Last year, when we played WOMAD in Charlton Park, it was much too quick for us to fully savour the experience, but the gig itself was something we would never forget. WOMAD, the festival, is like that! you can’t forget your WOMAD experience in a hurry.

This time round, WOMAD Caceras, was our tour opener. And what a way to start a tour! In Spain for the first time ever, playing at one of the most beautiful concert venues in the world, to thousands of people who don’t speak our language! Perfect ;)

We landed up in Caceras after a quick flight into Madrid and a 4 hour bus journey along Spain’s scenic country side. Quickly checked into the hotel and went out exploring the town. After what must be 4 hours of walking, we ended up at the Main Stage for WOMAD Caceras to catch the local act and a electro - ska - rap - beatbox band close day 1.

It was quite a party for us, five of us in what must have been atleast 25,000 people who had come out to party on the streets of Caceras. We had a jolly good time, being the “novelty items”, the only Indians (as far as we were told) in a kilometer’s radius, we did not spare a single opportunity to tell everyone we could about coming over to our show the next day.

We had a workshop planned early in the evening on the 7th and then a couple of hours before our show at 11 PM local time! The good thing with festivals is that there is always a floating crowd and word of mouth / the sound travels quickly and people land up filling the venue before you can even think about it!

Our workshop was quite interesting because it was largely planned as a talk + explain + demonstrate session where we realized very quickly that the first two parts of the plan were not possible! We did have a translator but the crowd was clearly not in the mood to listen to us explaining things and especially not when we spoke in English!

So demonstrate it was! and we demonstrated as much as we could about our music, the culture, our influences, the arrangements, the “Indianness” of it and what made our music special. And the crowd loved it! The workshop also served as a good curtain raiser for our performance later in the night.

By the time the workshop was done, we were seeing the best of the Spanish unpredictable weather where there were rains lashing around and the production crew had to arrange a makeshift shelter on stage for the equipment and at one point, it got so bad that the workshop after us had to be cut off half way!

But all spirits were high for when we returned, after a set by a local opening band, we were on stage, making real what had been a dream till one moment before! The crowd did not disappoint either. People poured in from all corners and we had quite a few people ready to party - Indian Folk Style!

A tight one hour set in which Raghu’s guitar string snapped only once was most joyously played out by the band and we could see much dancing and revelry from on stage which made things much better for us, pushing up the performance a notch or two higher!

Like Raghu said, “We froze the clouds, stopped the rains and moved the crowd”, it was a crazy night and we loved every moment of it and with it, another WOMAD chapter is etched in our memories, not to be forgotten in a hurry!

Muchas Gracias to Team WOMAD, Caceras for getting us there and having us play. Too many to thank by name, but you know who you are!

PS: Happy Birthday to Vijay whose birthday we celebrated on stage in Spain! Don’t think we can give you a better gift ;)

See the rest of the photographs - here and here. Photos of the band on stage shot by Paul Knowles.

Download Link - May 2010 Calendar

Its a little late coming, but its time for the May 2010 calendar! Giving it out on the day we head out on our most ambitious tour yet, starting in Spain and then traveling through the UK, you will be hearing a lot more from us from here on!

For now, its time to put this on your desktops and remember your favourite band on tour and send some positive vibes our way :)

Calendar designed by - Prasad Bhat (http://graphicurry.com)

Photograph by - Ganesh Raghunathan (http://ganeshraghunathan.com)

After much drama and lots of tension, we finally got everything sorted out and we are off! First to Caceras in Spain and then to the Rest of the UK - if you know people that should watch us, please point them in our direction :)

Thats us with a tribute to the airline that is taking us to Europe!

And that is where we are playing our first gig! So wish us luck :)

In today’s job market, its shocking to see companies that last long, and its even more shocking to see employees stick to a single company for over 10 years and when a company has that happen with more than 65 employees, you know its a good place to be!

Our discussion with SAP about this show started quite a while back! and the flow of events kept morphing around into various things but with the underlying message that at the end of it all, the audience should be picking up their jaws from the floor and going back saying “WOW!” - in capitals and with an exclamation!

This was going to be a show where we would collaborate with Nritarutya and create something that can only be described as ‘magical’. It was going to be a night that would be talked about for the next 10 years!

And it was.

If you followed the sequence of events on that day, you would never have imagined that the show would even happen. It was a brand new setup for the event co-ordinators, DeckBubble and though all of them had an idea what the outcome might be like, no one was really sure!

To top it all, sound check started at 11 AM and went on till 5 getting everything in place. Infact with 15 artistes on stage meeting and collaborating for the first time, it was quite surprising that we finished it all even! each of us had worked out our parts separately because of the last minute changes and it was beautiful to see it all come together on stage.

To put things in perspective, the event was affected by everything from artist schedules, to concept, to RSVPs to the Icelandic Volcano! Some key people who needed to be at the event were stuck in Europe with no way to get here in time.

