Abubilla Music

This Week in the Studio: 10.03.27

Written by Jimmy

Mikey brings even more class to ‘One in a Trillion’, while Gus puts down two of his songs and ‘fixes’  ‘Starin’ at My Shoes.’   And Mike does unspeakable things to the Congas.    And a surprise ‘gig’ by Ed and Louise.

Here’s 5 things you need to know:

1. St. Hannah takes over from Louise.   As Lou moves from Abubilla to the Real Thing at the Old Vic, she is ‘handing off’ assignments in two directions.  One is to give St Hannah a lot of work and the other is to help Jimmy recruit a new COO.    So St Hannah has been handed the Jam Jar Competition and the March Newsletter.   St Hannah was extremely  busy and end up leaving the office quite late on Saturday.  We worry we are stressing her a bit.   And we’ll get her back in the studio next time, so when we’re not stressing her, we are actually just terrifying her.
2. Louise recruits for a COO.  We spend a lot of time going thru CV’s to choose a new COO to take over from Lou.  A lot of great resumes and so little time to do interviews. We have started contacting people to discuss next steps and spent some time on Sunday interviewing folks that were available.  This will take longer than we thought, simply because there are fantastic people out there who are interested in us and we have so little time to interview.  If you’re one of those who applied, please be patient with us.   We really need a COO to help with this recruiting thing!
3. We then were joined by Imogen, who came to do some writing and work on that secret squirrel thing.     Mike arrived, fresh from a gig with Kyla la Grange (more on this at future date from Mike).   He was greeted by some awesome ‘natural wood’ congas that he forced Jimmy to buy.   It took about 11 delivery men to bring the congas.  Shipment 1 was polka dot congo (large) and natural wood conga (small).  Phone call from company saying ‘oops, the guy who ordered polka dot congas is complaining… (I hadn’t noticed), and would like to make sure his polka dots get to him and he ships natural.   Jimmy likes this as he hates polka dots.   BUT, he insisted that natural conga arrives first before he gives up posession of polka dot.   He’s not stupid.  So delivery lady arrives to pick up polka dot.  Without natural.  Jimmy sends her away, ‘nope, bring me natural first please.’    ‘Ok, says company and send shipping man 3.  To pick up polka dot.  ‘Nope!’ says Jimmy.  He goes away.  Next day.  Delivery man 4 brings natural.  Jimmy takes and offers polka dot.  Nope, says man, i’m a DELIVERY MAN, not a PICK UP man (he says this somewhat patronisingly).    Delivery man 5 comes and offers new pair of Natural Conga.  No, says Jimmy, assuming another bill might arrive.    Jimmy offers him Polka Dot Conga.  No, says No. 5 and gives me another delivery vs. pick up speech.  Story repeats itself like Groundhog Day, until finally, Delivery man number 11 turns out actually to be a PICK UP man and takes Polka dot conga off my hands.  Anyway, I digress.  After Mike comes Mikey and Ed.  We bring Mikey in to finish off the ‘soft low strings’ bit of One in a Trillion.  As usual, Mikey was awesome and did great violin part.  Sadly no further beatboxing on Saturday, but Mikey then hung out to finish his artist page so we can ‘feature him.’
4. Then Gus arrived, our Andrew Strong.  He was in town for a Battle of the Bands in Camden, with his band S.U.N.  He is why we formed abubilla – a young, incredibly talented guy who is still modest (we’re not sure he knows how good he is yet) and can really benefit from a group of folks committed to his songs and making the music better.  We worked on two of his songs, Walking and Thru Love and then ‘fixed’ his chorus on Starin at My Shoes.  We also added more Louise to Gus — good combo.  We’ll feature his stuff in upcoming Newsletters once we get him up as an Artist.  
5. Finally, as the day wound down, we had Louise and Ed give us their live acoutic version of 71 Hours to Monday and Chamberlain in Munich.      Lou has taken her new country phase to extraodinary levels and I’m tempted to do a Convoy cover!

So a full house, with everyone that we’ve ever had playin’ in the studio, other than Sophie and Andy.    We missed them but are keen to see everyone the week after Easter.     off to mix four songs!

Jimmy