather (Toto), and Gregg Rolie (Santana, Journey), whose names and faces you might not recognize but whose songs you certainly would. Just past the midway point in the show at the Pearl, Lukather stepped to the mic, and Starr began beating out a familiar rhythm on the drums. As Lukather picked out the first few notes on the guitar and the synths pumped out the insistent melody, the song was instantly recognizable: “Africa.” In the theater balcony, Cobb recalls looking across at Niespodziani and seeing something change in his friend. “I just watched Nick’s face and, all of a sudden, it was as if this weight lifted off him.”

The Beatles had always been Niespodziani’s favorite band. “Now, I’m watching Ringo Starr, and he has to play fucking ‘Africa’ every night, too,” Niespodziani says. “He was in the Beatles! That was a life-changing moment for me.” Starr and his band were touching many of the same nerves in the audience at the Pearl Theater that Yacht Rock Revue touches all the time. “When we started Yacht Rock, I didn’t like the music we were playing. I didn’t like myself for being in a cover band. I had some dark times. It’s been a journey for me to get okay with it. That was a pretty key moment. Once you get to a certain point in the music business, everybody’s hustling. I’m not going to look down my nose at anybody for doing anything that makes it possible to feed their family by singing songs.”

Seeing Starr go yacht rock was a significant step that’s made enjoying Yacht Rock Revue’s triumphs a little easier. For years, Olson and Niespodziani waited for interest in yacht rock—and their band—to fade. Opening Venkman’s was a hedge against that. But Yacht Rock Revue’s stock continues to rise. Their touring business has grown 375 percent since 2014. “It’s not a fad,” Niespodziani says. “This is going to be our biggest year by far.” They play increasingly larger venues and have recently started booking dates overseas, including this summer in London.

The question is, where else can they take this, literally and figuratively? Back in 2013, the band quietly released a five-song EP: four original songs and a cover of—what else?—“Africa.” They used to occasionally drop an original tune into their shows, sometimes announcing it as a “Hall & Oates B-side.” The crowds were amenable, kind of. “It’s hard when they know every word to every song,” Niespodziani says. “They don’t come for discovery; they come for familiarity.” That’s a truism any band who has ever had a hit knows all too well. The essential appeal of Yacht Rock Revue—and yacht rock—is a combination of nostalgia and escape, a yearning for the simpler, easier time these songs evoke. Yet Niespodziani has been wondering lately if it’s possible to pivot fans to his own songs, either with Yacht Rock Revue or Indianapolis Jones.

“That’s still my dream,” he says, “to have one song that matters to somebody the way ‘Steal Away’ matters to people. No matter what else I do in life, if I don’t ever get over that bar, part of me will feel like I failed at the one thing I wanted. I don’t know if I can ever let go of that. I don’t know if I’m ready to face that darkness.”

In 2013, during a commencement speech at Syracuse University, the author George Saunders told graduates, “Success is like a mountain that keeps growing as you hike up it.” Niespodziani brought this quote up to me while we were having coffee. He knows his life is nothing to complain about. He lives a rarefied existence where he gets paid a lot of money to play music. But clearly, the mountain grows in front of him, and the hike up isn’t always easy. He’s still prone to self-deprecating asides about his band, he still kinda envies the Robbie Duprees of the world—but, hey, he doesn’t need to get drunk onstage anymore, and he doesn’t lose sleep wondering if he’s a force for good or evil in the world. That stop sign at the crossroads in the Old Fourth Ward isn’t an omen or a cautionary tale. It’s simply a funny story that makes people smile. He’s just working on becoming one of them.

“The way I really made peace with it is, it occurred to me that everywhere we went, everyone was so happy to see me,” he says. “These people, it’s the highlight of their week to come sing along with these tunes. If your job is making people happy, that’s a pretty good calling.” He leans back in his chair and smiles. “My job is to make it okay for everybody else to have fun. That’s kind of cool.” He gets quiet for a moment and shrugs.

This article appears in our  July 2018 issue .

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• Places - European, Western and Northern Russia

YEKATERINBURG: FACTORIES, URAL SIGHTS, YELTSIN AND THE WHERE NICHOLAS II WAS KILLED

Sverdlovsk oblast.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is the largest region in the Urals; it lies in the foothills of mountains and contains a monument indicating the border between Europe and Asia. The region covers 194,800 square kilometers (75,200 square miles), is home to about 4.3 million people and has a population density of 22 people per square kilometer. About 83 percent of the population live in urban areas. Yekaterinburg is the capital and largest city, with 1.5 million people. For Russians, the Ural Mountains are closely associated with Pavel Bazhov's tales and known for folk crafts such as Kasli iron sculpture, Tagil painting, and copper embossing. Yekaterinburg is the birthplace of Russia’s iron and steel industry, taking advantage of the large iron deposits in the Ural mountains. The popular Silver Ring of the Urals tourist route starts here.

In the summer you can follow in the tracks of Yermak, climb relatively low Ural mountain peaks and look for boulders seemingly with human faces on them. You can head to the Gemstone Belt of the Ural mountains, which used to house emerald, amethyst and topaz mines. In the winter you can go ice fishing, ski and cross-country ski.

Sverdlovsk Oblast and Yekaterinburg are located near the center of Russia, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and also the southern and northern parts of Russia. Winters are longer and colder than in western section of European Russia. Snowfalls can be heavy. Winter temperatures occasionally drop as low as - 40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) and the first snow usually falls in October. A heavy winter coat, long underwear and good boots are essential. Snow and ice make the sidewalks very slippery, so footwear with a good grip is important. Since the climate is very dry during the winter months, skin moisturizer plus lip balm are recommended. Be alert for mud on street surfaces when snow cover is melting (April-May). Patches of mud create slippery road conditions.

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg (kilometer 1818 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is the fourth largest city in Russia, with of 1.5 million and growth rate of about 12 percent, high for Russia. Located in the southern Ural mountains, it was founded by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine, it was used by the tsars as a summer retreat and is where tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed and President Boris Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career. The city is near the border between Europe and Asia.

