How a Knock on the Door Changed our Lives

The Story of the American Rock Band, Dream Alive

We all love Pink Floyd don’t we? What about Coldplay? How awesome would it be to somehow pick up the best of both bands and make new music! Well today we have a band that draws its influences from these masterminds of music and infuses its own magic within! With two critically acclaimed albums under their belt (and one more on the way), all the way from Los Angeles, California, team trbble is proud to present, the winners of this year’s Artist Aloud award for the best video, Dream Alive!

We got to speak to Nik and Karan from Dream Alive who recounted starting from an apartment in Los Angeles to performing around the country and in India. Here’s what they had to say:

On Winning the Award for The Best Video

“It’s a pretty surreal feeling. It came as a surprise because this was the first video we shot and it was on zero budget. The video was a group effort with everyone contributing to it —We rented a stage area and our friend Irwin was the cinematographer , Nik’s Sister was the lead actress and Karan’s cousin was in it too.

We played in India earlier and it was an amazing experience — the audience was really receptive and for us to be recognised and awarded by the Jury for it is really a humbling experience.”

On the Beginning of the Dream Alive

“It really all started with a knock on the door. Karan and I used to live in the same apartment complex and coincidentally shared a wall too. So he used to be able to hear me playing the keyboards. One day when I was jamming to some classic rock tunes, he came over and said — Hey that’s some awesome stuff you’re playing. We should definitely get together and jam! And then we started jamming. Coincidentally, the video that we won the award for was the first song we jammed together on.

So literally around three weeks after we first jammed, we played our first live gig. This happened somewhere in 2012(Phew, time flies!)”

On gathering a mass following in India

“The legwork for getting a lot of following in India was always in works. Whenever we did any promotions via Facebook or YouTube, we always targeted India since that’s Karan’s hometown too. We also started mailing MTV Indies with our videos. Artist Aloud also signed us up and helped promote our first album. All these factors put together helped us gather followers in India. “

“So one day Karan came to me(Nik) and asked me if it would be feasible to play in India at Blue Frog(Mumbai) and the Baroda International Marathon — he was like, no pressure, just give me an answer within this afternoon! Lucky for me , I had a ten year Visa and so I said, yeah why not and he was like, good ’cause your plane leaves in six days!

The experience of playing in India was pretty amazing, the crowd is so involved and passionate that it makes the entire playing experience a lot more fun!”

On the Concert at the WorldArts Studio

“So we created a profile for our band on their website and they invited us to perform at their studio to broadcast our concert live via periscope like they usually do. The only issue was that only three of us were available that day so we decided to do an unplugged/acoustic version of our songs. We usually play as a five piece band with a bassist and three piece harmonies. That was, playing an unplugged version was a big learning experience for us because sometimes when you reverse engineer a song and strip it down, you learn a bit more about the song,even if you’ve played it hundreds of times. The guys at WorldArts were really amazing and did a good job with the organisation of the concert — they even promoted our music afterwards and gave us a few videos of our performances that we cherish till date. It’s always nice to have organisations support the indie music community both morally and also by providing a platform to showcase ourselves”

Chances of collaborating with any Indian Bands

Karan:

“ So I grew up in India and I’ve always followed the rock acts from there — I love bands like Parikrama,Indian Ocean, Agnee, Thermal and a Quarter and many others. I used to listen to them so often and attend their concerts. Many of them used to play stuff like Iron Maiden,Metallica and I used to enjoy them a lot. The music scene in India is pretty big these days and I especially love the way bands infuse Indian Classical music with Rock music.

If I were to pick a band that I’d love us to collaborate with it’d be probably be Thermal and a Quarter or Indian Ocean. I’ve always been a fan of the blues sound that is native to TAAQ’s music and Nikhil Rao , the guitarist of Indian Ocean is a good friend. We’d love to maybe jam with them whenever we come to India next or maybe go on a tour with a band that sounds similar to us!”

(Imagine the sound of both the bands together — that would be something!)

On funny experiences on the Road

“So there was this one time that we were playing at the House of Blues here in LA and we were the second last band to go on stage. We had made this fancy intro for the show which we were going to play. For the intro, we wanted to use the newly acquired Moog . Now the thing about the Moog is that it’s an analog instrument and requires like five minutes to warm up before it gets in tune. Sadly, the guys at the centre told us that we had like five minutes to set up and we were not able to use the Moog at all — it was just standing on stage like a prop! The funny part is that at the end of the concert, people came up to us and said — Woah! dude, that was some amazing stuff you played on the Moog!”

On the production of the Drifting Away album

“ The entire EP was done in less than a month(like GNR just coming up with songs in a day!). Martin and David(Bass and Drums) are real magicians. They laid down the album by recording bass and drums in one room and we grooved off of it. They laid down the groundwork that made it so easy for us to just add layers on top of their work!

We sent the songs songs to MTV and after a few months of follow up Emails, they got back to us and said that they’d be airing the songs one after the other. The effort put into the album really paid off that way!”

Future Plans and the Upcoming album

“So we’ve currently been bitten by the writing bug. The last album was really spontaneous and was made really quickly and we love that. Now that we have time in our hands, we’re writing new material and experimenting with new sounds. We can’t wait to share it with everyone, it will be something different but will be distinctly Dream Alive”

“Apart from that, we’re planning a few gigs come June and also, want to come back to India, this time all five of us, and play. We’re trying to contact the organisers of the Mood Indigo Festival(IIT Bombay’s Cultural Fest) and also will try to book a few gigs in other cities. So all in all, a lot to look forward to!”

Discover Dream Alive’s amazing music , on trbble at a time!

You can listen to the full interview here.