We enter an old apartment building in Santacruz and make our way to a jam pad located at the far end of the ground floor, negotiating a guard dog we have been warned about. The band we are there to listen to is finishing the last bars of Knocking on Heaven's Door as we stand outside the door waiting for the song to end. Once it does, we enter a tiny space with hardly any room to move. But it's slick, state of the art, in fact. It is, after all, where the legendary Louiz Banks rehearses, and we settle into a chair right opposite the piano where he's seated. Next to him, his son, Gino, is towering over a set of drums. To our right, there is Avishek Dey on the bass and Kush Upadhyay on guitar, two promising young city musicians. And the person who was singing the Bob Dylan classic as we waited outside — Dalip Tahil — is now to our immediate left, our knees occasionally grazing against each other's due to the lack of space. They are all gearing up for the actor's first ever live gig with a full-fledged band. And we are there to dig deeper into this exploration of his musical side.

But first, we listen to the outfit — named Soul2Soul — go through the motions with Feel, by Robbie Williams. It's one of those songs that start out low. But then the music builds up and rises to such an extent that if the human voice were an elevator, it would reach the top floor of a high-rise. Tahil's voice is a raspy one that's soaked in whiskey. It's more suited to the initial stanzas of the track where the elevator, to extend the metaphor, is still climbing up the first few floors. But he eventually does get to the top of the building with a little help from his friends. And then he waltzes through Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight, the last song they rehearse.