Yekaterinburg (also spelled Ekaterinburg) is located on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains in the headwaters of the Iset and Pyshma Rivers. The Iset runs through the city center. Three ponds — Verkh-Isetsky, Gorodskoy and Nizhne-Isetsky — were created on it. Yekaterinburg has traditionally been a city of mining and was once the center of the mining industry of the Urals and Siberia. Yekaterinburg remains a major center of the Russian armaments industry and is sometimes called the "Pittsburgh of Russia.". A few ornate, pastel mansions and wide boulevards are reminders of the tsarist era. The city is large enough that it has its own Metro system but is characterized mostly by blocky Soviet-era apartment buildings. The city has advanced under President Vladimir Putin and is now one of the fastest growing places in Russia, a country otherwise characterized by population declines

Yekaterinburg is technically an Asian city as it lies 32 kilometers east of the continental divide between Europe and Asia. The unofficial capital of the Urals, a key region in the Russian heartland, it is second only to Moscow in terms of industrial production and capital of Sverdlovsk oblast. Among the important industries are ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, machine building and metalworking, chemical and petrochemicals, construction materials and medical, light and food industries. On top of being home of numerous heavy industries and mining concerns, Yekaterinburg is also a major center for industrial research and development and power engineering as well as home to numerous institutes of higher education, technical training, and scientific research. In addition, Yekaterinburg is the largest railway junction in Russia: the Trans-Siberian Railway passes through it, the southern, northern, western and eastern routes merge in the city.

Accommodation: There are two good and affordable hotels — the 3-star Emerald and Parus hotels — located close to the city's most popular landmarks and main transport interchanges in the center of Yekaterinburg. Room prices start at RUB 1,800 per night.

History of Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine I. It was used by the tsars as a summer retreat but was mainly developed as metalworking and manufacturing center to take advantage of the large deposits of iron and other minerals in the Ural mountains. It is best known to Americans as the place where the last Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and near where American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down in 1960.

Peter the Great recognized the importance of the iron and copper-rich Urals region for Imperial Russia's industrial and military development. In November 1723, he ordered the construction of a fortress factory and an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. In its early years Yekaterinburg grew rich from gold and other minerals and later coal. The Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745 created such a huge amount of wealth that one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. By the mid-18th century, metallurgical plants had sprung up across the Urals to cast cannons, swords, guns and other weapons to arm Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The Yekaterinburg mint produced most of Russia's coins. Explorations of the Trans-Baikal and Altai regions began here in the 18th century.

Iron, cast iron and copper were the main products. Even though Iron from the region went into the Eiffel Tower, the main plant in Yekaterinburg itself was shut down in 1808. The city still kept going through a mountain factory control system of the Urals. The first railway in the Urals was built here: in 1878, the Yekaterinburg-Perm railway branch connected the province's capital with the factories of the Middle Urals.

In the Soviet era the city was called Sverdlovsk (named after Yakov Sverdlov, the man who organized Nicholas II's execution). During the first five-year plans the city became industrial — old plants were reconstructed, new ones were built. The center of Yekaterinburg was formed to conform to the historical general plan of 1829 but was the layout was adjusted around plants and factories. In the Stalin era the city was a major gulag transhipment center. In World War II, many defense-related industries were moved here. It and the surrounding area were a center of the Soviet Union's military industrial complex. Soviet tanks, missiles and aircraft engines were made in the Urals. During the Cold War era, Yekaterinburg was a center of weapons-grade uranium enrichment and processing, warhead assembly and dismantlement. In 1979, 64 people died when anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility. Yekaterinburg was a “Closed City” for 40 years during the Cold Soviet era and was not open to foreigners until 1991

In the early post-Soviet era, much like Pittsburgh in the 1970s, Yekaterinburg had a hard struggle d to cope with dramatic economic changes that have made its heavy industries uncompetitive on the world market. Huge defense plants struggled to survive and the city was notorious as an organized crime center in the 1990s, when its hometown boy Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia. By the 2000s, Yekaterinburg’s retail and service was taking off, the defense industry was reviving and it was attracting tech industries and investments related to the Urals’ natural resources. By the 2010s it was vying to host a world exhibition in 2020 (it lost, Dubai won) and it had McDonald’s, Subway, sushi restaurants, and Gucci, Chanel and Armani. There were Bentley and Ferrari dealerships but they closed down

Transportation in Yekaterinburg

Getting There: By Plane: Yekaterinburg is a three-hour flight from Moscow with prices starting at RUB 8,000, or a 3-hour flight from Saint Petersburg starting from RUB 9,422 (direct round-trip flight tickets for one adult passenger). There are also flights from Frankfurt, Istanbul, China and major cities in the former Soviet Union.

By Train: Yekaterinburg is a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Daily train service is available to Moscow and many other Russian cities.Yekaterinburg is a 32-hour train ride from Moscow (tickets RUB 8,380 and above) or a 36-hour train ride from Saint Petersburg (RUB 10,300 and above). The ticket prices are round trip for a berth in a sleeper compartment for one adult passenger). By Car: a car trip from Moscow to Yekateringburg is 1,787 kilometers long and takes about 18 hours. The road from Saint Petersburg is 2,294 kilometers and takes about 28 hours.

Regional Transport: The region's public transport includes buses and suburban electric trains. Regional trains provide transport to larger cities in the Ural region. Buses depart from Yekaterinburg’s two bus stations: the Southern Bus Station and the Northern Bus Station.

Regional Transport: According the to Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT): “Public transportation is well developed. Overcrowding is common. Fares are low. Service is efficient. Buses are the main form of public transport. Tram network is extensive. Fares are reasonable; service is regular. Trams are heavily used by residents, overcrowding is common. Purchase ticket after boarding. Metro runs from city center to Uralmash, an industrial area south of the city. Metro ends near the main railway station. Fares are inexpensive.

“Traffic is congested in city center. Getting around by car can be difficult. Route taxis (minivans) provide the fastest transport. They generally run on specific routes, but do not have specific stops. Drivers stop where passengers request. Route taxis can be hailed. Travel by bus or trolleybuses may be slow in rush hour. Trams are less affected by traffic jams. Trolley buses (electric buses) cannot run when temperatures drop below freezing.”

Entertainment, Sports and Recreation in Yekaterinburg

The performing arts in Yekaterinburg are first rate. The city has an excellent symphony orchestra, opera and ballet theater, and many other performing arts venues. Tickets are inexpensive. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater is lavishly designed and richly decorated building in the city center of Yekaterinburg. The theater was established in 1912 and building was designed by architect Vladimir Semyonov and inspired by the Vienna Opera House and the Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa.

Vaynera Street is a pedestrian only shopping street in city center with restaurants, cafes and some bars. But otherwise Yekaterinburg's nightlife options are limited. There are a handful of expensive Western-style restaurants and bars, none of them that great. Nightclubs serve the city's nouveau riche clientele. Its casinos have closed down. Some of them had links with organized crime. New dance clubs have sprung up that are popular with Yekaterinburg's more affluent youth.

