As part of a Starbucks event to promote musicians, I was invited to cover Bryden-Parth. For those of you who dont know about them, Bryden Lewis was the guitarist for the Raghu Dixit Project (Until a month ago) and is currently the guitarist with Slain, while Parth Chandiramani is the flautist for the Raghu Dixit Project. Both these musicians have come together to create a stripped down act (currently accompanied by Joel Rozario from Solder on percussion) where they’re currently focussing on creating medleys of popular songs ranging from the Backstreet Boys to Avicii.
This act was formed as a stress buster from the other more intense mainstream gigs that they individually work on and is aimed at giving them an avenue to write original material. The choice of going with a stripped-down approach was to focus more on having fun. Bryden commented,” With this approach we’re doing multiple things like Parth going beyond the flute to play keys and saxophone. And I’m looking after vocals which are a big challenge for me. This gives us room to push ourselves.”
While original music is the intent, the band’s set list right now focuses on covers. As the band explained, the reason for starting off with this was easy because they were playing these songs at parties for friends and family in any case. While the band did not rule out an album, their current focus is to write more original material. “Given everyone’s packed schedules, we’re not sure on a date for the album. Right now, this is just a big stress buster for us.” said Parth.
This particular gig had a special guest from Mumbai– Siddarth Basrur. Anyone who has been in the indie scene knows the vocal range of Siddarth. I’ve personally been a big fan of his since his Goddess Gagged days and cannot wait to see what he brings to the party with Scribe. As someone who still has dreams of being a rock journalist, this gig is something that would go into a memoir for sure. After performing a couple of songs from his other act – Last remaining light, Siddarth and the band sang Stay from his Chasing Rain album. We suddenly had a flash choir join him. This turned out to be his proposal to his long-time girlfriend. I’ve only seen such things in the movies; this was the first time I’ve actually seen this live. She said yes.
The audience at the gig was made up mostly of friends, family and faces familiar to the band. It’ll be interesting to see if they do take this particular act on the road with some original material
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