The man of many faces goes solo

One of the city's famous band expats, Sidd Coutto, is taking the lone road forward with his debut solo album, Sunny Side Up, which is a collection of songs he's composed over the past two years

Sidd Coutto is in his room, flipping the virtual pages of his iPad. "I just Googled how to sell your album online. I'm going solo," he declares.

We spend the next thirty minutes listening to the first scratch of his new solo album, Sunny Side Up, while Sidd remains immersed in research.


Singer-songwriter Sidd Coutto. Pic/ ROYCIN D'SOUZA

Funny, dark, satirical, twisted, melodicu00a0-- the eight songs on his yet-to-be released album are everything we know Sidd Coutto to be: actor, storyteller, singer, performer and jester all rolled into one. With this album, he's turned producer, manager, graphic designer (he's made the album cover and inlay on Photoshop), distributor (that's why the research) and booking agent. The change, however, has more to do with circumstance than choice.

"I was tired of waiting for people to get the show on the road. Everyone is busy. My problem is that I am always writing songs and if I don't record them, I will forget them," he shrugs.
Sidd started out with 20 songs "which my friend chopped to eight," he says, pointing at Hans Dalal, who has mixed Sunny Side Up.

"It will be just the two of us on stage, when we play with our laptops and iPads. No nonsense, no waiting for people, no bad marketing with only ten people showing up. This is my best self-effort," says the 31-year-old, who has played and programmed all the instruments on the album, including the trumpet.

It's taken two months for Sidd to record and produce the album, with the help of friends. "It's a pro-bono effort. Everything and everybody who have played on it have done it for free."

The album comprises everyday musings, which Sidd says is characteristic of his work. "I pick up the guitar, I strum a rhythm and I start singing. That's also what I try to do at all my gigs: Bring an impromptu energy by doing something unexpected," says Sidd, a philosophy he has stayed true to as the front man of the three-year-old band Tough on Tobacco, while playing drums for Ankur Tewari and the Ghalat Family, as well as on screen when he slips into his actor-avatar.

"Do you know how the entire material on the Tough on Tobacco's first album happened? I wrote all of it, while waiting for my set call sitting in a vanity van while shooting for Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye," shares Sidd.
About Sunny Side Up, he says, "It will be spontaneous."

"I want to make music and be on top of the scene. For now though, I am happy doing what I am, even sitting at my terrace," says Sidd, who will be selling his album through Flipkart, and iTunes.