Band Member Bios
Name: Archie
Role: Keyboard
Fast Fact: Daughter of eccentric millionaire Viktor Yashmelin, Archie grew up in the Eastern Bloc.
Bio: Along the banks of the Volga, little Annastasia Archerella would walk to school every morning. Very few children were afforded the opportunity to attend the Plekhanov Academy of Economics, and so, she held her head high. The Soviet era was ending; her world was changing around her in ways she had not imagined. Gorbachev nixed for a drunkard. The CCCP scrapped for a federation. This was not the Moscow she had known; no, these were happenings better suited for one of those American novels that lined the walls of her father’s library.
Hero of the people, real-life spy, and literary luminary, Viktor Yashmelin found his daughter on a clandestine foray into Appalachia. Whilst running routine reconnaissance along the Green River, things went amok. It was an ambush! CIA agents lurked in every piney grove, snipers in every tar-paper shack. He had little option but to run; fleeing like a madman he came crashing down through the woods to the riverbank. Here he commandeered a canoe and paddled down the river to safety. But upon reaching the Rochester Dam, he discovered a stowaway. A baby girl. Taking the child as his own, he pledged to protect and serve her, and from that moment forward dedicated his life to her well being. Pittsburgh International wasn’t far away. Ten hours later, Viktor was cradling his new daughter tightly in his arms as they flew through the midnight skies. This was how Anna came to grow up in Moscow...
You may wonder how it is she came to join the vee Revolution. But, you see, that is simple. Revolution flows in the blood of every Russian; from Kamchatka to the Urals, Murmansk to seaside Caspian hovels, it is inescapable. Inspired by Billy Joel’s 1987 foray into the Soviet landscape, “Archie,” as she had taken to calling herself, began a lifelong love-affair with western piano rock. Fifteen years later, whilst vee, &roid, and G-Man were on the last leg of their Russian tour, Archie was in the audience. A musical revolution -- what could be better? "We never knew what friends we had until we came to Leningrad."