Then the event started and what was supposed to be a long ceremony got over real quick and we were supposed to take stage an hour and a half in advance! but the only problem being, half the artistes were not even at the venue, each had gone out in the break between the sound check and were on their way back.

But then, all was well, because, to cut a long story short, atleast it started.

When you are told that you are playing to about 60 families, of people who have completed 10 years in a software company, you expect a certain kind of audience profile and an certain kind of response. But when we went on stage and were done with the first song, we were looking at a LOUD and fun party crowd that were hooting and whistling like it was their college graduation!

Raghu started Mysore se Aayi and the dolls entered the hall and took things a couple of notches higher and by now half the people were jumping around with us which only got us pumped up further. One more song and Nritarutya came and tore the place apart with their dance for Khidki and by now, things were at a fever pitch.

More of our songs followed and Raghu got the whole hall learning Kannada and the “African” bit of Lokada Kallaji when the Nritarutya boys came out with their masks adding a special touch to the song.

When it was time for ‘Har Saans Mein’, we got a bunch of people up on stage and the entire quawali feel of the song was realized with everyone clapping along and those whistles that improved over time :p The band and the entire chorus singers on stage took a bow and it was time to end proceedings with ‘Mahadeshwara’. But it was not to be!

A couple of encores that included ‘Kodagana Koli Nungiththa’ and ‘Mussanje Manjalli’ and we had finally managed to satisfy everyone. A session of autographs and photographs followed and that brought to an end one of the most fun corporate shows we’ve ever played!

Special thanks to Mr. Ferose, the MD of SAP Labs, Bangalore for the vision and for making this happen and congratulations for what you have achieved and for inspiring your colleagues to stay and consider it home!

Thanks to Jagadish, Kalyan and Beena from SAP who were instrumental in us playing that show and to Sunil and Akshay from DeckBubble, we must do this again sometime!

Much thanks to Ganesh Raghunathan for his awesome photography!

Download Link - Calendar for April 2010

Here it is! The desktop calendar for April 2010 and we’re not pulling a prank! so go ahead, download, use it on your desktop and spread the good word!

Calendar designed by - Prasad Bhat (http://graphicurry.com)

Photograph by - Shiv Ahuja (http://shivahuja.com)

I was going through pictures posted on various social networks that everyone had tagged the band in and I came across this amazing piece of work that was done by Tamagna Ghosh @HAMI which just blew my mind away!

I really want to put together a show case of everything that has been done by you guys for the band and our music and thank each of you guys personally for doing that! So if you have done something that we haven’t seen, please put it up somewhere, on Facebook, on Flickr, on Youtube, on anything you want and send us a link or write us an email and let us know!

Lets plan to get all of you guys together sometime soon and we’d love to personally thank each of you for doing that!

Download Link - Calendar for March 2010

I know its a little late in the year to start this, but its about time we did! Here is a desktop calendar that you can download and use - We will release one every month so you have a constant reminder about your favourite band and an easy way to mark your dates as well!

Calendar designed by - Prasad Bhat (http://graphicurry.com)

Photograph by - Kalyan Varma (http://kalyanvarma.net)

This show will be remembered as the show that almost never happened and because of Holi! but that is another story ;)

IISc’s Miditha was the last stop on a a short tour of sorts where we played shows on alternate days to round up the month of February. But some confusion meant that everything got sorted out at the last minute, but that is not something to worry about. The usual suspects caused a lot of tension during the sound check as usual, but that was sorted out to and from there on, nothing could stop this from being a fun show!

A Sunday night on the eve of Holi might not have been the best setting for a show, but we were quite surprised by the turnout! about 1500 to 2000 people who came in and most of them bang up front against the stage! All our settings we had finalized during our sound check went for a toss much to our sound engineer Niranjan’s dismay because the crowd right up front were just so loud!

But a couple of songs and all was in order as we went out and belted songs from the first album throwing in some of the new ones at regular intervals and at the same time fulfilling requests for songs from Raghu’s movies - it was a careful balancing act. But we have heard the requests for new material and the 2nd album and both are on their way - the new material is ready and at last count over 15 songs that we need to pick from for the next album and they will be unleashed sooner than you think :)

A thank you to all who came out to see us that night, it was brilliant to have everyone so close to the stage and loving the music!

Big thank you’s to Mitr Raj and Arun Ganesh for these excellent photos! Anyone else with photos, please do send them over or give us a link to the photos :)

See Rakesh Raj’s Full Album of the show - http://picasaweb.google.com/104503746765843426225/RaghuDixitIISCConcert

When ‘Rebel Star’ Ambarish personally recommends and invites you to perform for a event that he is personally involved in, you just go! and what a fantastic thing that turned out to be!

We were called to perform for the annual celebrations by the Sathyanarayana temple in Hulimavu (Off Bannerghatta Road) and we thought it was going to be a small affair but nothing prepared us for what it actually turned out to be! We were playing on the same stage that was previously graced by greats such as Yesudas, Hariharan, SP Balasubramaniam, Kunnakudi Vaidhyanathan and more! to even be spoken of in the same breath as these artistes is an honour let alone performing at the same stage!

