Luton musician pens song to benefit Ukrainian refugee hostel

Luton musician Ben Amadeus Scrivener is a huge fan of Ukraine, which he visited twice before the Russian invasion.

Now he has composed a song – This Old Town (Won’t Die Alone) to benefit a refugee hostel in Lviv.

The former Queensbury Upper pupil went there in 2019 and to Kyiv in 2021, both times to play.

He recalls: “Lviv was a carefree city – amazing food, beautiful people and great street musicians. Kyiv last year was similar – a genuinely Bohemian music scene, almost untouched by tourism, where I listened to jazz, punk, manouche (gypsy jazz) and even English and Irish folk.”

In September he went again, this time with friend and fellow muso John Mangan, to play at a refugee hostel in central Lviv.

Ben, 33, says: “I don’t know what I was trying to achieve. I’m not a medic or a nurse or even a counsellor – I’m a musician. John felt the same but for him it was a personal calling: he needed to support the Ukrainian people.

"By the end of our stay we realised we had helped the refugees in ways we couldn’t possibly have imagined or understood until now.

"The hostel where we played and stayed was run by incredible young women. They could have been some of the students who’d come to my previous gigs – now suddenly they had the weight of the world on their shoulders.”

Ben was also keen to meet up with his his Kyiv-based friend Oleksandr Remez, whom he describes as a ‘fantastic bassist.’ But Oleksandr had joined the army to fight for his country’s freedom and had been injured – although he is now thankfully recovering.

Ben says the full gravity of the situation hit him when he and John went to the refugee hostel: “I will always remember the strength of some of the refugees. Some had life-changing wounds but were still able to smile.

"One young man in his 20s had lost all his limbs but we got on with him very well, in spite of the language barrier. There were many like him, missing arms and legs.”

And it’s this hostel that will benefit from the proceeds of his song. The money will go towards rent, electricity and heating equipment.

Ben says playing there was a revelation: “It seemed to put people in touch with a world beyond war, a memory of peace.”

And he remembers drinking vodka later that evening and seeing what he thought was a falling star: “Then I saw it drop and there was an explosion. The outskirts of the city has been bombed. The Ukrainians said: ’Don’t worry, it’s just a missile. Have another vodka.’”

Ben smiles: “I’m not a smoker. But I had a cigarette as well.”

He believes the Ukrainian people are strong and will win: “It’s just a matter of time.”

The video for This Old Town was produced with a little help from Ben’s friends from the band Cardinal Birds and was filmed in Krakow, Lviv and Kyiv and contains footage from his previous visits.

> Buy and stream the single at his website, or on Spotify.