Big Bang Blues Announce Live EP, Five-City Tour This Month
The New Delhi-origin blues band also look back at their long-anticipated set at Mahindra Blues festival in February
Blues rock band Big Bang Blues' band members (from left to right) Naman Datta, Shivam Khare, Sushant Thakur, Diyatom Deb and Archit Agrawal at the Mahindra Blues Festival 2024 in Mumbai.
New Delhi’s Big Bang Blues had been applying to perform at Mahindra Blues Festival since 2018 and it’s only in February that they were selected via the Band Hunt competition to be a part of one of the country’s longest-running blues festivals. It marked their first performance at the Mumbai festival since 2013.
Guitarist Sushant Thakur says, “It was a thrilling experience and an acknowledgment by [the] blues-loving audience that we are on the right path and to continue drive further ahead with all we got.” Vocalist Diyatom Deb, who joined the band in 2016, calls it a dream come true. “I don’t think there were a lot of expectations from us but when we started our set, the entire garden at Mehboob Studios was filled,” he adds.
For a band that started in 2009 and underwent a few lineup changes and remained wholly independent to try and make it as a blues act in India – and also spawned an offshoot project SkyEyes and a self-titled EP in 2019 – Thakur says it’s not been an easy road. “[Throughout] all this what did keep me going was a thirst to express myself through songwriting influenced with blues and call of the road – touring,” the guitarist says.
Big Bang Blues have now announced a five-city tour that will coincide with the launch of a live EP Live at The Piano Man. There’s also an album in the works, but for now, the band will perform in New Delhi on April 19th, in Gurugram on April 21st, in Pune on April 26th, in Hyderabad on April 27th and close with a show in Bengaluru on April 28th.
There are five Big Bang Blues songs, plus covers like “Pride and Joy” by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love.”
At the Mahindra Blues Festival, Big Bang Blues were packing in “different avatars” of the band within their half-hour slot, according to keyboardist Shivam Khare. He says, “One song was boogie-style original blues, another one was a blues rock. We also had a song which had a very long experimental improv section in the middle.”
Outside of their performance, the band also got to meet and interact with international artists like Samantha Fish, Dana Fuchs, Vanessa Collier, Sheryl Youngblood and their band members. Deb says he also got to learn a lot about the blues scene in Chicago and other parts of the U.S. and locally, picked up valuable feedback from the Band Hunt competition’s judges, guitarist Ehsaan Noorani and keyboardist Loy Mendosa.
Even with these mainstay events, Thakur hopes that there will be more to keep the blues alive in India, beyond the International Blues Day in August each year. Khare adds, “It would be great to have more blues festivals in India. Blues is a form of music that most people can easily relate to and there is a lot more that blues bands can offer to the audience if given proper platforms.”
Big Bang Blues Live – EP Launch Tour 2024
April 19th – The Piano Man Jazz Club, New Delhi (get tickets)
April 21st – The Piano Man, Gurugram (get tickets)
April 26th – Pune
April 27th – Secunderabad Club, Hyderabad
April 28th – The Raft, Bengaluru w/Funkmonks (get tickets)
