We played in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa on the 3rd of April, and were scheduled to go to Coimbatore directly from there and then on to the M.A.D festival where we would play on the 5th. However, Airtel wanted to launch their new service, Airtel Money on the 5th in Infosys, Bangalore but after finding out that we couldn’t be a part of it, decided to do our show on the 4th instead.

All was well, except, the ONLY direct flight from Bhubaneshwar to Bangalore landed in Bangalore at 3.30pm and since it was a weekday at Infosys, the company feared that people wouldn’t stay back late and so wanted to start the show at 5pm. For us to get out of the airport and make it to the Infosys campus and then do a soundcheck and start was going to be impossible. So we almost cancelled the plan, but for this one flight connection I found – Bhubaneshwar to Hyderabad by an Indigo flight, a one hour and ten minute wait before we take the Jet Lite flight to Bangalore. And to top that, the planned closure of the Bangalore airport would end on the 3rd and we would be landing on the first day when the airport was open during the day!

And we were still cutting it close and adding more points of failure to the plan, but we decided it was worth taking that risk! And at the end of the day, Indigo goes on national TV and tells us how their service is incredibly prompt and we’ve seen and almost come to believe it, so we would surely be able to do this.

But as fate would have it, the Indigo flight from Bhubaneshwar to Hyderabad was delayed by 40 minutes. This meant that before we even took off from Bhubaneshwar, we were not going to make the Jet Lite deadline to checkin.

And this happened without any warning, we sat in the flight that arrived at the scheduled Departure time and from there, just one thing added to another and what was supposed to be a 10.10am departure was going to be a 10.45am departure.

I made 2 calls at this point, one to my wife Shilpa, who I asked to web check us in one way or the other, and another to Nandita, who I asked to talk to Jet and see if they can hold check-in for us till we get there.

I couldn’t web check-in the band myself the previous day because for some God forsaken reason, Jet allows only Jet Privilege members to web check-in, but Shilpa called the office and fought her way through making sure we were web checked in by the time we landed in Hyderabad, and not just that, she even got us our favorite seats!

Nandita went into rockstar mode, called Jet, requested, pleaded, threatened to sue, swore and even cajoled I think to make sure that Jet would hold the counters open for us. Further than that, I was told, both Airtel’s management and Infosys management put their stern word in to make sure we would board that flight. And just as a precaution, had even kept an helicopter on stand by to make sure we get our behinds to Bangalore in time.

On the flight, I did my share of cajoling and requesting and got the cabin crew to talk to the captain of the flight to call the Indigo ground staff and tell them that the flight was delayed and we had no other option and request them to help us in anyway possible.

After that, it was the most tense 90 minute flight I have ever taken, with no way to know what was happening, all I could do was sit and wait!

The minute we touched down in Hyderabad, I put my phone on and called Shilpa who confirmed that we had been checked-in on the flight and called Nandita who said she has done all she can to have them wait for us.

The flight came up to the aero-bridge, and the 6 of us were the first to exit the flight, and much to our surprise found and Indigo airport staff member, Zaed, waiting for us with our boarding passes for the Jet flight. He took us through the transfer route, had us go through security check and at the boarding gate for the Jet flight in less than 10 mins. Even the security staff were quite amused and shocked to see an Indigo staff member doing all this for a Jet flight!

Once we were at the gate, it was time to worry about our instruments that were checked in to the flight. Zaed got on the job and did his magic. Just as they announced the final boarding call for us to take the flight, Zaed came back to say our bags and instruments were connected as well and we now had all our stuff transferred to the Jet flight. The sigh of relief on hearing this was quite something!

A HUGE round of thanks and our heart felt appreciation to Zaed, Mary, Sami and Somiah from the Indigo offices / airport staff and to Sneha, Iona and Shruti, the cabin crew members on our flight from Bhubaneshwar without whose help, all of this would never have happened for us! You guys absolutely rock

The Jet flight to Bangalore itself was quite uneventful and we go to the airport in Bangalore, headed to Infosys and like all fairy tales end, had one hell of a smashing gig!

With that, Airtel Money officially launched in Infosys!

