The Attic Bar

We played our first gig last night at the Attic Bar in Kathmandu. We had a hectic, helter skelter ride through Kathmandu's rush hour streets. A pandemonium of cars, motor bikes and bicycles, honking horns and traffic cops' whistles.

The Attic bar is in the disused wing of a former palace, and the top floor turned from  rubbish dump into a very cool venue, with stage and couch seating. It was started 3 months ago by a bunch of friends who just wanted to have their own bar - and since they are all blues fanatics, it's a blues bar.  They only have blues there, and like them, the audience is all 20 somethings.

When we arrive they were rotating two of my CDs on the sound system and within minutes several people introduced themselves as fans and requested songs off the albums! Even more amazing, one young man introduced himself and said he had been told of our visit by our friend Mahendra in Auckland, (who is the president of the NZ Nepal Friendship Society) and said that he lived in NZ for a few years and had seen us playing at Mission Bay!

We played two sets and got great audience reaction, they sang along on the usual songs, such as "Leaving Blues".  The washboard and the rest of Warren's percussion set up, such as the cahon and the stomp board proved fascinating to the audience. They went wild when he played all that stuff - and after the show a few got up to have a go with the cahon and washboard while we were packing down!

The Attic Bar  © Nepali Times

At the end of the night we stayed on and they plied us with beers and produced plates of curry and rice - what more could a blues musician ask for! We got lots of really positive feedback - clearly they enjoyed the show, too. It was a fantastic start to the festival.

I was interviewed by a reporter from one of Nepal's English Language newspapers, The Nepali Times, and here it is , exactly as printed:

 Meanwhile the Attic Bar at Utter Dhoka hosted the Mike Garner Band. The three-man band from New Zealand couldn’t help but energise the crowd with their songs. All dressed sharp in black outfits, especially Mike, the lead singer with a lead guitar in his hand, had the crowd entertained. Warren Houston was more than a drummer with his own invented instrument made out of washboard and the grave bassist Dave Robinson never left his fingers off the fret as it kept the crowd tapping their feet. Take It Easy Baby, Leaving Blues, Still Your Loving Man and I Wish I Was in Memphis were few of the songs that really made the crowd sing along with Mike.
“Blues has the wound of past emotions and experience, and the flow of the music unfolds every part of it with melody,”said Mike. It must be his passion for this genre that he is still playing Blues at 60. “Well this is my first visit to Nepal and I am pleased to be in such a wonderful country and I am really excited about the other events as well,” expressed Mike.

OK - it;s not exactly what I said, but it almost sounds better that way!

It's raining today - they are having a lot of unseasonal rain at the moment, but it's warm and not windy, so it actually freshens the air. Girls on the back of motorbikes have umbrellas out over themselves!