'Fell in love with Burlington': Eugene Hutz returns for Gogol Bordello's sold-out VT show

Eugene Hutz is really a citizen of the world. His band, Gogol Bordello, is based in New York, but he has spent his life living on three continents – Europe, North America and South America.

In recent months, though, his thoughts have turned deeply toward two places that really shaped who he is: Ukraine, the country of his birth where he spent the first 16 years of his life, and Burlington, where his family relocated after a previous generation’s exodus from his Eastern European homeland.

“Burlington is a fundamental point for Gogol Bordello, not only for me,” Hutz told the Burlington Free Press in a recent phone conversation. He noted that another of the “gypsy-punk” band’s founding members, Pamela Racine, is also from Burlington. His parents still reside in the Burlington area, and he’ll return for a sold-out Gogol Bordello show Wednesday, Aug. 2, at Higher Ground.

Vermont wasn’t what Hutz was looking for as a teenager when his family fled Ukraine after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear-plant disaster in what was then the USSR. He said immigrants to the United States want to be in the middle of the action in places like New York or Los Angeles.

“This was a very different experience to come to Burlington. But very, very quickly, in a matter of days, I fell in love with Burlington,” Hutz said. He hung with the punk-rock crowd at the Burlington teen club 242 Main and discovered what he called a “super-friendly and art-spirited” community.

“It was probably the greatest way to heal the depression and immigration trauma, which is inevitable when you are a transplant, especially as a teenager,” Hutz said. “I’m still dealing with that.”

‘Scream of My Blood’ documentary: What it is about

Much of Hutz’s story in Burlington unfolds in the documentary “Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story,” which premiered June 13 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and is continuing to make the film-fest rounds. In the documentary, Hutz talks of the pain of leaving his “awesome girlfriend” and the punk-rock scene he had recently discovered as a 16-year-old in Kiev to head to Poland, Austria, Italy and then, unimaginably, Burlington.

“This word ‘Vermont,’ I heard for the first time in my life,” Hutz, laughing, says in the film. “I just landed here and this is what immigrants don’t want. They don’t want to be in Vermont, in a remote area.”

The next morning, he walked the streets and found numerous music stores. He saw kids with leather jackets and spiky hair. He walked up to them and said, “Dead Kennedys,” mentioning the name of one of the punk era’s premiere bands. They responded “Sex” and he replied “Pistols.” He found his scene.

The focus of his scene was 242 Main, the now-defunct club attached to the abandoned, crumbling Memorial Auditorium on Main Street. The teen venue drew national touring acts including Agnostic Front (playing Sept. 17 at Higher Ground) and the Cro-Mags, and supported numerous local acts such as the bands Hutz and his friends formed.

Hutz would eventually move to New York to begin his worldwide music career. “Scream of My Blood” shows Gogol Bordello’s growth into an act that is at its core a band with members from all over the world (Hutz lived in Brazil for a time), yet one showing that we’re part of one world, no matter how different our backgrounds.

The documentary draws to a conclusion with Hutz returning to his native Ukraine in 2022, months after the Russian invasion. He plays for Ukrainian troops and for war refugees in the country where he still has many friends and family members.

“Music is a form of magic,” Hutz says in the film, noting that music can help support and heal those going through hard times.

“Maybe that’s why I got into it in the first place,” he says.

Music with a purpose in Ukraine

Hutz spoke to the Free Press last week from a tour stop in Calgary, Alberta, where he noted that a sizable population of refugees from Ukraine settled 150 years ago. He said those immigrants lived among wild animals and rapacious mosquitos, using hatchets to turn impenetrable forests into huts.

“That’s what gives Ukrainians extra confidence to take matters into your own hands and have faith that it will work out,” Hutz told the Free Press.

He spoke of how, on his visit near the front lines last year, he played Gogol Bordello tunes with members of the Ukrainian military band. They asked if they could keep performing Gogol Bordello songs as morale boosters for the troops.

“That was probably a maximum payoff for the art you make,” Hutz said. “You created art that serves a purpose, and serves a purpose in a moment of crisis.”

Gogol Bordello concerts have always felt like a high-energy celebration of a world coming together, but now take on the added weight of the devastation in Hutz’s homeland. Though their concerts have always seemed joyous, he said there’s always been a deeper undercurrent that means there will be no obvious change in tone for the Higher Ground show.

“It’s the kind of music for people who have yet to overcome the odds, and quite serious odds,” Hutz said. “In that sense, it needs no transformation.”

Tickets, times, location: Gogol Bordello with Puzzled Panther

WHAT: Gogol Bordello with Puzzled Panther

WHEN: 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 2

WHERE: Higher Ground Ballroom, South Burlington

INFORMATION: Sold out. www.highergroundmusic.com

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Gogol Bordello leader talks Ukraine, Burlington, VT, and documentary