2 Stroke Tour: Skrat & aswekeepsearching go around the nation

It takes an insane amount of effort and contacts to get a multi-city tour in India. And it’s harder if you are an indie musician. Taking things into his own hands, Uddipan Sarmah of Post-Rock band aswekeepsearching, aims to change some of that.

[ Check out our interview with aswekeepsearching along with their debut album here]

Along with Chennai based Alt-Rockers(?) Skrat, Uddipan and his band is hitting the road on a multi-city, DIY tour. Uddipan sent us the official press release which we’ll quote verbatim (cause that’s slightly more honest than rephrasing and calling it ‘an article’) –

The first edition of the 2Stroke Tour will ride through 5 cities over 5 days from June 17th to 21st, 2015. Uddipan had long thought of exploding the touring scene in India and bring it in line with what happens in Europe and the U.S. but had been held back by the vexing question of financial investment. In March earlier this year, he had a long conversation with Bengaluru-based music enthusiast and blogger, Ramakrishnan Krishnan (Ram) about this. Ram, who has been supporting Indian Indie music in his own way for a while now, immediately fell in with Uddipan’s idea and decided to invest in it.

The 2Stroke Tour, as the name indicates, will feature two bands and will be a series. It will span genres and attempt to put together on each edition 2 sets of artists that complement each other either in similarity or as an interesting contrast. Episode 1 of the tour will have the exciting Chennai trio, Skrat playing along with aswekeepsearching in Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Skrat has always been a positive, adventurous band and the artists straight away jumped at it when the idea of the Tour was presented to them. aswekeepsearching has always been eager to expanding their boundaries. Although they are not strangers to long tours, Skrat still rates this their toughest tour given its back-to-back schedule. But both bands believe that the excitement of kicking off something new like this more than compensates for the back-breaking work required.

The bands and the organisers are united in their belief that non-corporate sponsored, DIY touring is within the realms of possibility and sustainability. In a sign of their long-term commitment to this endeavour, Uddipan and Ram have already started planning for the next tours. Following a short break after the first one, the 2Stroke tours will resume late August or early September and will be a regular feature in the Indian Indie gig calendar.