It could so easily not have been us there on stage that night. The original dates for the festival were clashing with our tour in Sri Lanka, but it snowed on those days and the festival was pushed by a week enabling us to make it. The day we arrived was really bad weather, so the sound set up couldn’t happen till the morning of the actual festival, and we were supposed to headline on the first day, but the delay meant that only 2 bands would play on the first day and as fate would have it, we started proceedings at the Gulmarg Winter Festival!

Kashmir is special to every single Indian, but MOST Indians have only heard about Kashmir, and VERY VERY few have actually been there. So when we were offered a chance to perform in Kashmir and what would be such a historic event, I had little hesitation in saying “Yes!” but we never knew how epic this tour would actually be.

Half the band had never seen snow in their lives, so the thought of performing on a snow covered mountain slope was met with mixed reactions of joy, apprehension, excitement and fear. And we experienced all those emotions on this trip!

We landed in Srinagar, straight from Delhi, where we played at one of our favorite clubs in the country, Attitude Alive, and were whisked off in cars straight to Gulmarg. Now Gulmarg is about 40Kms from Srinagar, but is DRAMATICALLY different in climate, terrain and most importantly for the rest of our trip – Temperature.

Enroute to Gulmarg, we did a pit stop at Tungmarg, where we had a fantastic lunch at a road side hotel, equipped ourselves with Wellies and jackets and waited our turn to climb the hills on to our hotel in Gulmarg. Then followed the most incredible road journey that we had had ever been on. We were seated in ‘chained vehicles’ – chains tied around the tyres of our vehicle to avoid them sliding back on the snow covered roads – and we were driving around the mountains that were covered in at least 4 ft of snow!

Those roads were just about wide enough for our SUV and somehow, there was two way traffic and we were witness to some amazing maneuvering with tyre slippage being accounted for as well! On one side of the road was the breathtaking scenery with snow clad mountains, tall pine trees and on the other, a vehicle trying to squeeze past on a road clearly meant only for one vehicle!

We reached Gulmarg nevertheless, safe and sound, but frozen to the bone, and then we realized how under prepared we had been all along and what it actually meant to be standing in sub zero temperatures. But all of us were just trying to soak in as much of the surroundings as possible. A couple of us had our first falls on ice, we tried to throw snow balls at each other and more importantly, realized the meaning of the word ‘Thaw’!

A small session of Dumb Charades to keep us amused after dinner and we slept like we hadn’t slept in a LONG LONG time.

The morning was the prettiest sight! The mountain range in the background and a vast snow filled golf course outside our window, and we couldn’t wait to go out and explore. With the warmest we could get ourselves to be and our spirits high, we walked out and straight into the open arms of the numerous guides and vendors waiting to take us for a ride :p – pardon the pun!

But we very soon realized how organized the tourism industry is here in Gulmarg, and after some more warm clothing purchases, we were assigned individual sledges and one attendant and we started our tour around the area. Your first time on a sledge is always going to be an experience and we had a crazy introduction to it, and then headed straight to the beginners ski slopes!

We got our ski gear on, and about half an hour later, we were all doing solo ski rides down the small slopes! And we have video proof to show!

From there it was another trek to the Gondola or the cable car and that took us to Phase 1 – 1200 metres above Sea Level! An intermediate spot that we could see a large part of the mountain range from. At this point, we were less than 100 metres from the Line of Control and that was quite something.

We came back from the day’s outing and everyone went back for a quick snooze because while you don’t realize it because of the temperature, walking around in boots in the snow and skiing makes you seriously tired.

We waited for a couple of hours before Vivek called saying things were more or less set up and we could come over to start a small soundcheck and continue to start the festival. The venue was like they took a winter postcard and plonked a stage right in the middle of it and how they did it is something I don’t even want to find out! The walk to the stage with no equipment itself was challenging for us, so having to set up a full PA there must have been a mammoth undertaking!

There were lots of problems to start with and one by one, we ironed out most of them, giving us enough to start the show with. Raghu was adamant that we perform in our trademark lungis and the compromise was that we would keep our boots on, and wear our lungis over them. Which is what we did!

