Q&A: Auyon Mukharji from Darlingside

Darlingside promotional photo. Photo courtesy of Auyon Mukharji

Darlingside promotional photo. Photo courtesy of Auyon Mukharji

On March 7, Darlingside will be at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. for an intimate music experience. Coming from Boston, Massachusetts, the band features four musicians who come together using dozens of instruments to create different, folk-like music. Auyon Mukharji, violinist and mandolinist for Darlingside, had much to say about the band and their upcoming event.

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Band members Harris Paseltiner, Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji and Dave Senft started their careers in Boston, Massachusetts. Photo courtesy of Auyon Mukharji

Tell me a little bit more about the event.

We’ve gotten to play here once before, and I can’t say we play at a huge number of breweries, but the Sierra Nevada stands out in a sense that it’s a gorgeous theater in the middle of a brewery, which is very cool. We’ve gotten in once before, and we’re very much looking forward to coming back.

How did your band get started?

We are a four piece Americana-folk (band). We all met in school, at Williams College in Massachusetts, and we’ve been touring for about six and a half years now. We are now based in Boston, so on the other side of the state. As for instrumentation, we have violin, mandolin, cello, guitar, electric bass, banjo and kick drum. All of our members are multi-instrumentalists. All of us sing and write together, so there is writing going on all the time. As you might imagine, it is a very slow process and there is a lot of collaboration.

How did you come up with the name for your band?

While in school we all took the same class, a winter-study class on songwriting. One of the teacher’s favorite phrases in that class was “you have to kill your darlings.” I think that comes from a British literary critic back in the day. The meaning behind it is that often times when creating something, or creating any kind of writing, often times the parts that you’re most proud of, most attached to, are the parts you have to get rid of in order to make it cohesive and coherent, as opposed to a reflection of your favorite cute or clever phrases. So Darlingside, like homicide, we initially came up with it with a c, where the etymology comes from the same root as homicide, but spelled with an s, we didn’t want to come off as super into death or terribly morbid.

Anything else you want students to know?

Outside of the fact that there’s going to be great beer and a really nice place, I think there isn’t much else to know.

The event will be held at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. at 7 p.m. on March 7. For more information, visit the Darlingside website.

Sarah Strausser can be reached at [email protected] or @strausser_sarah on Twitter.