United by a deep love for the blues and the language of rhythm, three percussionists make up the By2Blues trio. Today, Ananth Menon, the multi-instrumentalist who switches between the Veena (in which he was trained), the harmonium and the mridangam, is the lead singer and guitarist, Vasudev Prabhu plays harmonica and Joe Anthony is on percussion. Together, as they juggle their day jobs, their band, By2Blues, is one of the most solid blues outfits in the country.
Despite the melancholic angst that has come to be associated with playing the blues, Ananth finds in them a great deal of peace. "The blues bring with them a certain ease and acceptance towards life," says Ananth, talking to DC in the midst of a jam session. Ananth and Dev founded the band back in 2011. "We each wanted to start something. We had heard each other play and had stayed in touch. We met and 15 minutes later, we know we had something," says Ananth.
He fiddles with a harmonica, letting out a bending note to demonstrate the complexity of technique that lies beneath the apparently rustic genre. "Real blues harmonica is difficult, it's also hard to teach because you can't see what's going on as you play. In essence, you're breathing in and out," he explains.
Four years later, Joe came along. By this time, Ananth and Dev had found themselves in something of a rut and the new arrival was just what they needed. "We wanted to experiment and when Joe joined, we felt an intense chemistry."
Despite their reputation for the blues, the band does stray from time to time. "We're not strictly blues, quite the opposite. It's an influence, we still have to make our songs interesting, not replicas. So we do some rocky blues, some jazzy blues, some no-blues too. Sometimes we deviate from a song that's essentially the blues and at times, we add elements to songs that are not." Ananth's love for the blues came early, when he watched Eric Clapton play. "There's a certain power behind it," he recalls. "If you want any music to work, though, the feeling you put behind it makes all the difference."
Two members of the band have day jobs - Joe is a technical writer and Dev, an advertising consultant. Ananth is the only full-time musician, a decision he sometimes thinks was stupidity, faced with the struggles of making ends meet. "Yes, there are the highs of doing what you love, when your music transports you to another space and when you interact with your audience. You find that with years of searching but when you do, it's beautiful. That's what keeps me going, but it isn't easy." Still, he believes that a degree of "insecurity" isn't all bad. "I think it's important to be a little insecure about your music," he says. "It makes you work every moment of the day."
