Abubilla Music

Abubilla Music: Our History to Date

Written by Jimmy

Introduction

From a 40th Birthday drunken promise, to not simply an Island of Misfit Toys, but an international Archipelego of Misfit Toys.  Here’s  our best recollection of the key events of Abubilla Music.  We’ll improve and make more accurate as we go.  We call it a tale of five chapters and a story just beginning.   The story starts with a ‘Happy Accident’ where we set out to learn a software programme and discovered a little tribe of musicians.  In Chapter 2, which we call “A Lifetime of Saturdays,”  that little Tribe becomes the Saturday Morning Canasta Club, recording in London and Spain.  In Chapter 3, which we call ‘The Music’, the group produces 3 albums in less than a year, launching Gus at the FlatPlanet.   In Chapter 4, we focus on ‘Everything Else’ – the Abubilla Music Foundation, the launch of more Discovery Artists (Tati and Chris)  and our first big Gig.  We are now starting Chapter 5, which begins in Leon…

Chapter 1: “The Happy Accident”:  Learning Pro Tools and Finding a Band (November 2000-January 2009):  The Chapter begins at a Manor House in the English Country side with Jimmy leaning over to Martyn saying we should just drop all this work stuff and start a label.  But mostly this is a little chapter about learning Pro Tools and not wanting yet another ‘boy toy’ to collect dust.

• 2000 Autumn:  There’s a fuel crisis, we know that.  And Jimmy and Kathy orgnaise a great Birthday Bash for their 40th at a Manor House, inviting 8 couples and a really cool band called Rawhide.   Sometime in the evening, as Rawhide finishes, Jimmy and Martyn somehow for some reason agreee to start a band and record label by 2010.   Somehow, both remember.
• 2008 January:   After conversations with a business coach, Jimmy was advised to start planning for ‘Chapter 2’ (it was a 50 year long Chapter 1!).  Idea was if you want to start doing more things than work at 50, you needed to plan for two years in advance.  So Jimmy writes “Business Plan and Jobs to Be Done” memo  to Martyn that targetted ‘launch’ music label by Summer of 2010.  Even then Jimmy is calling it the name of his villa in Spain, but spells it “Abuvilla” through whole memo.
• 2008 May:  Jimmy and Martyn meet at a restaurant near St Martin’s Lane and agree to really commit to this thing.  Jimmy writes a more detailed plan and description of an Assistant.   As part of workplan he commits to using the summer to sort out and buy recording equipment.   He starts researching best kit.
• 2008 May-early June:  Jimmy buys Pro Tools.   It arrives as box of Software and a Mixing Kit.  It sits un-opened for 3 weeks.  He then opens it and installs it.  It sits un-started because he can’t start it.  Things are ugly.  Another major splurge on ‘boy toys’ that has gone wrong.  This is a pattern which he discusses his journey to learn music, which stalls for similar reasons:  read here.
• 2008 June:  Now, this gets interesting.  Jimmy confesses to work friend that yet again he has bought a lot of boys toys that collect dust at home.  Talks about Pro Tools.  Friend points out that he knows CEO of Digi-Design that produces Pro Tools and maybe he could help.  Jimmy writes note to CEO with the business plan (includes two CD’s of type of music Jimmy wants to record).  CEO responds that he has a great young sound engineer that might be able to help.
• 2008 June 13:   Andy e Mails Jimmy making conteact.  We agree to meet at end of summer.
• 2008 September 25:    Andy meets Jimmy and Martyn at the Strand.  Andy describes the meeting here.  We agree that Andy will help build out the Studio.  For personal reasons, Martyn won’t start working with us for about 5-6 months, so Andy and Jimmy order away.  Jimmy still has the order slip for getting ‘The Snake’ on September 25 2008.  He writes later about building out a studio (Click Here).
• 2009 November:  Jimmy and  Andy set up the studio and begin to record.  To be clear, the sole reason Jimmy and Andy were meeting on Saturdays was to teach Jimmy Pro Tools.  We do a couple covers, but decide this is stupid because we don’t ‘own the songs’ and are wasting our time.  So we start goofing around with our own material.  It starts with a song called Puppy, the first official song of Abubilla Music. It involves Jimmy’s daughter Morgan and her friend singing the word puppy into each of the microphones so Jimmy could practice.  That was it.  Not a classic.  The next song was an Andy penned number calling ‘Teaching Jimmy’ which essentially was:  “Here we are at Berywn Avenue, showing Jimmy What to do, with Pro Tools, music, chords and tempo, everything so we can go”.   Amusingly, we borrowed the tune for our first Christmas Song (see below).  Then  Jimmy remembers a couple songs he wrote when he was 17, one of which was Sandy in the Sleeping Back, which we record.  Andy plays all instruments except the ‘Girls’ Vocals which are all completed by Morgan’s Friends.   This song appears on first album – we write about it here.

We invite Anthony Calf, an actor friend in the neighborhood, into the studio to play piano.  He provides backing vocals on another song we start working on Occassional Touch.  He suggests that we should invite his daughter at one point to join us.  Her name is Louise

• 2009 January:  Louise Enters Studio and records Occassional Touch and Sat out the 15th.    The second song goes through about 15 versions, which Andy describes (click here).   This whole notion of showing how music is made becomes a hallmark of what we’re trying to do.  Enjoy the making of music not just the finished product and share our journey.  Our first recordings are filled with pet noises and door bells, and our first recordings are split in two by a pizza break.  Patterns are set early.
• But that is the  end of Chapter 1, we have a room that Kathy still think she controls.  It has a computer desk in it with Pro Tools and a couple cables and mics.  But you can still hid the equipment and host a party.  So really not much.  Things are going to change dramatically.

