Episode 7 – Warren Mendonsa – The Musician Dad

Photograph by Deepak Gopalkrishnan

(This is from Nadir Pop’s prespective)

When I was in college I remember attending the small and simple rock shows that used to happen in our city, Mumbai in India.

There was this band called Zero, these guys were young, strong, bordering brashness and knew the pulse of the crowd. But the member that really stood out, for me at least, was the lead guitarist, Warren Mendonsa.

That was around 17 years ago. We connect again, but this up close and as parents. Time can do wonderful things to people, the span doesn’t matter, but the point at which you meet is what matters.

Warren is this big, rotund man who looks like a regular bloke. His humility precedes him and at no point will you assume that he is a world-class musician, producer and composer.

Warren was sweet enough to give us some time and talk about his journey of being a parent and how is balances his life between creating music, being a dad, a husband and sometimes touring.

We spoke about his band Blackstratblues, their last 2 albums being inspired by his daughter. He goes on to say that being a parent changes his perspective even when it comes to creating music and having his daughter around kind of seeps into his creative process of making music.

Bedtime with The Beatles was something that Warren introduced us to where the musician called Jason Falkner takes Beatles songs and transforms them into lullabies. I think it’s quite genius. It’s great for kids clearly.

And another show that he introduced us to was Beat Bugs, a kids show which is based on The Beatles songs without the dodgy lyrics. I introduced it to my 3.5 year old daughter. She saw the first 5 mins, turns to me and enquires, almost offended, “Where is the bettle?” She was actually expecting the insect and when I said there aren’t any, she just dropped the phone and left.

Warren also truly believes that introducing musical instruments to young children is very beneficial.

The recording experience with Warren was a bit at the start. He was our first guest and we ended up talking amongst ourselves for a good 25 minutes and guess what we forgot to hit record! So we had to restart the entire conversation and it was all good.

Check out the latest Blackstratblues album

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