Blackstratblues on Homecoming Shows in Mumbai: ‘It’s Nice to Come Back to Where You Started’ 

It wasn’t too long ago that Mumbai-bred and Auckland-based guitarist Warren Mendonsa returned to India after moving to New Zealand a couple of years ago. The musician was in the country to play at the returning Independence Rock festival in November last year with his rock outfit Zero. “That one was a bit of a whirlwind [trip], we were in Bombay only for eight days,” says Mendonsa.  

This time around, however, his stay in India is a much longer one, which has given him the chance to set up gigs with his other band, blues-rockers Blackstratblues. The group – which also includes drummer Jai Row Kavi, keyboardist Beven Fonseca and bassist Adi Mistry – wrapped up shows last week in Bengaluru, and in New Delhi as part of the inaugural Oddball Festival.  

Before that, the last time the Blackstratblues crew played a gig together was at Mumbai’s antiSOCIAL in December 2019. Ask Mendonsa what it’s like getting back onstage with the band and he says, “It’s like riding a bicycle. You run it for so long that even if you don’t play together for a few years, it still feels quite natural. I didn’t really have to think too much about it, which is good.” 

Fortunately for him, the Oddball dates managed to coincide with his already-planned trip to India. Initially, the group were meant to play just the Bengaluru show. “Luckily, the boys [the band] hadn’t been booked for that weekend yet, so Oddball asked us to play Delhi as well. Then, they said, ‘Why don’t you do Bombay as well?’ I said, ‘No, no, we need to practice [laughs].’” 

Well, Mumbai fans of the band are in luck as Blackstratblues recently announced two back-to-back gigs at the city-based antiSOCIAL on March 3rd and 4th. The first set will be a regular late club gig and the second one an earlier set, which will kick off at 6 pm. Mendonsa plans on changing up the setlist for each night but promises to play songs that “people want to hear.” He adds, “There’s no way you can actually cover a back catalog of six albums. But it’s still quite a good exercise [to split the setlist] because you leave your setup overnight and you don’t really have soundcheck on the second day. So, I thought that it would be a good thing to call a few guests on the second day and instead of doing a soundcheck, we’ll just run through a few songs and see what we can pull off. That’s the idea.” 

With Blackstratblues playing on home turf for the first time since 2019, Mendonsa says, “The first-ever Blackstratblues gig was in Bombay, so it’s kind of nice to come back to where you started.” The band was scheduled to perform at antiSOCIAL in Mumbai in March 2020 and had to cancel that gig due to the pandemic. “It’s almost like we’re making up for that, doing two gigs instead of one [laughs].” 

With no more Blackstratblues shows on the cards while he’s in India this time, Mendonsa does inform us that there were plans to try and play in Kolkata, Hyderabad and Pune. He says, “But I guess you have to make do with what you can, logistically and economically.”  

Although Mendonsa released a Blackstratblues live album titled L . I / O . V . E. Vol. I in 2022, the last studio album he put out, Hindsight Is 2020, was in 2021. The guitarist tells us that he doesn’t have any concrete plans at the moment once he returns to New Zealand in terms of releasing new Blackstratblues music. However, he says, “There’s always material that is lying in my hard disk that needs to be fleshed out. I think I’ll actually put out the next live album first, volume two, and then look at the next studio album.” 

Click here to buy tickets for the March 3rd and 4th, 2023 Blackstratblues gigs in Mumbai.