Yekaterinburg's most popular spectator sports are hockey, basketball, and soccer. There are stadiums and arenas that host all three that have fairly cheap tickets. There is an indoor water park and lots of parks and green spaces. The Urals have many lakes, forests and mountains are great for hiking, boating, berry and mushroom hunting, swimming and fishing. Winter sports include cross-country skiing and ice skating. Winter lasts about six months and there’s usually plenty of snow. The nearby Ural Mountains however are not very high and the downhill skiing opportunities are limited..

Sights in Yekaterinburg

Sights in Yekaterinburg include the Museum of City Architecture and Ural Industry, with an old water tower and mineral collection with emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and other precious stone; Geological Alley, a small park with labeled samples of minerals found in the Urals region; the Ural Geology Museum, which houses an extensive collection of stones, gold and gems from the Urals; a monument marking the border between Europe and Asia; a memorial for gulag victims; and a graveyard with outlandish memorials for slain mafia members.

The Military History Museum houses the remains of the U-2 spy plane shot down in 1960 and locally made tanks and rocket launchers. The fine arts museum contains paintings by some of Russia's 19th-century masters. Also worth a look are the History an Local Studies Museum; the Political History and Youth Museum; and the University and Arboretum. Old wooden houses can be seen around Zatoutstovsya ulitsa and ulitsa Belinskogo. Around the city are wooded parks, lakes and quarries used to harvest a variety of minerals. Weiner Street is the main street of Yekaterinburg. Along it are lovely sculptures and 19th century architecture. Take a walk around the unique Literary Quarter

Plotinka is a local meeting spot, where you will often find street musicians performing. Plotinka can be described as the center of the city's center. This is where Yekaterinburg holds its biggest events: festivals, seasonal fairs, regional holiday celebrations, carnivals and musical fountain shows. There are many museums and open-air exhibitions on Plotinka. Plotinka is named after an actual dam of the city pond located nearby (“plotinka” means “a small dam” in Russian).In November 1723, Peter the Great ordered the construction of an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. “Iset” can be translated from Finnish as “abundant with fish”. This name was given to the river by the Mansi — the Finno-Ugric people dwelling on the eastern slope of the Northern Urals.

Vysotsky and Iset are skyscrapers that are 188.3 meters and 209 meters high, respectively. Fifty-story-high Iset has been described by locals as the world’s northernmost skyscraper. Before the construction of Iset, Vysotsky was the tallest building of Yekaterinburg and Russia (excluding Moscow). A popular vote has decided to name the skyscraper after the famous Soviet songwriter, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky. and the building was opened on November 25, 2011. There is a lookout at the top of the building, and the Vysotsky museum on its second floor. The annual “Vysotsky climb” (1137 steps) is held there, with a prize of RUB 100,000. While Vysotsky serves as an office building, Iset, owned by the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, houses 225 premium residential apartments ranging from 80 to 490 square meters in size.

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center (in the city center: ul. Yeltsina, 3) is a non-governmental organization named after the first president of the Russian Federation. The Museum of the First President of Russia as well as his archives are located in the Center. There is also a library, educational and children's centers, and exposition halls. Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career in Yekaterinburg. He was born in Butka about 200 kilometers east of Yekaterinburg.

The core of the Center is the Museum. Modern multimedia technologies help animate the documents, photos from the archives, and artifacts. The Yeltsin Museum holds collections of: propaganda posters, leaflets, and photos of the first years of the Soviet regime; portraits and portrait sculptures of members of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of various years; U.S.S.R. government bonds and other items of the Soviet era; a copy of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, published in the “Novy Mir” magazine (#11, 1962); perestroika-era editions of books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and other authors; theater, concert, and cinema posters, programs, and tickets — in short, all of the artifacts of the perestroika era.

The Yeltsin Center opened in 2012. Inside you will also find an art gallery, a bookstore, a gift shop, a food court, concert stages and a theater. There are regular screenings of unique films that you will not find anywhere else. Also operating inside the center, is a scientific exploritorium for children. The center was designed by Boris Bernaskoni. Almost from the its very opening, the Yeltsin Center has been accused by members of different political entities of various ideological crimes. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00am to 9:00pm.

Where Nicholas II was Executed

On July, 17, 1918, during this reign of terror of the Russian Civil War, former-tsar Nicholas II, his wife, five children (the 13-year-old Alexis, 22-year-old Olga, 19-year-old Maria and 17-year-old Anastasia)the family physician, the cook, maid, and valet were shot to death by a Red Army firing squad in the cellar of the house they were staying at in Yekaterinburg.

Ipatiev House (near Church on the Blood, Ulitsa Libknekhta) was a merchant's house where Nicholas II and his family were executed. The house was demolished in 1977, on the orders of an up and coming communist politician named Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin later said that the destruction of the house was an "act of barbarism" and he had no choice because he had been ordered to do it by the Politburo,

The site is marked with s cross with the photos of the family members and cross bearing their names. A small wooden church was built at the site. It contains paintings of the family. For a while there were seven traditional wooden churches. Mass is given ay noon everyday in an open-air museum. The Church on the Blood — constructed to honor Nicholas II and his family — was built on the part of the site in 1991 and is now a major place of pilgrimage.

Nicholas and his family where killed during the Russian civil war. It is thought the Bolsheviks figured that Nicholas and his family gave the Whites figureheads to rally around and they were better of dead. Even though the death orders were signed Yakov Sverdlov, the assassination was personally ordered by Lenin, who wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Trotsky suggested a trial. Lenin nixed the idea, deciding something had to be done about the Romanovs before White troops approached Yekaterinburg. Trotsky later wrote: "The decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of he punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing."

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “Having read a lot about the end of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and servants, I wanted to see the place in Yekaterinburg where that event occurred. The gloomy quality of this quest depressed Sergei’s spirits, but he drove all over Yekaterinburg searching for the site nonetheless. Whenever he stopped and asked a pedestrian how to get to the house where Nicholas II was murdered, the reaction was a wince. Several people simply walked away. But eventually, after a lot of asking, Sergei found the location. It was on a low ridge near the edge of town, above railroad tracks and the Iset River. The house, known as the Ipatiev House, was no longer standing, and the basement where the actual killings happened had been filled in. I found the blankness of the place sinister and dizzying. It reminded me of an erasure done so determinedly that it had worn a hole through the page. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“The street next to the site is called Karl Liebknecht Street. A building near where the house used to be had a large green advertisement that said, in English, “LG—Digitally Yours.” On an adjoining lot, a small chapel kept the memory of the Tsar and his family; beneath a pedestal holding an Orthodox cross, peonies and pansies grew. The inscription on the pedestal read, “We go down on our knees, Russia, at the foot of the tsarist cross.”