With our fingers numb and not even feeling the strings as we strummed the guitar, it was quite challenging to even get through sound check, so our show was as expected, full of bloopers and absolute crazy moments when we had no idea how we were even playing! But like Raghu said, “Shiny Happy People” got us through our short 40 min set.

Now that I look at this experience, I am still left wondering why someone would do a festival like this, and even more of a question, is why bands would agree to play here, and a bigger one, why people would come to a place like this for such a festival! and the answer is that there is power in music and like the song ‘Kodagana Koli Nungitha’ says, each of us is significant in the way the universe functions, and every little thing that we do has repercussions that are felt somewhere.

For all that effort, Kashmir saw its first music festival ever, and after having spoken with the locals who hadn’t heard a band play in all their life, us playing for half an hour there, was a MAMMOTH event in their lives!

And lastly, us musicians are a little crazy that way, while most of this sounds ridiculous to the logical mind to pull off, we think its pretty darn cool!

I know we have been part of igniting a spark that will hopefully lead to much bigger things one day, but that is not for me to predict at this point. I just want to thank everyone who was crazy enough to think this was a good idea and follow through with it and make it happen.

We’ve played at quite a few special places around the world so far in our career, but this one will count as the craziest thing we have done yet!

]]> http://raghudixit.com/gulmarg-winter-music-festival-2012/feed/ 0 http://raghudixit.com/massive-march-1st-leg/ http://raghudixit.com/massive-march-1st-leg/#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:16:40 +0000 Gaurav http://raghudixit.com/?p=9108 Bangalore to Colombo – The First Leg of our Massive March tour finally got underway with a fantastic gig at the Indiranagar Club which started the ball rolling. The 2000 members who gathered started off a little quiet but then came right up to the massive dance floor that was positioned right in front of the stage.

With a dynamic president like Mr. BNS Reddy at the helm, the club has only seen fantastic things happen over the years and when we played there this week, he said, it was the icing on the cake.

We started after much anticipation and got straight into a fully energetic set and kept it going there till multiple cries for an encore at the end had to be quickly satisfied and we had to head home and pack for a 10 day tour.

But like all of our travels, this one had to start with much drama as well! we had to fly from Chennai and not Bangalore because there were no morning flights from Bangalore. Now just like a movie climax, we had 6 and a half hours to report at the Chennai airport and the journey to Chennai takes, you guessed right, 6 odd hours!

But when Raghu was ready to leave from home, he realized he has misplaced his passport, and about 40 minutes of frantic searching later found, the passport and then realized his house keys were missing, and by the time that confusion was sorted, we were already running behind by an hour.

Our drivers though, drove like the wind and that combined with a thoughtful online checkin meant that we were sailing smoothly!

But then at immigration, we realized that Parth has forgotten his PIO card, an important travel document and they wouldn’t allow him to travel! Much convincing ensued with us pulling all stops and doing everything in our power to convince the Immigration officers to allow him onward. And it worked! they agreed to let him travel without his card!

We landed in Colombo and drove through the mad traffic into the city and took the expressway to Galle, and landed at the venue for soundcheck at EXACTLY the time specified to us! A quick sound check followed where we overhauled the entire stage and I ended up being the stage monitor mix engineer while Vinod reset the PA almost!

But we got what we wanted from the sound and it was going to be a couple of hours before we got on stage. We were walking around the festival venue that was just outside the magnificent Galle Fort and on the rocky shore of the Indian ocean.

The Galle Music Festival has very interesting programming, there are bands from 5 different countries playing and each of them are completely different from each other, and it has been quite a while since we have ‘represented’ India at an event! That was quite interesting for me.

By the time we were on stage, a crowd of about 4000 – 5000 people had gathered and Raghu started off by telling all of them sitting dutifully before the stage to stand up and start the party. And they did! And that just made it all the more fun for us! We got them going and by the time we ended our short set, EVERYONE was a part of it, jumping and dancing along.

It was finally time for us after about 15 hours of traveling, 4 hours of waiting, and half an hour of playing, to finally head to our hotel and crash out!

As we head into our Colombo concert today and after another fantastic day at the Galle Music festival, we will certainly miss Sri Lanka very much! Many heartfelt thanks to Solveig Korum and Concerts Norway, to Rashani and Menika and everyone at Sewalanka and also to Sudharaka and Shehan who took lovely care of us for making this such a fantastic trip!

