Abubilla Music

10.11.22 Autumn 2010 Spanish Jam: Report Back

Written by Jimmy

We are back from our fourth Spanish Jam, ready to report back on the music and everything else. Context: We have a nice little rhythm now as a band.  We go to Spain and jam for 3-5 days, write about 10 songs, then take 6 months to work through those songs, add a few more and release a CD.  We always make sure the CD is ‘off to Dan Dan (our Master Engineer)’ before we go on the next Jam.   We are now on our fourth Spanish Jam, having sent  ‘If I Were A Little Birdie’ off to Dan Dan.   Don’t worry it will be out in time to send Christmas Presents….

Our Music:  We walked away with 15  songs (well, we did 2 versions of 2 of the songs, so 13 new songs), some of which might make it to the the new album.   A quick summary of how they were created.

• Day 1:  Thursday.  Arrived from London; cloudy, so went directly to studio.   Jimmy had lyrics for Agatha’s 18th.   Filled with all the phrases he hears Hunter’s 18 year old friends say.   They were heading off to Agatha’s 18th Birthday a couple weeks back and Jimmy loved the phrase Agatha’s 18th. Ed had a riff that he claimed to have had for 8 years looking for a song.  Why, Ed, why didn’t you bring it earlier?   We wanted to do a T Rex style song that Gus and Mike would ‘mosh pit’ to… Rob’s magic bass came up with nice little ‘Bang a Gong’ vibe and Gus mostly bounced around in the corner going ‘hey, hey, hey.’    A song was born in a couple hours and we rewarded ourselves with pizza and Series One of Outnumbered.
• Day 2:  Friday.  Jimmy met Andy early and we started Saved (Light Version).  Band joined in and a second, more country oriented country song was born for female vocals.   Nice little country song, but we wanted to take it much darker.  That evening, in the living room, Andy, Rob, Lara and Sophie went dark.  Very dark.  Cecily, the cello, became the Wicked Witch of the East.  Enter Saved (Dark Version), which was then recorded in sessions on Saturday and Sunday.     But I digress.  After Saved Light, we discovered that the sun was out on an amazing day in Spain.  So what do we do?  Write and record outside.  And thus was born, King Henry’s Tears, a little song about why the English love to be miserable.   We wrote, recorded and produced a video all on the Friday (See first video below).  And Sophie got a sun burn on her shoulders.   A classic Spanish Jam.  We returned to the Studio in the evening to write Climb, composed and sung by Andy and a very sad guitar.    That evening, Ed started us down the path of Saved (Dark Version).

• Day 3:  Saturday: Bad weather.  Studio day.  Kicked off with putting Lara’s vocals down on Saved (Dark Version).  Switched to  1 Way Home (blues version) , a fun blues song, with Andy on lead;  Jimmy did his numbers thing again (Martyn again didn’t notice) with lyrics – he last did this on Too Many Weddings (Martyn didn’t notice then either).   This was followed by Ed’s little tune for Just Floatin’, our Juno inspired song, with vocals from Ed/Sophie (second time behind mic, first time in lead).   In the afternoon, Andy took Gus in the studio to recordTransform (acoustic version had been done early in London), Day Dream and Step Up.   Later that evening, Gus sat in living room and wrote, performed and recorded on to video Sun’s Up.

• Day 4, Sunday:  Beautiful blue skies, but windy.   Busy.  Day begins early with Jimmy and Andy rising early to record Sarah Why? our tribute to Elton, Billy (with a nod to Brian).    We then worked on new vox on Saved (Dark Version) and then Ed led us through a completely new version of 1 Way Home (Ed’s version), with a great sing-a-long vocal.    Andy spent a lot of the day with Gus writing additional tracks, and Gus did another performance video, of Step Up and Transform.    We then re-did Agatha’s 18th from scratch.

• Day 5:  Monday, Sunny.  Last day.  Focus on clean up and Breathe.  While the rest of the band cleaned the villa from top to bottom, Jimmy, Andy and Rob retreated to the studio to record Breathe.  The final song from our 3.5 days.  And one of our favourites.. We then cleaned the studio, drove to the airport, met at Burger King (another weird tradition) and arrived safely in London.

Everything Else: The great things about the Jams is there is always everything else.  There are a couple things to mention (and quite a bit to forget):

• The Impact of Sunshine:   Without a sunny Friday, there would be no King Henry’s Tears.  And that amazes us.    The band is like the simplest organism – feed it on sun and it grows one way, feed it on rain and we move another.  It was sunny so we didn’t want to go in studio.  But we wanted to make music.  So we brought the studio outside, went acoustic and needed a song that had nothing to do with the sun (so folks would think we were ‘deeper’ than the sun-seeking single organisms we are…).
• Greg, Greg, Greg: Greg is our video guy.  From ClingFilms.  He did the videos for Monkey Space Camp and Immovable Thing.  He’s amazing. Fits perfectly in. And after 4 minutes of reflection the band voted Sparky into the club.  We don’t know what he is yet, but he’ll get the hoodie.   We have released King Henry’s Tears and some of Gus’s performances.  But watch this space for the video for Agatha’s 18th!
• Martyn and Alice at 330 in the morning… Eventually, we’ll really capture the essence of Martyn. But he told a story about Marinade and his guitar pedal and BA that had us dying with laughter.  One of those had to be there.  But we were there.  A classic.  He won’t remember of course which means he’ll tell it again.
• BA And Ceci:  We had very mixed experiences with BA.  On way down, a very bad man took offense to the cello and made her travel upside down the whole flight. Not good.   And the pilot yelled at Sophie.  On the way back, they loved her, let her travel face up and gave her an extra tuna sandwich.   Definitely only come back from Spain with a cello. Hell to the yes.
• Banned Behaviours:    We have agreed that each member of the band will be told to stop one very annoying thing they do all the time.  Only three of us have been labelled yet, but the tensions are rising.  Ed is no longer allowed to twirl his fingers in a circle (which to all the world means keep going) to signal Jimmy or others to stop recording. We have shown him the ‘cut’ sign (hand across throat) and he promises to use it.  Martyn is not allowed his Roland Guitar pedal. Ever.   He still brings it – to Spain and London.  But he can only talk to it in the corner and give it a cuddle. He does.   And Gus has to pull his trousers up.  We are tired of seeing Jack Wills pants all day long.  Other behaviours will be banned as we go and a full list published somewhere.
• Lou/Lew:   We really missed Lew and Lou.   No awesome blues guitars.  No awesome Lou’s vox.  Must fix for the summer.

Well that’s enough said about all this.  Back to the studio on Saturday to work with David and Hannah on Just Floatin’.    Third album out in a couple weeks and lots of new websites to be launched. We’ll keep you in the loop.

The Saturday Morning Canasta Club