—————————————————— The Return of Mystical Houston Rocker Tyagaraja | Rocks Off | Houston | Houston Press | The Leading Independent News Source in Houston, Texas

Breaking News

The Return of Mystical Houston Rocker Tyagaraja

In 2006, Million Year Dance won the award for Best New Band in our annual Houston Press Music Awards, and followed the next year by winning Album Of The Year for Liberation. It seemed that the band and their enigmatic leader Tyagaraja (a.k.a. Jonathan Welch) would be Houston's next hope for national notoriety. MYD was awarded a Guitar Hero package for winning the latter award, standing in stark incongruence with the band's space-y blues elevated by Tyagaraja's soaring and reedy Thom Yorke-style wail.

But somewhere along the line, Million Year Dance disbanded due to creative differences , and by early 2008 Tyagaraja was recording solo demos and following a spiritual leader across the world and doing some big-time introspection.

A few weeks back, Tyagaraja starting hooking himself back into the Houston music scene, after almost two years away. Photographer Mark Austin invited him to his house, and was lucky enough to be able to record a new song from Tyagaraja's new trove of tunes. Mr. T is currently fine tuning this and other works, and may have a new release out by year's end.

KEEP THE HOUSTON PRESS FREE... Since we started the Houston Press, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Houston, and we'd like to keep it that way. With local media under siege, it's more important than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" program, allowing us to keep offering readers access to our incisive coverage of local news, food and culture with no paywalls.
Craig Hlavaty
Contact: Craig Hlavaty