In 2014, a Russian sound engineer named Leonid Vorobyev decided to give himself an unusual 60th birthday present. Instead of a cake, he assembled a band.
Not just any band. Imagine a band full of all stars.
Vorobyev gathered some of the best musicians he knew, pointed a camera at them, and recorded a tribute to the American rock band Chicago. There were no sheet-music charts available in Russia, so Vorobyev did what obsessive musicians do: he sat down with the recording and transcribed every note by ear.
The video exploded across the internet.
If you know, you know.
If you don’t, allow me to give you a musical gift.
Vorobyev, trained as a choir conductor at the East Siberian Institute of Culture in 1989 but working most of his life as a sound engineer, had quietly spent decades building relationships with Russia’s best studio musicians. For the video project, he assembled an all-star band.
That group eventually became Leonid and Friends.
Many fans now call them the greatest cover band on Earth.
After the first viral Chicago tribute, the band kept going, recording more meticulous recreations of classic horn-driven rock. The arrangements are so precise that listeners often swear they’re hearing the original recordings.
Their repertoire now ranges far beyond Chicago. The band performs songs by Blood, Sweat & Tears, Earth Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder, and the Carpenters, all recreated with jaw-dropping accuracy.
Today Leonid and Friends have released four albums and completed multiple sold-out tours across the United States.
For Vorobyev and his bandmates, that success borders on the miraculous.
To understand why, you have to go back to the 1970s—to a cold town in Siberia.
At the time, Western musical instruments were nearly impossible to obtain in the Soviet Union. Western rock music was officially banned.
Young people who gathered to listen to rock sometimes had their parties raided by Communist authorities.
Like thousands of other Soviet teenagers, Vorobyev and his friends began improvising. They built electric guitars from scavenged electrical parts and bootleg photos of the Beatles. Some young musicians reportedly pulled the coils out of public telephone booths to use as pickups.
Finding Western music was another challenge entirely.
Teenagers hunted for rare bootleg albums or tuned their radios late at night to faint signals from Voice of America or Radio Free Europe.
When they managed to obtain music, they copied it using homemade record cutters onto discarded hospital X-rays. The recordings were known as “bones” because you could see the chest x-ray spinning on the record player.
In 1972, Vorobyev stumbled across a copy of Chicago’s first album.
He was instantly hooked.
That single moment would quietly plant the seed for a cultural phenomenon four decades later.
As Vorobyev once said, “Many Russian musicians have a dream—to play for audiences in America.”
That dream is now coming true.
Even though English is a second language, their performances are stunningly tight recreations of classic 1970s music. Even the original artists have taken notice.
After hearing Leonid and Friends perform the Carpenters’ “Superstar,” Richard Carpenter invited the band’s vocalist Kseniya Buzina to his home for dinner and later attended one of their concerts.
The performance is uncanny.
On recent tours, members of the band have even performed alongside some of their American musical heroes.
I discovered Leonid and Friends the modern way—late at night while doom-scrolling.
The lifestyle my wife and I have chosen sometimes keeps us apart during the winter months. One evening I stumbled across their cover of “Say a Little Prayer” by Bacharach and David. When we’re apart, I think of her and play this version.
Music has a way of collapsing the distance.
Leonid and Friends recently expanded their “Make Me Smile 2026” tour to the western United States.
And I’ll confess something.
I wrote this column partly to take a break from legislative follies.
But I also wrote it to give you a heads-up.
Leonid and Friends will be performing in Denver on October 25, 2026, and in Salt Lake City on October 28, 2026.
Even this early, tickets are selling quickly.
Which proves something remarkable.
Forty years ago, teenagers in Siberia were secretly carving rock music onto discarded X-rays just to hear it.
Today, those same musicians are selling out concert halls in America.
Sometimes music connects us more than we can know.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 to 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