Books: The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 1995); The Fall of the Romanovs by Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir Khrustalëv (Yale, 1995);

See Separate Article END OF NICHOLAS II factsanddetails.com

Execution of Nicholas II

According to Robert Massie K. Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra, Nicholas II and his family were awakened from their bedrooms around midnight and taken to the basement. They were told they were to going to take some photographs of them and were told to stand behind a row of chairs.

Suddenly, a group of 11 Russians and Latvians, each with a revolver, burst into the room with orders to kill a specific person. Yakob Yurovsky, a member of the Soviet executive committee, reportedly shouted "your relatives are continuing to attack the Soviet Union.” After firing, bullets bouncing off gemstones hidden in the corsets of Alexandra and her daughters ricocheted around the room like "a shower of hail," the soldiers said. Those that were still breathing were killed with point black shots to the head.

The three sisters and the maid survived the first round thanks to their gems. They were pressed up against a wall and killed with a second round of bullets. The maid was the only one that survived. She was pursued by the executioners who stabbed her more than 30 times with their bayonets. The still writhing body of Alexis was made still by a kick to the head and two bullets in the ear delivered by Yurovsky himself.

Yurovsky wrote: "When the party entered I told the Romanovs that in view of the fact their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals Soviet had decided to shoot them. Nicholas turned his back to the detachment and faced his family. Then, as if collecting himself, he turned around, asking, 'What? What?'"

"[I] ordered the detachment to prepare. Its members had been previously instructed whom to shoot and to am directly at the heart to avoid much blood and to end more quickly. Nicholas said no more. he turned again to his family. The others shouted some incoherent exclamations. All this lasted a few seconds. Then commenced the shooting, which went on for two or three minutes. [I] killed Nicholas on the spot."

Nicholas II’s Initial Burial Site in Yekaterinburg

Ganina Yama Monastery (near the village of Koptyaki, 15 kilometers northwest of Yekaterinburg) stands near the three-meter-deep pit where some the remains of Nicholas II and his family were initially buried. The second burial site — where most of the remains were — is in a field known as Porosyonkov (56.9113628°N 60.4954326°E), seven kilometers from Ganina Yama.

On visiting Ganina Yama Monastery, one person posted in Trip Advisor: “We visited this set of churches in a pretty park with Konstantin from Ekaterinburg Guide Centre. He really brought it to life with his extensive knowledge of the history of the events surrounding their terrible end. The story is so moving so unless you speak Russian, it is best to come here with a guide or else you will have no idea of what is what.”

In 1991, the acid-burned remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed from a shallow roadside mass grave in a swampy area 12 miles northwest of Yekaterinburg. The remains had been found in 1979 by geologist and amateur archeologist Alexander Avdonin, who kept the location secret out of fear that they would be destroyed by Soviet authorities. The location was disclosed to a magazine by one his fellow discovers.

The original plan was to throw the Romanovs down a mine shaft and disposes of their remains with acid. They were thrown in a mine with some grenades but the mine didn't collapse. They were then carried by horse cart. The vats of acid fell off and broke. When the carriage carrying the bodies broke down it was decided the bury the bodies then and there. The remaining acid was poured on the bones, but most of it was soaked up the ground and the bones largely survived.

After this their pulses were then checked, their faces were crushed to make them unrecognizable and the bodies were wrapped in bed sheets loaded onto a truck. The "whole procedure," Yurovsky said took 20 minutes. One soldiers later bragged than he could "die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress's -------."

The bodies were taken to a forest and stripped, burned with acid and gasoline, and thrown into abandoned mine shafts and buried under railroad ties near a country road near the village of Koptyaki. "The bodies were put in the hole," Yurovsky wrote, "and the faces and all the bodies, generally doused with sulfuric acid, both so they couldn't be recognized and prevent a stink from them rotting...We scattered it with branches and lime, put boards on top and drove over it several times—no traces of the hole remained.

Shortly afterwards, the government in Moscow announced that Nicholas II had been shot because of "a counterrevolutionary conspiracy." There was no immediate word on the other members of the family which gave rise to rumors that other members of the family had escaped. Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlov in honor of the man who signed the death orders.

For seven years the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra, three of their daughters and four servants were stored in polyethylene bags on shelves in the old criminal morgue in Yekaterunburg. On July 17, 1998, Nicholas II and his family and servants who were murdered with him were buried Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg along with the other Romanov tsars, who have been buried there starting with Peter the Great. Nicholas II had a side chapel built for himself at the fortress in 1913 but was buried in a new crypt.

Near Yekaterinburg

Factory-Museum of Iron and Steel Metallurgy (in Niznhy Tagil 80 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg) a museum with old mining equipment made at the site of huge abandoned iron and steel factory. Officially known as the Factory-Museum of the History of the Development of Iron and Steel Metallurgy, it covers an area of 30 hectares and contains a factory founded by the Demidov family in 1725 that specialized mainly in the production of high-quality cast iron and steel. Later, the foundry was renamed after Valerian Kuybyshev, a prominent figure of the Communist Party.

The first Russian factory museum, the unusual museum demonstrates all stages of metallurgy and metal working. There is even a blast furnace and an open-hearth furnace. The display of factory equipment includes bridge crane from 1892) and rolling stock equipment from the 19th-20th centuries. In Niznhy Tagil contains some huge blocks of malachite and

Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha (180 kilometers east-northeast of Yekaterinburg) has an open air architecture museum with log buildings, a stone church and other pre-revolutionary architecture. The village is the creation of Ivan Samoilov, a local activist who loved his village so much he dedicated 40 years of his life to recreating it as the open-air museum of wooden architecture.

The stone Savior Church, a good example of Siberian baroque architecture. The interior and exterior of the church are exhibition spaces of design. The houses are very colorful. In tsarist times, rich villagers hired serfs to paint the walls of their wooden izbas (houses) bright colors. Old neglected buildings from the 17th to 19th centuries have been brought to Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha from all over the Urals. You will see the interior design of the houses and hear stories about traditions and customs of the Ural farmers.

Verkhoturye (330 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg) is the home a 400-year-old monastery that served as 16th century capital of the Urals. Verkhoturye is a small town on the Tura River knows as the Jerusalem of the Urals for its many holy places, churches and monasteries. The town's main landmark is its Kremlin — the smallest in Russia. Pilgrims visit the St. Nicholas Monastery to see the remains of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, the patron saint of fishermen.

Ural Mountains

Ural Mountains are the traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia and have been a crossroads of Russian history. Stretching from Kazakhstan to the fringes of the Arctic Kara Sea, the Urals lie almost exactly along the 60 degree meridian of longitude and extend for about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) from north to south and varies in width from about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in the north and 160 kilometers (100 miles) the south. At kilometers 1777 on the Trans-Siberian Railway there is white obelisk with "Europe" carved in Russian on one side and "Asia" carved on the other.

