BLACKSTRATBLUES ON LATEST ALBUM: ‘IT'S A DIARY OF MY LAST YEAR'

Guitarist Warren Mendonsa walks us through his new 16-track record ‘Hindsight Is 2020’

- DAVID BRITTO

A lot has changed since we last visited guitarist Warren Mendonsa’s Mumbai home two years ago to talk about his 2019 Blackstratblues album When It’s Time. Of course, the pandemic has changed most people’s lives, but for Mendonsa and his family, that change happened to be a move to Auckland, New Zealand last June. He says, “We had been planning on going to New Zealand in 2020 in any case for the last two or three years, even before the pandemic happened.” Mendonsa adds, “I wanted to get here by the time my daughter has to go to kindergarten.”

However, this is not Mendonsa’s first foray in moving to New Zealand. Kiwi land is in fact the birthplace of Blackstratblues when the guitarist moved there in 2004 before releasing the project’s first two albums: Nights in Shining Karma (2007) and The New Album (2009). Upon his return to India in 2011, Mendonsa released three more records; The Universe Has a Strange Sense of Humour (2015), The Last Analog Generation (2017), and the aforementioned When It’s Time while also forming a formidable live act alongside drummer Jai Row Kavi, keyboardist Beven Fonseca, and bassist Adi Mistry.