Thanks also to Rajyashri Goody for these fantastic pictures!

Playing at College fests can go either way – you might have the best experience because they will be incredible hosts and you will be taken care of excellently, or it could all go south and they have no idea what is happening. At SIMC last weekend, it was the former and some of the best hospitality and treatment we have received.

SIMC Lavalle is located in the hills just on the outskirts of Pune. The drive there is quite scenic but the campus is breathtakingly beautiful. And right from when we landed there to the final show itself, we had a very good feeling about the show.

We took some rest and had a relaxed soundcheck following which, Joshish played a nice set to get the crowd that had gathered revved up for us to take stage. We got on bang on time, and started with a nice version of our staple set opener, Hey Bhagwan, following it up with the Dewarists track, Masti Ki Basti, which really set the pace for the show.

It was a set that was mostly from the new album until we started hearing cries for all the old favourites and Raghu did not disappoint, we went through the set loving every minute of it and even did an encore to finish things up. After that encore, while the sound guys packed up the stage and were half way through dismantling mics, we saw that the crowd had not left the venue at all! Cries for “One More!” followed and Raghu obliged doing a solo version of ‘No Man will ever love you, like I do”.

Our heartfelt thanks to all the students of SIMC who put this together, especially Pawan and Ankita, you guys were the stars of the evening!

Also – much thanks to Pooja Udaikumar for these fantastic photos – do check the rest of her set from that night and go like her photography page!

Rewben and us met during the Roots Tour that we went on in 2008! It was then that we realized that there was some magic when we got on stage together and just jammed. So a chance to actually sit and work together and make music could not be passed up!

There is very little I have to say about our experience in Shillong where we were to spend a week working on a brand new song, but managed to compose and record it overnight and whats better, perform the new song at the Autumnfest in Shillong after just one day of composing it!

So without any more delay, please go right ahead and watch the episode of ‘The Dewarists’ where we take you through how we made our latest song, ‘Masti ki Basti’.

Also check out some amazing pictures of us live on stage at the Autumnfest taken by Kunal Kakodkar

This is our second time playing live on a National TV show in the UK, the first one of course being ‘Later … with Jools Holland‘!

But fear not, we aim to be done soon, and then go on a massive album launch tour, and make sure that ALL OF YOU get yourselves a copy!

The Raghu Dixit Project will be in the UK around the same time to continue the collaboration project with Bellowhead that will be staged at the Southbank Center’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, as part of their festival, Alchemy – 2012.

Norway is a beautiful place and everywhere you look could be your desktop wallpaper or some post card you are sending back home! And after a really long journey, where we did Bangalore – Bombay (layover) – London (layover) – Oslo – Alesund and that was close to 24 hours of sitting in planes and airports, we stepped out into the crisp cold air of the Alesund airport and it was like magic! We snapped out of whatever jetlag and tiredness there was and there was even a spring in our step.

A short ride to our hotel, the Quality Waterfront, by the bay where there was possibly the biggest ship we have seen in our lives, the MS Queen Elizabeth parked right outside. And that, I think was a sure sign of how much fun we were to have and how much of our time would be in or beside the water!

We had just about enough time to put our bags into the room when Kristin, our hostess for the trip was all set to take us on our first boat trip of the weekend. A short trip to the Alnes lighthouse where there was dinner arranged for us, which was a healthy mix of Norwegian, Spanish and Japanese food, with an extra emphasis on sea food caught from the Norwegian seas, and a healthy overdose of beer and wine, which was served in a boat!

All the artists playing at the festival were at the lighthouse and it was the perfect way to break the ice (pardon the pun) and set the perfect vibe for the festival. The festival is about a bunch of friends / volunteers that come and hold a free music festival for over 30,000 people, where the artists go and play for free, and everyone does their bit for free. And the ‘bunch of friends’ vibe was set beautifully at the dinner and it also, in my opinion, set the tone for the rest of the weekend.

After chatting with almost everyone there, eating some fantastic seafood, drinking a LOT of beer, and then at one point, even climbing the light house, we were all whisked off in our van to the hotel to retire for the night!