The eastern side of the Urals contains a lot of granite and igneous rock. The western side is primarily sandstone and limestones. A number of precious stones can be found in the southern part of the Urals, including emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and aquamarines. The highest peaks are in the north. Mount Narodnaya is the highest of all but is only 1884 meters (6,184 feet) high. The northern Urals are covered in thick forests and home to relatively few people.

Like the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, the Urals are very old mountains — with rocks and sediments that are hundreds of millions years old — that were one much taller than they are now and have been steadily eroded down over millions of years by weather and other natural processes to their current size. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “The rock composition helps shape the topography: the high ranges and low, broad-topped ridges consist of quartzites, schists, and gabbro, all weather-resistant. Buttes are frequent, and there are north–south troughs of limestone, nearly all containing river valleys. Karst topography is highly developed on the western slopes of the Urals, with many caves, basins, and underground streams. The eastern slopes, on the other hand, have fewer karst formations; instead, rocky outliers rise above the flattened surfaces. Broad foothills, reduced to peneplain, adjoin the Central and Southern Urals on the east.

“The Urals date from the structural upheavals of the Hercynian orogeny (about 250 million years ago). About 280 million years ago there arose a high mountainous region, which was eroded to a peneplain. Alpine folding resulted in new mountains, the most marked upheaval being that of the Nether-Polar Urals...The western slope of the Urals is composed of middle Paleozoic sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones) that are about 350 million years old. In many places it descends in terraces to the Cis-Ural depression (west of the Urals), to which much of the eroded matter was carried during the late Paleozoic (about 300 million years ago). Found there are widespread karst (a starkly eroded limestone region) and gypsum, with large caverns and subterranean streams. On the eastern slope, volcanic layers alternate with sedimentary strata, all dating from middle Paleozoic times.”

Southern Urals

The southern Urals are characterized by grassy slopes and fertile valleys. The middle Urals are a rolling platform that barely rises above 300 meters (1,000 feet). This region is rich in minerals and has been heavily industrialized. This is where you can find Yekaterinburg (formally Sverdlovsk), the largest city in the Urals.

Most of the Southern Urals are is covered with forests, with 50 percent of that pine-woods, 44 percent birch woods, and the rest are deciduous aspen and alder forests. In the north, typical taiga forests are the norm. There are patches of herbal-poaceous steppes, northem sphagnous marshes and bushy steppes, light birch forests and shady riparian forests, tall-grass mountainous meadows, lowland ling marshes and stony placers with lichen stains. In some places there are no large areas of homogeneous forests, rather they are forests with numerous glades and meadows of different size.

In the Ilmensky Mountains Reserve in the Southern Urals, scientists counted 927 vascular plants (50 relicts, 23 endemic species), about 140 moss species, 483 algae species and 566 mushroom species. Among the species included into the Red Book of Russia are feather grass, downy-leaved feather grass, Zalessky feather grass, moccasin flower, ladies'-slipper, neottianthe cucullata, Baltic orchis, fen orchis, helmeted orchis, dark-winged orchis, Gelma sandwart, Krasheninnikov sandwart, Clare astragalus.

The fauna of the vertebrate animals in the Reserve includes 19 fish, 5 amphibian and 5 reptile. Among the 48 mammal species are elks, roe deer, boars, foxes, wolves, lynxes, badgers, common weasels, least weasels, forest ferrets, Siberian striped weasel, common marten, American mink. Squirrels, beavers, muskrats, hares, dibblers, moles, hedgehogs, voles are quite common, as well as chiropterans: pond bat, water bat, Brandt's bat, whiskered bat, northern bat, long-eared bat, parti-coloured bat, Nathusius' pipistrelle. The 174 bird bird species include white-tailed eagles, honey hawks, boreal owls, gnome owls, hawk owls, tawny owls, common scoters, cuckoos, wookcocks, common grouses, wood grouses, hazel grouses, common partridges, shrikes, goldenmountain thrushes, black- throated loons and others.

Activities and Places in the Ural Mountains

The Urals possess beautiful natural scenery that can be accessed from Yekaterinburg with a rent-a-car, hired taxi and tour. Travel agencies arrange rafting, kayaking and hiking trips. Hikes are available in the taiga forest and the Urals. Trips often include walks through the taiga to small lakes and hikes into the mountains and excursions to collect mushrooms and berries and climb in underground caves. Mellow rafting is offered in a relatively calm six kilometer section of the River Serga. In the winter visitor can enjoy cross-mountains skiing, downhill skiing, ice fishing, dog sledding, snow-shoeing and winter hiking through the forest to a cave covered with ice crystals.

Lake Shartash (10 kilometers from Yekaterinburg) is where the first Ural gold was found, setting in motion the Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745, which created so much wealth one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. The area around Shartash Lake is a favorite picnic and barbecue spot of the locals. Getting There: by bus route No. 50, 054 or 54, with a transfer to suburban commuter bus route No. 112, 120 or 121 (the whole trip takes about an hour), or by car (10 kilometers drive from the city center, 40 minutes).

Revun Rapids (90 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg near Beklenishcheva village) is a popular white water rafting places On the nearby cliffs you can see the remains of a mysterious petroglyph from the Paleolithic period. Along the steep banks, you may notice the dark entrance of Smolinskaya Cave. There are legends of a sorceress who lived in there. The rocks at the riverside are suited for competitive rock climbers and beginners. Climbing hooks and rings are hammered into rocks. The most fun rafting is generally in May and June.

Olenii Ruchii National Park (100 kilometers west of Yekaterinburg) is the most popular nature park in Sverdlovsk Oblast and popular weekend getaway for Yekaterinburg residents. Visitors are attracted by the beautiful forests, the crystal clear Serga River and picturesque rocks caves. There are some easy hiking routes: the six-kilometer Lesser Ring and the 15-kilometer Greater Ring. Another route extends for 18 km and passes by the Mitkinsky Mine, which operated in the 18th-19th centuries. It's a kind of an open-air museum — you can still view mining an enrichment equipment here. There is also a genuine beaver dam nearby.

Among the other attractions at Olenii Ruchii are Druzhba (Friendship) Cave, with passages that extend for about 500 meters; Dyrovaty Kamen (Holed Stone), created over time by water of Serga River eroding rock; and Utoplennik (Drowned Man), where you can see “The Angel of Sole Hope”., created by the Swedish artist Lehna Edwall, who has placed seven angels figures in different parts of the world to “embrace the planet, protecting it from fear, despair, and disasters.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

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Yekaterinburg city, Russia

The capital city of Sverdlovsk oblast .

