The Speeding Lisa guitarist and owner of the popular ex-pat bar looks back on business, and life, in Kyiv
Leading up to the Post’s 10th birthday this September, each week we’ll be highlighting members of the local business community who have played leading roles over the years. This week, we talk to Euan McDonald, owner of the Drum and guitarist for local business community who have played leading roles over the years. This week, we talk to Euan McDonald, owner of the Drum and guitarist for local favorites Speeding Lisa.
Whoever’s been a part of Kyiv’s ex-pat community for a while has probably seen the ex-pat cover band Speeding Lisa play. And if they have, they were sure to notice its guitarist, Euan McDonald, who doubles as proprietor of Kyiv’s popular ex-pat bar, the Drum.
McDonald, 35, wasn’t planning on singing rock ‘n’ roll covers or slinging beers in the Ukrainian capital back when he was studying artificial intelligence and linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, or earning his masters in information technology from the University of Glasgow. The son of teachers, he saw himself becoming a professor of linguistics and computer programming.
However, a lack of funds to pursue doctoral studies put McDonald “into a dead end,” as he puts it. Wanting something else than an academic career, he played guitar in a Glasgow amateur funk band called Fly and looked around for a job.
Shortly after that came a crucial development: McDonald earned a certificate to teach English as a foreign language from the Edinburgh Language School, and followed his older sister to Kyiv, where she was teaching in the International House language school.
“I was interested in the Russian language and had already come out to Ukraine in 1993 to visit my sister, and I thought, it’s a cool place. I wanted to go either to Kyiv, St. Petersburg or Moscow, but Kyiv’s job came up faster,” he says. In February, 1994 he accepted a job at International House.
In the summer of 1995, he left his teaching job to take up the more lucrative position as an editor at the Eastern Economist, the now-defunct business magazine founded by Canadian Lydia Wolanskyj.
“It seems that every foreigner who has gone into journalism here has come through the Eastern Economist,” he jokes. “They had a very high turnover, though, and Lydia Wolanskyj was a very strong character,” he says with a smile.
He spent almost two years at the Economist before becoming the Kyiv Post’s business editor in spring of 1997, and later becoming managing editor of the paper.
McDonald saw the Post during its adolescence.
“In those days the editor was Igor Grinwald, who is extremely intelligent and a great journalist. He convinced [Post publisher] Jed Sunden to up the standards of the paper, and made the Post into what it is right now. Before, it was a fairly dodgy little sheet. He taught me a lot about journalism, too,” he remembers. McDonald remembers his Post stint as being hard but exciting work, especially during the 1998 parliamentary elections.
Another exciting event that year was the birth of McDonald’s son Alexander – or Shunzi as his father calls him.
The wet business
McDonald worked with his now-wife, Katya Gorchinskaya, at the Post, where she was a reporter. McDonald and Gorchinskaya had known each other from International House, where she studied English. By chance, she followed him to Eastern Economist and further to the Post.
In 2000, the couple took a leap into entrepreneurship and opened the Drum.
“All that time we were saving up some money, looking for a place to open up some bar,” McDonald says.
The idea of a bar came up even before the pair started working for the Post. It had its genesis in German ex-pat Eric Aigner’s pizza delivery service, and in his Sofia bar on Sofyivska Square.
“The first time I met Eric, he was delivering me a pizza. I was with a friend and we ordered a pizza and this jolly German dropped by the door with a big pizza. Then he opened his first bar on Sofyivska. It was Kyiv’s first proper Western-style bar. Katya and I used to hang out there a lot.”
“So we thought, ‘Cool. We should do it. Where do we get the money?’ We started saving up.”
The couple spent a few years economizing and looking for a suitable location until they found a dingy basement located in a courtyard off Prorizna. They rented it, thoroughly refurbished it, and in 2000 opened it as the Drum. The bar’s motto, known to ex-pat and native drinkers alike, is “sometimes you beat the drum, sometimes the drum beats you.”
McDonald says their landlord has been a good partner, lowering their rent since they took on all the reconstruction expenses themselves.
Two years ago, the couple started the Upbeat catering service, which delivers dishes from the Drum’s menu and provides bartender and waiter services.
“The Drum was always profitable, right from the beginning,” McDonald says, adding that the Orange Revolution increased the number of people coming into the Drum. Now he has plans to open another bar, but he’s still not sure about the details of the expansion.
Speeding McDonald
Neither teaching, nor journalism nor owning a bar has stopped McDonald from getting his rocks off playing music.
Following up on his Fly experience, back in the 1990s he played in a band called Mr. Walles, which consisted of him and four Ukrainians.
“We wrote our own songs, some in English and some in Ukrainian. But it was when I was switching from the Eastern Economist to the Post. I was busy and I just couldn’t keep it up with the band. I even gave up my Russian lessons.”
Later on, Nick Morris, Hugh Patton, and David Diamonan started Speeding Lisa. McDonald joined the band in 1998.
“I first met them at Greg Bloom’s house party, and they invited me to join, basically because I had a guitar and effects box and I could do distortion,” he laughs, adding that the first place he played with them was in Aigner’s Podil night club, Al Capone. Since then the band has had some line-up changes. Present drummer Marc Lewis, who used to play with the 1980s hair-metal heroes Ratt, replaced Patton when he took off for the Philippines. A female Canadian who joined Speeding Lisa for a while “took the band up to the next level, “‘cause she could actually sing,” he laughs.
Recently another Canadian, Blair Sheridan, came on board with his guitar.
“Playing in Speeding Lisa is fun,” says McDonald, admitting that since they’re playing covers the band doesn’t take much of his time. But he says they have plans to record a few songs “hopefully by the end of the year,” and become more serious musicians, as he puts it.
Besides running the Drum, taking care of his second son, three-month-old Robert, playing in a band, and planning to record a CD, McDonald has for over a year now been editing the Interfax information agency’s English-language content. He worked that job full-time during last year’s tumultuous election period.
“I do it ‘cause it’s interesting – it’s certainly not wonderfully well paid. But I just like guys there.”
