It’s not often that a place like Vellore gets to witness one of the premiere music bands of the country perform. This Friday, the city will witness a performance by one of the favourite groups, Second Coming, at a private function.
The story of Second Coming is one that speaks about second chances in life and how a bunch of experienced musicians following their passion of writing their own music have shot to national prominence.
It all started over four years ago, as a series of impromptu jams at the house of Sengen Joachim in Yercaud. Anyone who was in Chennai during the 70s would have heard of the band The Avengers and its leader Sengen Joachim. Sengy, as he’s affectionately known as, now lives in Sacramento, California but he spends four months of the year in Yercaud where he is in the process of setting up an artists village on his 60- acre property.
It was here that Sengy met Reji Varghese, who had by that time already released an album of his own compositions. A strong bond and friendship developed between Sengy and Reji and they started composing and recording their own music, a few of which went on to be aired on radio and a few on TV as jingles for Pondy Tourism. They were joined a year later by bass guitarist Tenny Allwood, jazz guitarist Philip Kohlhoff, keyboard-player Mark Wilcox and drummer Maynard Grant.
The line-up now includes rising star and young vocalist Ryan Fernandez and guitarist Darren Netto, who is referred to as ‘The Jimmy Hendrix of Chennai’.
The impromptu jam sessions in the hills of Yercaud have now snowballed into over 65 concerts across five States, and four hit songs from their debut album Colours New.
Second Coming has its own state-of-the-art recording studio at Perambur, Chennai, where they record their own music as well as jingles.