Sunday Driver UK

The secret of a band’s success lies in its name.

A band’s name should encapsulate the mood of its music. A band 's name should be cool. But there is an exception to every rule. “Sunday Driver” is – you guessed it! – named after a gene commonly found in fruit flies. It does not evoke our “eclectic fusion of eastern and western styles”.

Sunday Driver have been through many incarnations over the years before arriving at our line up of six people and twice as many instruments – numbering an orchestral harp and a sitar, as well as a pair of dessert spoons.

We started out quite sometime ago after Chandy had just returned from a field trip in Antarctica, collecting data for the British Antarctic survey. Five months living off dried carrots at -40 C and no toilet had left her determined to be a singer – the prospect of hot sweaty music venues and scantily clad screaming fans being a perfect antidote to life in the deep freeze.

After a summer of exchanging of handwritten notes and TDK cassettes (e-mails and mp3 just can’t compete!) Chandy hooked up with guitarist Joel, bassist Mel and the multi-talented Kat. Originally the quartet were aiming for a gentle blend of Chandy's own dulcet tones to a backdrop of harp and guitar. This can still be heard even in our more recent songs like “Sweet Dreams” , recently included on a community project CD supported by the Big Chill, and featured on Chill radio. Its reviews are far more flattering than Joel’s original synopsis of Chandy's singing: “an Indian version of Charlotte Church”.

As the ranks swelled over the years to include lead guitarist Chemise, and tabla player Matthew Sarkar, our music has become increasingly experimental. An Arts Council grant back in 2004 paid for training workshops with renowned sitarist Baluji Srivastav. This sparked our interest in Hindustani classical music and inspired Joel to take up the sitar. Two years on, his skill had outstripped even George Harrison’s – he composed the melody to “Bol and Spoon” which formed the soundtrack for our award winning BBC Radio 4 show on ‘Leprosy: a Forgotten Disease’. And Joel’s notoriety on the gourd reached its zenith last year with a unique performance “Norwegian Wood” on the sitar for BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

Sunday Driver have played well over 100 gigs together over the years, and have almost – but not quite – earned enough to cover the cost of tea and biscuits at band practices. Favourite "notches on the band bedpost" include the Cambridge Folk Festival, the Secret Garden Festival and a gig with the Grand Union jazz orchestra at the Cambridge Corn Exchange. As well as a slightly surreal appearance on Mel and Sue's BBC London radio show and numerous appearances on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, we’ve also been played on Classic FM’s Chiller Cabinet.

Still , our favourite haunts remain the Portland Arms in Cambridge, and Cambridge’s Living Room – which features the best of the local music scene as well as artists from further afield. Antarctic-inspired “Trip” can be found on Hope Street Music’s Living Room Live CD (available via iTunes).

So what’s the secret of our longevity? Perhaps it’s not having listened to well-wishers who say we could have “made it big” if we’d only been more mainstream. Will Young’s music may earn him more than the price of a pack of Ginger Nuts, but can he stun an audience into silence by beating his thighs with a spoon?

We received a grant from the Arts Council last year to record and market a new album. In October of 2008 we will be launching what promises to be our finest work to date; the album “In the City of Dreadful Night”, showcasing our unique blend of bitter-sweet song writing and eclectic line up of Tabla, Sitar, Harp, Guitars and Bass Clarinet. And spoons. Don't forget the spoons.

Forthcoming performances this year include Cambridge Pink Festival, The Edinburgh Mela and the album launch at The Junction 2 in Cambridge aka The Shed (Friday 17th October). See you there!

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The secret of a band’s success lies in its name.

A band’s name should encapsulate the mood of its music. A band 's name should be cool. But there is an exception to every rule. “Sunday Driver” is – you guessed it! – named after a gene commonly found in fruit flies. It does not evoke our “eclectic fusion of eastern and western styles”.

Sunday Driver have been through many incarnations over the years before arriving at our line up of six people and twice as many instruments – numbering an... (read more)