Dave Starke & Nish Pillay

“Journeymen – An evening of original story and song with Dave Starke (Guitar, Voice) and Nish Pillay (Tabla, Percussion) as they celebrate a decade of collaboration and reflect on their mutual “coming of age” as two of South Africa’s hardest working musicians! Their first impromptu performance occurred shortly after Dave appeared on The Voice SA and Nish on SA’s Got Talent. This developed into some early collaborations and a series of lowly, hard-grind performances at casinos, restaurants and bars across KZN.
Having grown tired and disillusioned of sleeping in cheap hotels and living off of petrol station pies the duo went into studio to collaborate on Dave’s first original studio album, Duende, in early 2018. After a year of fiercely promoting this collection of songs, they collaborated on a second album and started to land opening act slots for some of South Africa’s biggest acts. This was followed by Nish being invited to make guest appearances with a number of established performers including Ard Matthews, Steve Newman and The Jack Mantis Band – with whom he opened for Grammy Award winner Ben Harper in 2019. Dave had just been commissioned to write the soundtrack for dark comedy feature film, The Killing Floor as Nish travelled to Bangalore to study with Indian Tabla master Rahul Pophali.
Upon his return, the duo were riding high on the tour circuit as an in-demand folk-fusion duo calling themselves “Tantu Nada”. The success was cut short, however, by the arrival of the pandemic and both musicians had to survive by hook or by crook until live performances opened up again in 2022. Older, wiser and with a few more tales to tell, Dave Starke and Nish Pillay are thrilled to bring their newest offering to a select audience at Red Clay Cafe, Hogsback.”