April 25, 2022: Mellowness was the flavour at Pop Splat’s sixth volume of Standing Room Only, a weekly gig at The Hive featuring talent from all over, and this week’s edition of the gig featured singer songwriter Sonam Dorjee Lama and newly renamed Kanchan Daniel Band, now known as Kanchan Daniel And The Beards.
Sonam Dorjee Lama played the first set at Standing Room Only, and the man played his first set in the city since he moved to London, UK. Dorjee’s set was a singer songwriter set, with him playing a total of nine songs, mostly originals and the occasional cover. Although Dorjee started out his set pretty comfortably with his originals Red and a cover of Nikhil J Menon’s Where Gravity Fails, he did seem to be going off from time to time. While Sonam did seem to be making quite a few goof ups on stage, it was still a fun set nonetheless, with a more than enthusiastic audience. Dorjee had his cousin Faraz Sohail, who is also vocalist of Hindi band Wajood His best song for the night, was also the song most people were asking for all the time, his original track, Funky Monkey.
Kanchan Daniel And The Beards were the second act for the night. The band played an acoustic set with Kanchan Daniel on vocals, Anand Kamath on bass, Kush Upadhyay on guitars and Mukesh Lobo on keys. The band played a total of nine songs, again a mix of covers and originals. In a city that has just a few select blues bands active, it’s always fun to listen to this particular one, with its beautiful renditions of the blues. Mukesh Lobo could be more right when he described his band’s music as more soul than blues; while the blues seeps through every note that they play, the amount of “feel” is something that surpasses the realm of blues even. Along with their music itself though, the band’s relaxed onstage presence is what makes the band an absolute joy to watch always. Their best songs for the night were their Ray Charles’ cover of Let’s Go Get Stoned, Blue Rain that they released at this gig and Black Heart.
Pictures – Dhananjay Mane Photography/ PopSplat.in
