From left to right - Prasanth Sumanth (Drums/vocals), Vinod Easwaran (Vocals), Soumyajit Ray Chaudhary (Guitars), Mohit James (Bass), Ashley Murray (Drums) and Sandeep Mittal (Guitars/Vocals)

Why would a music magazine write about a bunch of corporate honchos? We got paid to do it man! Jokes apart, The Second Shift is a band made up of 6 guys (2 bankers and 2 HR guys in the band!) who feel it is necessary to have a creative outlet after a long day/week/month at the office. While the name might implement that it’s just another hobby, for the members of this band, the music represents an alternative way of looking at life.

Gigpad.com founder and guitarist of the band, Sandeep ‘Sandy’ Mittal tells us, “We work fulltime, its difficult to get any time off at all but what started off with a few random jam sessions about a year back, later progressed into regular weekend jams and suddenly we had a good thing going.” Not willing to let his guitar strings rust away, he had been writing and composing songs himself before the others came along. “A lot of the material was already written, which is probably why it happened a bit sooner for us, it was much easier to record and put out a demo CD out there.”

The Second Shift is still finding its feet in the live scene, having just finished their second gig at Not Just Jazz by the Bay, they feel that recording is probably easier! “With the amount of time we get, its difficult to practice, but we forced ourselves into it and this was actually the first time in our lives that we played on stage!” says Sandeep excitedly. However, for these guys their demo album which contains ‘grown up love stories’ in the form of songs, gives the greatest sense of satisfaction. “It is almost an achievement after just a year together, sort of suggests that all our jam sessions has lead to something productive. Like, a full stop you know? Which is good.”

Doing What They Do Best - Performing at Not Just Jazz by the Bay

The album could possibly signify the end of a very small chapter in the bands history as they plan to do more gigs in the near future. “The first gig at Café Goa was fantastic, we’ll probably have this honeymoon period with friends and family coming to a lot of the gigs early on but we’re not in a hurry to get anywhere, we’ll take the next 10 to 15 gigs as a learning experience!” he states enthusiastically. Their song ‘July People’ has already managed to generate quite a buzz, they also play covers of U2, Radiohead, John Mayall, etc. and other songs from their album! “Covers is something we have to do now, considering we can’t play for 3 hours with just 10 original songs off our album. However, we’re not anti covers”, declares Sandeep, “as long as we’re progressing in a direction which would enable us to play an all original set, we’re cool!’

First Step Taken - The cover of their recently released CD album, 'The Second Shift'

The art work on their album CD has a bright yellow background with a circus joker peeking in from behind the curtains tentatively. Upon opening the case, the band’s mindset is conveyed quite brilliantly – that first step onto the stage shown within the case has been taken! “At the simplest level, its bright and eye catching with some good songs inside, people like it!” says Sandeep.

You can mail the band for a copy of the free CD on thesecondshiftband@gmail.com OR listen to their songs at www.reverbnation.com/thesecondshift and also join their Facebook page! Like they state, ‘We’re about the things you do between waking and sleeping that hold you together’. Well, we have our eyes on you !