Yekaterinburg - Overview

Yekaterinburg or Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk in 1924-1991) is the fourth most populous city in Russia (after Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk), the administrative center of the Ural Federal District and Sverdlovsk Oblast.

This city is one of the country’s largest transport and logistics hubs, as well as an important industrial center. It is unofficially called the “capital of the Urals.”

The population of Yekaterinburg is about 1,493,600 (2022), the area - 468 sq. km.

The phone code - +7 343, the postal codes - 620000-620920.

Ekaterinburg city flag

Ekaterinburg city coat of arms.

Ekaterinburg city map, Russia

Ekaterinburg city latest news and posts from our blog:.

26 May, 2020 / Unique Color Photos of Yekaterinburg in 1909 .

2 December, 2018 / Yekaterinburg - the view from above .

21 November, 2018 / Abandoned Railway Tunnel in Didino .

4 December, 2017 / Stadiums and Matches of the World Cup 2018 in Russia .

3 January, 2017 / Ekaterinburg, the Capital of the Urals: Then and Now .

More posts..

News, notes and thoughts:

4 April, 2011   / Free travel on new high-speed trains should allay fans' fears about long journey to Ekaterinburg - the most far-flung city on Russia's list of sites for 2018 World Cup. Let's hope the train will not break down in the middle of nowhere.

1 February, 2011   / Today is the 80th anniversary of the birth of Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia. President Medvedev today unveiled a monument to Yeltsin in his home city Ekaterinburg. First one in Russia.

History of Yekaterinburg

Foundation of yekaterinburg.

The territory along the Iset River, which served as a convenient transport route from the Ural Mountains deep into Siberia, has long attracted settlers. The oldest of the currently discovered settlements on the territory of present Yekaterinburg was located next to the Palkinsky Stone Tents rock massif and dates back to the 6th millennium BC.

From the 7th-3rd centuries BC, ancient metallurgists who mastered the smelting of copper lived in this settlement. Copper figures of birds, animals, people, arrowheads, various household items were found here. Later they learned how to make iron products. All discovered settlements were destroyed as a result of fires, possibly during raids of the conquerors.

The territory occupied by present Yekaterinburg became part of Russia in the middle of the 17th century. At that time, it had practically no permanent population. The first Russian settlements were founded in the second half of the 17th century. At the beginning of the 18th century, the first ironworks were built here.

In the spring of 1723, by decree of Emperor Peter I, the construction of the largest iron-making plant in Russia began on the banks of the Iset River. Construction began on the initiative of Vasily Tatishchev (a prominent Russian statesman). He was supported by Georg Wilhelm de Gennin (a German-born Russian military officer and engineer), on the initiative of which the fortress plant was named Yekaterinburg in honor of Empress Catherine I (Yekaterina in Russian), the wife of Peter I.

More Historical Facts…

The historic birthday of Yekaterinburg is November 18, 1723. On this day, a test run of the plant equipment was carried out. Its main products included iron, cast iron, and copper. In 1725, the Yekaterinburg Mint began production on the territory of the fortress and became the main producer of copper coins in the Russian Empire. Until 1876, it produced about 80% of the country’s copper coins. In the 1720s, the population of Yekaterinburg was about 4,000 people.

Yekaterinburg - one of the economic centers of the Russian Empire

In the middle of the 18th century, the first ore gold in Russia was discovered in this region, which was the beginning of the gold industry in the country. As a result, Yekaterinburg became the center of a whole system of densely located plants and began to develop as the capital of the mining region, which spread on both sides of the Ural Range.

In 1781, Catherine II granted Yekaterinburg the status of a county town in the Perm Governorate. The population of the town was about 8,000 people. In 1783, the town received a coat of arms depicting an ore mine and a melting furnace, which symbolized its mining and metallurgical industries (similar images are depicted on the current coat of arms and flag of Yekaterinburg).

In 1783, the Great Siberian Road was opened - the main road of the Russian Empire that passed through Yekaterinburg. It served as an impetus for the transformation of Yekaterinburg into a transport hub and a center of trade. Thus, Yekaterinburg, among other towns of the Perm Governorate, became the key town for the development of the boundless and rich Siberia, the “window to Asia”, just as St. Petersburg was the Russian “window to Europe.”

In 1808, the Yekaterinburg plant was closed, and the history of the town entered a new stage related to the development of a large regional center with a diversified economy. At the beginning of the 19th century, the gold mining industry flourished. At the same time, deposits of emeralds, sapphires, aquamarines, diamonds, and other precious, semiprecious, and ornamental stones were discovered in the Urals. Yekaterinburg became one of the world centers for their artistic processing.

After the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the mining industry of the Urals experienced a severe crisis, a number of plants were closed. In 1878, the first railway was constructed across the Urals and connected Yekaterinburg with Perm. In 1888, the Yekaterinburg-Tyumen railway was built, and in 1897 - the railway to Chelyabinsk, which provided access to the Trans-Siberian Railway. Yekaterinburg became a major railway junction, which contributed to the development of the local food industry, especially flour milling. In 1913, the population of Yekaterinburg was about 69,000 people.

Yekaterinburg in the first years of Soviet power

On November 8, 1917, Soviet power was established in Yekaterinburg. On April 30, 1918, the last Russian emperor Nicholas II and his family members with a few servants were transported from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. They were placed in the “House of Special Purpose”, the mansion of engineer Nikolai Ipatiev requisitioned for this purpose, and transferred under the supervision and responsibility of the Ural Regional Soviet.

In July 1918, units of the White Siberian army approached Yekaterinburg, under this pretext the leadership of the Ural Regional Soviet decided to shoot the imperial family. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, it was done in the basement of the Ipatiev House.

10 days later, units of the Czechoslovak Legion entered Yekaterinburg. Over the next 12 months, it was under the control of anti-Bolshevik forces. On July 14, 1919, the Red Army reoccupied the city. Soviet authorities and the Yekaterinburg Province with a center in Yekaterinburg were restored. In 1920, the population of the city was about 94,400 people.

The political center of the Urals moved from Perm to Yekaterinburg. In 1923, Yekaterinburg became the administrative center of the vast Ural Oblast, which in size exceeded the territory of the present Ural Federal District of Russia. In 1924, the city council decided to rename the capital of the new region to Sverdlovsk - in honor of Yakov Sverdlov, a Bolshevik party administrator and chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

Sverdlovsk - a Soviet industrial giant

During the years of Stalin’s industrialization, Sverdlovsk was turned into a powerful industrial center. The old factories were reconstructed and new large factories were built, including giant machine-building and metal processing plants. In 1933, the construction of the future flagship of Soviet engineering (Uralmash) was completed. The population of Sverdlovsk grew by more than 3 times, and it became one of the fastest growing cities in the USSR.

