Yes! You read that right…it is the very same Ehsaan from the ‘Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’ trio. Fender guitars are launching their new Ehsaan signature series guitars in India. I was fortunate enough to be there for the launch. After playing for a bit on stage, Ehsaan’s blues band asked people if they wanted to come up on stage and play the new guitars.
As always, me with my’ be the first horse out of the stable’ mentality when it comes to such things ran up. I may have trampled some other people on the way…happens! Never seen National Geographic? Never stand in the way of a charging Rhino. Anyway, I get on stage and one of his band mates gives me his guitar to mess around with. It’s a good thing I go for the classes because I knew some very basic almost laughable blues pentatonic scales. Played a little by myself. And that’s when he and Jayanta start pointing out how different tones on the guitar work with the different pick-ups and how different styles come across. So he plays this little riff and I try to follow in vain. Your truly got a solid ten minutes on stage getting lessons from Ehsaan on how to play the blues and how to use the new guitar.
While the entire evening was a promo for the new guitars, which are okayish (pics to the left).
Good sound, but I’m not exactly kicked about the work on the scratch board. I still don’t believe that the whammy bar will not de-tune the guitars without a lock. Anyway, enough about the guitars. Some of my band mates also got to play with Ehsaan onstage. Post the launch, we got a good 30 minutes where Ehsaan & Jayanta were kind enough to actually squat down and show us some nice licks and techniques on the guitar which would help play the blues better.
Overall, totally nice chaps. Very humble and very open to having a conversation with people. So that’s my 5 minutes of fame this weekend. Someday, I’ll be in a full time blues band. I tell you, all this are signs for me to just stop working and play guitar all day long.
PS: Willing to write songs like ‘Sheela ki jawani’ for a living if I can play guitar otherwise. Here’s a pic of me with Ehsaan and my band mates.
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