Sid Sriram on what to expect from his first-ever homecoming India tour!

It just felt like the right time. I’ve done a bunch of shows across the country over the years, but I’ve been a professional musician for just over a decade and it just felt like the right time to cel - ebrate the breadth of the discography that I have. To really celebrate this whole journey that I’ve had with music over the years, there wasn’t really a big plan or logic behind it. It just felt like a gut instinct thing, so we went with it. The cities that I’m performing in happen to be the ones that have my biggest fan bases and that have really embraced me as their own. That’s why we’re going to these cities, I want to perform in many more cities in the future as well, but it felt like for this one specifically, this was a great way to put it in place.

What we really hold on to dearly, especially as a band is I’ve been perfor ming with most of these guys for just under a decade now and we started before our first show in 2016. What we do is a three-hour show, the same band on stage. There’s no dancers, no extra frills. We really try to embody that spirit of an old-school rock band where we get on stage, we’re rock - ing out with each other and it’s really about the music. Of course, there are great visuals and the lighting is really well done, but I love to stand on the fact that we don’t need much more. If the music is coming from a well-intentioned, honest place, performed with energy, honesty and love — that moves mountains.

It’s going to be slightly different. These shows are going to spotlight my hits in the context of films, everything from the beginning in 2012 all the way up to now. I think, what it will really do is give people a sense of the journey, from where we started to where we are now and take them on this whole arc. So, it’ll be primarily my film hits. Depending on the city, the languages will shift. We also love reinterpreting songs I grew up listening to from the ’90s. Some of my favourites to reinterpret are songs such as Pudhu Vellai Mazhai from Roja. Just different songs I’ve fallen in love with over the years, doing cool remixes of them. Then some of my original English repertoire as well. There are points of high tension and big release, moments of going all out rocking and then times where it’s just a gui - tarist and me singing.

Yeah, definitely. I’m not going to speak on the specifics or else it won’t be a surprise. But I’ve recently been working on a lot of original music in Indian languages and we’re releasing a song soon in Tamil. That will be part of the set list. There are also other unreleased pieces I’m still working on. I’m working on a few reinterpretations of really famous songs from the past that we’ve never performed before and I cannot wait to do those. There might even be some collaborations and special guests as well.

I tend not to speak on those before they come out, just to avoid jinxing anything and to let people experience it when it happens. But yes, there are things in the pipe - line. I recently started a joint venture between my own company, The Hybridist and Warner Music India. That joint venture is specifically to release Indian-language original music. So, we have a bunch of new songs and pieces of music coming out through that partnership and more collaborations in the future, for sure.

₹3,000 onwards. November 22, 5pm. At District Arena, Yelahanka.