January 17, 1934, Ural Oblast was divided into three regions - Sverdlovsk Oblast with a center in Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast with a center in Chelyabinsk, and Ob-Irtysh Oblast with a center in Tyumen. By the end of the 1930s, there were 140 industrial enterprises, 25 research institutes, 12 higher educational institutions in Sverdlovsk. In 1939, the population of the city was about 425,500 people.

Along with other Ural cities, Sverdlovsk made a significant contribution to the victory of the USSR in the Second World War. In total, more than 100,000 residents of the city joined the Red Army. 41,772 people didn’t return from the war: 21,397 - killed in battles, 4,778 - died from wounds in hospitals, 15,491 - went missing, 106 - died in prisoner of war camps.

Sverdlovsk became the largest evacuation point, more than 50 large and medium enterprises from the western regions of Russia and Ukraine were evacuated here. During the war years, industrial production in Sverdlovsk grew 7 times.

After the war, this city became the largest center for engineering and metalworking in Russia. During the Cold War, Sverdlovsk, as a key center of the defense industry, was practically closed to foreigners. In 1960, in the sky above the city, Soviet air defense shot down the U-2 spy plane of the US manned by Francis Gary Powers.

On January 23, 1967, a millionth resident was born in the city and Sverdlovsk became one of the first Russian cities with a population of more than 1 million people. In 1979, Sverdlovsk was included in the list of historical cities of Russia.

On October 4, 1988, a serious accident occurred at the Sverdlovsk railway station. The train carrying almost 100 tons of explosives rolled downhill and crashed into a coal freight train. An explosion occurred, aggravated by the proximity of a large warehouse of fuels and lubricants. The funnel at the site of the explosion had a diameter of 40-60 meters and a depth of 8 meters, the shock wave spread 10-15 kilometers. The explosion killed 4 people at the station and injured more than 500 people. About 600 houses were severely damaged.

Yekaterinburg - one of the largest cities of the Russian Federation

On September 4, 1991, the Sverdlovsk City Council of People’s Deputies decided to return the city its original name - Yekaterinburg. The population of the city was about 1,375,000 people. The restrictions on foreign visitors to the city were also lifted, and soon the first consulate general was opened here - the United States of America (in 1994).

The transition to a market economy led to a reduction in production at industrial enterprises, inert giant plant found themselves in a particularly difficult situation. In 1991, the construction of the television tower was stopped. The city was flooded with chaotic small retail trade in temporary pavilions and markets. These years were the heyday of organized crime, Yekaterinburg became one of the “criminal capitals” of Russia. The economic situation began to improve by the end of the 1990s.

In 2000-2003, the Church on Blood in Honour of All Saints Resplendent in the Russian Land was built on the site of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. In 2008-2009, the Koltsovo Airport was reconstructed. In June 15-17, 2009, SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and BRIC (Brasilia, Russia, India, China) summits were held in Yekaterinburg.

In 2015, the Presidential Center of Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, was opened in Yekaterinburg. On March 24, 2018, the abandoned unfinished television tower was dismantled. It was the tallest building in the city (almost 240 meters) and became one of the symbols of Yekaterinburg. 4 matches of FIFA World Cup 2018 were played in Yekaterinburg.

Today, Yekaterinburg is the largest center of attraction not only of Sverdlovsk Oblast, but also of the surrounding regions. By some socio-economic indicators, this city ranks third in Russia, after Moscow and St. Petersburg. Along with the development of trade and business, the city lost the status of the country’s largest industrial center.

On the streets of Yekaterinburg

Soviet-era apartment buildings in Yekaterinburg

Author: Alex Kolm

In the central part of Yekaterinburg

Author: Serg Fokin

Yekaterinburg street view

Author: Krutikov S.V.

Yekaterinburg - Features

Yekaterinburg is located in the floodplain of the Iset River on the eastern slope of the Middle Urals in Asia, near its border with Europe, about 1,800 km east of Moscow. Since the Ural Mountains are very old, there are no significant hills in the city.

This relief was a favorable condition for the construction of the main transport routes from Central Russia to Siberia (the Siberian Route and the Trans-Siberian Railway) through Yekaterinburg. As a result, it has become one of the most strategically important centers of Russia, which still provides a link between the European and Asian parts of the country.

Yekaterinburg is located in the border zone of temperate continental and continental climates. It is characterized by a sharp variability in weather conditions with well-defined seasons. The Ural Mountains, despite their low height, block the way to the masses of air coming from the west from the European part of Russia.

As a result, the Middle Urals is open to the invasion of cold Arctic air and continental air of the West Siberian Plain. At the same time, warm air masses of the Caspian Sea and the deserts of Central Asia can freely enter this territory from the south.

That is why the city is characterized by sharp temperature fluctuations and the formation of weather anomalies: in winter from severe frosts to thaws and rains, in summer from heat above plus 35 degrees Celsius to frosts. The average temperature in January is minus 12.6 degrees Celsius, in July - plus 19 degrees Celsius.

The city has a rather unfavorable environmental situation due to air pollution. In 2016, Yekaterinburg was included in the list of Russian cities with the worst environmental situation by this indicator. Car emissions account for more than 90% of all pollution.

Yekaterinburg ranks third in Russia (after Moscow and St. Petersburg) in the number of diplomatic missions, while their consular districts extend far beyond Sverdlovsk Oblast, and serve other regions of the Urals, Siberia, and the Volga region.

In terms of economy, Yekaterinburg also ranks third in the country. It is one of the largest financial and business centers of Russia. The main branches of production: metallurgical production and metalworking, food production, production of electrical equipment, electronic and optical equipment, production of vehicles, production of machinery and equipment, chemical production.

Almost all types of urban public transport are presented in Yekaterinburg: buses, trolleybuses, trams, subways, taxis. Yekaterinburg is the third largest transportation hub in Russia: 6 federal highways, 7 main railway lines, as well as Koltsovo International Airport, one of the country’s largest airports. The location of Yekaterinburg in the central part of the region allows you to get from it to any major city of the Urals in 7-10 hours.

Yekaterinburg has an extensive scientific and technical potential, it is one of the largest scientific centers in Russia. The Presidium and about 20 institutes of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 66 research institutes, and about 30 universities are located here.

This city is a relatively large tourist center. A significant part of tourists visit it to honor the memory of the last Russian emperor and his family killed by the Bolsheviks in the basement of the Ipatiev House in 1918.