There was a little disappointment because of the person who supplied us with the drum kit for the show bringing a complete sub standard kit inspite of promising the best! well .. that just goes on to our list of vendor woes and is another lesson learnt! But the people came out in huge numbers for the show and by the time we got off stage post our sound check and before the show had to start, there were easily about 15,000 people in the audience ready to party! It was infact, after a long time that we saw people climbing buildings nearby etc to watch our show! It did help that the show itself was in the middle of the main road in Hulimavu!

Half way through our show, one of the superstars of the Kannada Film Industry, Mr. Devraj and his wife came along and sat right in front of the stage! that just completely roused the crowd’s interest and one song later, when the man himself, ‘Rebel Star’ Ambarish turned up, it just went insane!

We weren’t sure if we were to continue or if we had to call them on stage right away, but Mr. Ambarish sat right in front of us and told us he was here for the music and to watch us, and we should just go on with the show!

We ran through some of the newer songs we’ve written including ‘Kodagana Koli Nungittha’ which is gaining in popularity, and the title track of ‘Just Maat Maathalli’ which were both completely loved by the crowd following which we closed with Raghu’s most popular song in Karnataka right now, ‘Ninna Pujege Bande Mahadeshwara’.

Half way through the last song, everyone went up to Ambarish sir and got him on his feet and he was doing a little jig with some of the organizers which got the whole crowd including the people on those buildings going crazy! What a way that was to end the show after which, the whole band got felicitated and Ambarish sir took the mic and told the whole gathering that he was a regular for this event and its something very close to his heart, but this year, he was there because he is a fan of the Raghu Dixit Project and he was here to listen to Raghu’s music!

That, coming from him, is most humbling for us as he added that, the value of the band cannot be matched in money, but only in the love that everyone showers on us! and it was a LOT of love they showered on us that night :)

As I look back on the show last night, it was something truly special and one that we will not forget in a hurry! there is something about performing to the people who love your music in your own backyard, heck, this was right by the roadside! its truly magical!

Much thanks to Ambarish Sir, Devraj Sir for coming in and watching us! and Mr. Venugopal who called us and made everything possible for us to play yesterday and special credit to Niranjan Sivram on the sound console who also took these photos!

Its not everyday that you are called to perform at a concert in Bangalore that starts at Midnight and goes on to the wee hours in the morning! atleast not if it is bang in the middle of the city and at full volume! But that’s just one of the reasons this show was so special!

It was Shivratri and the folks in Jayanagar were going all out to stay awake that night! and for that, they made the right choice when they picked us! :)

Mr. Lokie from Taurian Events, went all out to ensure that everything we asked for was provided, tech requirements wise and I am still reeling from multiple phone calls with him ironing out every little detail on stage and around it! But that din’t stop some glitches during the sound check which were deftly handled by Niranjan and Vinod who were helping out at the console that day!

We arrived early for the show in the night and it was the perfect time for Ganesh, who has been faithfully following us and photographing our shows for us to experiment with the lenses he had borrowed.  He had the band doing all kinds of weird things and the combination of those lenses and our mental ideas resulted in some very interesting photographs! A small sampler of the same is put up here for your viewing “pleasure”!

After a couple of hours at the venue, we were joined by the man of the moment, Sudeep himself who was clearly basking from the success of his latest movie, Just Maat Maathalli, which I’d definitely recommend you go watch! He came and sweetly introduced himself to us and then spent some time chatting with us before he got mobbed by eager fans who were whipping out cameras of all shapes and sizes to click their pictures with him!

The show started close to midnight and it was a surreal experience going up on stage at that time in Bangalore. That is usually the time everyone is packing up and heading back home! But that night, the party was just starting! and we were not ones to sober it down, so we went on stage and allowed the audience to get used to us for the first song and then, much to the dismay of the organizers who were trying to make people sit in an orderly fashion, we got every single person in the audience jumping around and dancing along with us!

A couple more songs and it was time for Sudeep himself to get on stage and deliver the mother of all treats to the audience when he took the mic and sang “Munjane Manjalli”, his favourite song from the movie! He then moved on to some audience games where he got sections of the crowd screaming their lungs out pitted against each other in a way that convinced us of the fact that he really needs to start a band of his own!

Sudeep’s cameo got the entire crowd even more excited and we launched into some of Raghu’s film songs followed by our new Kannada songs including the eternal favourite of every Kannadiga, “Kodagana Koli Nungittha”.

By now it was 2 AM and time to finally heed to the multitude of requests that were pouring in for “Mahadeshwara” and a perfect note to end a brilliant show on! we are very grateful to the organizers and also to Mr. Lokie who co-ordinated the whole event, we loved the show, we loved the food and you guys were lovely! Do get us back there next year!