In talks with Jasdeep Singh Virk

QUESTION:WHAT’S THE NAME AND ORIGIN OF YOUR BAND AND WHO ALL ARE THE MEMBERS?

ANSWER: The name of the band is Sand Smile. The name Sand Smile basically signifies that nothing is permanent in this world. If you draw a smile on the sand it will get washed away by the waves. One day we all are going to fade away, the only thing that will remain is our music.

The band was formed in 2017. At that point of time I was playing guitar with different local bands and was writing and composing my own songs. I was really not happy with playing someone else’s music. By the end of 2017 I decided to quit all the local bands with which I was associated and form my own project. So I started attending all local gigs and meeting people in order to find the correct bunch of individuals who would match my music style and those who are ready to invest their time in making original music. During this search I met Raghav Bhutani (Drums) in a local gig, he was at that time in class 12th and then I invited him for a jam. The first jam went well and Raghav Bhutani then introduced me to Jatin Chabbra (Keys/Violin) who was his school friend. We then started searching and auditioning for Bass guitar players and after meeting quite a few people we met Harkaran Singh (Bass). In our very first jam, all four of us felt the drive and since then we’ve never looked back.

The current lineup consists of the following:

Jasdeep Singh Virk – Vocals/ Guitars

Raghav Bhutani– Drums

Jatin Chabbra– Violin/Keys

Harkaran Singh– Bass Guitar

QUESTION: What inspires you to make music together?

ANSWER: Everyone has to find a way to inspire themselves. We all belong to different genres and musical influences but we all had one vision which was to make and perform original music.  We were just four people who started jamming together trying to find ourselves in the music we make. The freedom and energy we feel when we play our music inspires us to carry on. The sense of belongingness with each other and commitment towards the music makes us more dedicated towards achieving our goal in life. We take inspiration from each other. The sacrifices we all are making every day whether it’s spending time with family and meeting friends and spending majority hours in a day practicing with the band inspires us to make music together.

Question: Music making process?

Answer: Making music is never easy but we try to keep our music simple and uncomplicated. A song is nothing but an expression, so we try to bring out that expression through our lyrics and music. We want the listeners to connect and live our music. There is no fixed manner of making music in our band. So it all begins with me writing the song and then making a melody over it (composing).Then the next job is to introduce the song to the other members of the band. Each member then gives his inputs as per his understanding of the song, and then we all start jamming over the melody. After spending hours of jamming, demo recordings and sometimes rewriting the lyrics. We finally are able to compose a piece of art.

Question: What genre of music do you consider your work to be?

Answer: SANDSMILE is a combination of different genres. But if I have to name few it would be PSYCHADELIC ROCK, PROGRESSIVE ROCK, and ALTERNATIVE AND ART ROCK.

Question: What are you major influences?

Answer: There are many artists who influenced me in my style of song writing and composing. The major influences are classic rock bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and late 1980’s British Bands like Oasis, Radiohead, Porcupine Tree and few American bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Creed, Rage against the machine, Alter Bridge, Audioslave and Soundgardern.

Question: How did your parents react when you told them about continuing to pursue music instead of law?

Answer:  Initially my parents were not that serious about my interest in music.  They were of the opine that I am doing it just as a hobby. But after seeing me into it for a continued period of many years and after a lot of arguments, when they actually listened to my composition and song writing they started taking me seriously  and today they are happily supporting me in this because they know that it a trap from which I don’t want to escape. I would like to mention from my experience that it is difficult to survive on just music (specifically the genre we are into) in a society like ours because of less audience and venues where we can play live music . So I am also into business as a back up plan and I  would suggest all the artists who are trying to do something different, to have a secured back up plan so that you can be financially secured.

Question: What’s the ultimate direction of our band?

Answer:  We just want to cure and heal people with our music. We want people to relate to our music and feel that this song is written just for them. We want spread our music across people who really understands the beauty of music.  Right now we are working on our album and few music videos and hopefully it will be out next February.

Question: How can fans-to-be gain access to your music?

Answer: We are there on Instagram and Youtube by the name of Sandsmile.music. We are not much active on social media and we are planning to release our first album all at once. We have uploaded few of our work on Instagram and Youtube.

Interviewed by Parika Bhardwaj (4th year)