There are about 50 different museums in Yekaterinburg. One of the world’s largest collections of constructivist architectural monuments has been preserved here. In total, there are over 600 historical and cultural monuments in the city, of which 43 are objects of federal significance. The City Day of Yekaterinburg is celebrated on the third Saturday of August.

Interesting facts about Yekaterinburg

• It was founded by the decree of the first Russian Emperor Peter I and the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II was shot here;
• In 1820, the roof of the UK Parliament building in London was made of roofing iron produced in Yekaterinburg;
• Ural steel was used in the construction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris;
• Ural copper was used in the construction of the Statue of Liberty in New York;
• During the Second World War, Sverdlovsk was the center of broadcasting in the USSR;
• Equipment for the world’s deepest borehole (Kola Superdeep Borehole, 12,262 meters) was produced in Yekaterinburg;
• Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, began his political career in Yekaterinburg;
• Minor planet #27736 Yekaterinburg, discovered by the Belgian astronomer Eric Elst on September 22, 1990, was named in honor of this city;
• Two most northern skyscrapers in the world are located in Yekaterinburg: the Iset residential tower (209 m) and the Vysotsky business center (188 m), they are the tallest buildings throughout Russia east of Moscow.

Pictures of Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg city view

Author: Andrey Zagaynov

Modern architecture in Yekaterinburg

Author: Yury Baranov

The territory of the central stadium of Yekaterinburg before reconstruction

Author: Sergey Likhota

Main Attractions of Yekaterinburg

Sevastyanov House - a palace of the first quarter of the 19th century built in the architectural styles of pseudo-Gothic, Neo-Baroque, and Moorish traditions and painted in green, white, and red tones. Today, it is the most beautiful building in Yekaterinburg and one of its symbols. The house stands on the promenade of the Iset River, very close to the city dam. Lenina Avenue, 35.

“Plotinka” - the dam of the city pond on the Iset River built in the 18th century. From an architectural point of view, it is an ordinary bridge. However, it is of particular importance for the residents of Yekaterinburg since the construction of the entire city started from this place. Today, this is the main place for festivities in Yekaterinburg. Lenina Avenue.

Observation Deck of the Business Center “Vysotsky” - an open-air observation deck on the 52nd floor at an altitude of 168 meters. From here you can enjoy the views of all of Yekaterinburg. On the second and third floors of this skyscraper there is the memorial museum of Vladimir Vysotsky - a singer, songwriter, and actor who had an immense effect on Soviet culture. Malysheva Street, 51.

Vaynera Street - the central avenue of Yekaterinburg, the so-called “Ural Arbat”. One of its parts from Kuibysheva Street to Lenina Avenue is a pedestrian street. This is one of the oldest streets in Yekaterinburg laid in the middle of the 18th century. Along it, you can see merchant mansions, shops, administrative buildings, most of which were built in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries.

Rastorguev-Kharitonov Palace (1794-1824) - one of the most valuable architectural manor and park ensembles in Yekaterinburg, an architectural monument of federal significance built in the classical style and located in the city center. Karla Libknekhta Street, 44.

Church of the Ascension (1792-1818) - one of the oldest churches in Yekaterinburg located next to the Rastorguev-Kharitonov Palace. This beautiful building combines the features of baroque, pseudo-Russian style, and classicism. Klary Tsetkin Street, 11.

Yeltsin Center - a cultural and educational center dedicated to the contemporary history of Russia, as well as the personality of its first president, Boris Yeltsin. The museum dedicated to his life is one of the best museums in Russia. Borisa Yeltsina Street, 3.

Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts - the largest art museum in the Urals housed in two buildings. This museum is best known for its unique collection of Kasli art castings and the world-famous Kasli cast iron pavilion - a participant in the 1900 Paris World’s Fair.

The following collections can also be found here: Russian paintings of the 18th - early 20th centuries, Russian avant-garde of 1910-1920, Russian porcelain and glass of the 18th - 20th centuries, Russian icon painting of the 16th-19th centuries, Western European art of the 14th-19th centuries, stone-carving and jewelry art of the Urals, Zlatoust decorated weapons and steel engraving. Voevodina Street, 5; Vaynera Street, 11.

Museum of the History of Stone-Cutting and Jewelry Art . A unique collection of this museum consists of gem minerals, works of jewelers and stone-cutters of the Urals, and products created at the Ural lapidary factory. The museum has Malachite and Bazhov halls, the Emerald Room, and several exhibition galleries where visitors can see works made of colored stone and metal created by local artists. Lenina Avenue, 37.

Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore . At first, its collection consisted of four departments: mineralogical, botanical, zoological, and paleontological. Later, numismatic, ethnographic, and anthropological sections were added. Today, there are more than 700 thousand exhibits here. Lenina Avenue, 69/10.

Museum of the History of Yekaterinburg . This museum occupies a historic building of the 19th century. In addition to the main exhibition, you can see the wax figures of Peter the Great, Catherine II, Nicholas II, the Ural manufacturers Demidov, and the founders of Yekaterinburg.

Old Railway Station of Yekaterinburg - one of the most beautiful and picturesque buildings in the city built in 1878. In 2003, after a large-scale reconstruction, the Museum of the History of Science and Technology of the Sverdlovsk Railway was opened here. Vokzal’naya Ulitsa, 14.

Yekaterinburg Circus . Visible from a lot of points of the city, the building of the Yekaterinburg Circus is known for its amazing dome consisting of trellised openwork semi-arches, which is not typical for circuses in Russia. 8 Marta Street, 43.

White Tower (1929-1931) - a former water tower 29 meters high located at a certain distance from the center of Yekaterinburg, an architectural monument of Constructivism. Today, it is used as a cultural site. Bakinskikh Komissarov Street, 2?.

Keyboard Monument - a contemporary art object made on a scale of 30:1 in 2005. This 16x4 meter concrete keyboard consists of 104 keys spaced 15 cm apart. From here the famous tourist route “Red Line” begins (a self-guided tour of the historic city center). The monument is located on the embankment of the Iset River next to the House of the Merchant Chuvildin (Gorkogo Street, 14A).

Ekaterinburg city of Russia photos

Places of interest in yekaterinburg.

Sculpture of talking townspeople in Yekaterinburg

Author: Pichugin Mikhail

Old buildings in Yekaterinburg

Author: Andrew Golovin

Wooden Church of the Holy Martyr Arkady in Yekaterinburg

Author: Kutenyov Vladimir

Street transport of Yekaterinburg

Tram in Yekaterinburg

Author: Andrey Permyakov

Bus in Yekaterinburg

Author: Per Heitmann

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