The next morning was when we went and checked out Ocean Sound Recordings, one of the coolest places we have seen EVER! and it was a studio, like their website says, at the end of the world, in an absolute stunning location and had some of the most fantastic equipment available and a kickass room to record in!

We had lunch there and it was then a nice long walk along the Norwegian coastline for us to head to the festival. Now, let me put this in perspective for you. All of Giske, the town the festival happens in, has about 7000 people, thats an average housing complex in India now a days, and in that town of Giske, there is an island of population about, 700 people, where the actual site of the festival is. This island is so small, that there are no shops on the island. You have beautiful landscape and houses with incredible views.

So considering this, you must know that Norwegians are not really used to crowds. So when 35,000 people turn up for a free festival, on this island, it is a sight to be seen! And this year, they did!

The music started by 2 in the afternoon, and when we reached there, after our long walk, it was time for the memorial. There was a really touching memorial organized at the festival for all the victims of the horrid things that had just rocked Norway a week back. All artists at the festival contributed in some way, and the memorial was closed by Fran Healy, of Travis, singing ‘Sing’ with the entire crowd holding up red heart banners to show their solidarity. For each Norwegian there, considering it is a small place, where everyone we met knew someone or atleast someone who knew someone who was affected by the blasts, it was a special and touching moment.

We got on stage without wasting too much time and after a quick set up, it was time for us to launch into our music and like someone told us after our set, our ‘happy’ music was the best thing to go on after the memorial.

Raghu started with Hey Bhagwan, dedicating it to Norway, with a little prayer to the powers above to help Norway carry on through the tough time and for everyone affected, a second lease of life. We were to only play 4 more, so we breezed through Gudugudiya, and then dropped it down a bit for ‘No Man will ever love you, Like I do’ dedicated to our lovely hostess, Kristin who was seen jumping around making sure everyone she knows (and she knows a LOT of people) know that it was her we were referring to.

We then played ‘Kodagana Koli Nungitha’ before we ended with the “party song”, Mysore se Aayi, where we had everyone on their feet dancing to their heart’s content. A sight to be seen, and hopefully, we will have video evidence of it to show!

We were overwhelmed at the fantastic response and a huge thanks to everyone who came to watch and for everyone who made this trip possible!

The rest of the festival was quite amazing, with some of the best talent in Norway on display including Lars Vaular, Nils Petter Molvær, Susanne Sundfør and Morten Abel. And people stayed back, till 2 in the morning to listen, and enjoy themselves thoroughly.

But the trip din’t end there for us. We had a whole day ahead and some fantastic experiences in store. At noon, after having been given enough time to recover from the previous night, and then put on 3 big boats, and driven an hour into the fjords to the home of Severin and Lene, who stay in the most serene and picturesque surroundings I’ve ever seen.

To add to the awesomeness that was already too much to handle, our food was slow cooked in the earth! it was spiced and wrapped in the morning and was buried in the garden, with some hot stones over it it to let it slow cook in the heat and the pressure. And it tasted out of this world! And many of us were seen licking all the bowls clean and making sure all the little pieces were all wiped clean!

The place itself is an experience and it was with a heavy heart and heavier stomachs, that we headed back to our hotel, only to be promptly reminded that it was time to head for dinner. And not just any dinner, it was at the Atlanterhavsparken Aquarium where there was a special 3 course meal laid out for us, specially cooked for the occasion. And with it a Jam where most artists at the festival came on and did some special songs.

It was finally time to head back to our hotels, catch some well deserved sleep and wrap up any work we had online, and even squeeze some more sight seeing and then head to the airport for our flight back to London, where we will be based for the next 15 days.

But in the meanwhile, I don’t think any of this will be erased from our minds anytime soon.

Thanks Ante and Brent for all that you do, to Kristin and Anne May, the funnest girls we met, thanks for showing us an awesome time! and to Mette, for the fantastic person that you are!

A special thank you to Fran, Nora and to the amazing Clay, you guys are such humble people and after all that you have achieved, it is an ideal we hope to follow

And to Norway, you stole our hearts at the first glance, and now I don’t see how we can wait too long before we come back. In the words of the Terminator, “We’ll be back!”