Chapter 2:   “A Lifetime of Saturdays”:  We decide we have a little band and a set of life long friendships… (February 2009-Jan 2010):  We start this Chapter with a couple folks meeting on Saturdays, but by the end, we’ve formed a little band, released a little album and sort of committed to each other for a little Journey.  Not sure to where…

• 2009, February:   Louise and Andy start coming to the studio fairly regulary and we begin to write a few songs.
• 2009, March:  A milestone of sorts.  Andy can’t make it to the studio but Louise has written a new song, No Poetry.  Jimmy opens the studio and records Louise, on his own.   This means he’s learned to press buttons.  Here’s no Poetry:

• 2009, April:  We decide to build a studio in Spain, given we are calling this thing Abubilla Music, but have never gone to the villa that bears its name.  Involves ordering about 90 boxes of kit.  Pratap cannot believe it when boxes start arriving.  It totals about 120 individual boxes because we are fitting out studio with instruments as well.
• 2009, May Now things begin to change.  Martyn is now joining us.  He brings Rob, his bassist and good friend.  Rob brings an electric drum kit.   Jimmy does search at firm to find best musician.  Best musician is Ed.  Ed brings guitars and trumpet.  Rob joins May 2.  Ed joins May 9th.   Studio now has drums, piano, lots of mics, lots of music stands.  Kathy still thinks she is in control. But it is an illusion now.    With Ed and Louise, we decide a new ‘position’ at Abubilla Music, the Scholar (later to be called Discovery Artists.  The idea of the scholar is they get to write two songs with the group each.
• 2009, June:  We make three big decisions that will shape our future.  First,  Louise agrees to join as an assistant to help with organising things.  Second, we agree to launch a website and Louise introduces us to her friend Wes from Kent.  And Third, we agree to take the band to Spain to what we call our Spanish Jam.
• 2009, August:  First Spanish Jam.  Click Here for Details.  The band comes with partners – nice to know that of the group that came, we will have had two Abubilla Music weddings – Ed and Helen, Andy and Claire.   The band stays up late nights to play canasta.  This is a group that meets Saturday mornings and that plays Canasta.  The name the Saturday Morning Canasta Club is born.   During our breaks in the sun, we agree to try to release an album by November.  Someone points out that this album will represent six months of Saturdays.  The album name is born.    During the Spanish Jam Rob plays drums.  But we agree that we need a drummer.
• 2009, September:    Jimmy has good friends Margaret and Georges.  They have a son Seb.  Seb has a friend Mike Park.  Mike Park is a drummer.  Jimmy calls Mike.  Mike comes on a Saturday and joins the Band.   We love Mike.
• 2009, October 13:   We launch what we call Web 1.0, our first website.  It locks in a couple things that we’ve kept:  the logo (bird on guitar), the colours (terracotta) and the font (dirty typing).   Louise writes the first blog ever, reporting back on the Spanish Jam in August.   This is the beginning of two fantastic relationships.   The first is our partnership with Wes at Nebulo Strata, who has built all our websites as well as those for Ketebul Music, Singing Wells and Meninos do Morumbi.  The second is our love of blogging…
• 2009, November 28:   Start of second Spanish Jam, what we call the Autumn jam. Less sun, more music.   Click Here for Details.   We spent a long time jamming around some minor chords and called the jam Misery Marmalade and Other Spanish Jams.  The song became Immovable Thing.
•  2009, December 15:  First Album, Six Months of Saturdays, is released.   It has detailed liner notes, a home made cover and is backed by detailed on line descriptions of songs.  This becomes a staple for all releases.   Louise did the cover as a collage, which included the pictures we used on our website to decribe ourselves as artists.   We also locked in working relationships with Camden Electric Arts for graphics, Dan Dan for Mastering and Copysound for CD production.  We use them today.
• 2010, January 23.  Sophie joins Abubilla Music, starting with cello of Immovable Thing.   Sophie is a friend of Louise – they met in Africa.   We now have the complete Saturday Morning Canasta Club.  Andy on guitars and vocals, Louise on Vocals, Martyn and Ed on guitars, Rob on bass, Mike on drums and Sophie on Cello.  And with Sophie’s entry into the band, we complete Chapter 2, with most pieces in place:  the Saturday Morning Canasta Club, a website, an album, a logo, Spanish Jams.  We now have taken over two rooms in Kathy’s life.  She agrees she has lost control of them, but assumes, delussionally that she controls the ground floor of home in London.

Chapter 3,  “The Music”:  We release a ton of SMCC albums and Discover Gus, Launching him in 2011 at the Flat Planet:  With the basic building blocks in place, we devote all our time to song-write, releasing two more SMCC Albums and Gus’s Discovery Album, all leading to a little launch party at the Flat Planet.    And we discover our love of video and the web, releasing several new versions of the website.   Finally, we discover Ketebul music, building the foundations for the Abubilla Music Foundation…

• 2010, January 24th:  Imogen joins Abubilla Music and takes the lead on Invading London.
• 2010 February 3:   Louise publishes the now famous Dead Flies blog, which launches a whole series of dead fly art projects.  Click here
• 2010 February 13, The Knife Will Come Video is born.  Louise introduced us to Nataasha in the autumn of 2009.  We work with her on our first video, the Knife Will Come, starring Louise as Alice in Wonderland, Big Alice in the Little House.

• 2010, Feb 14:  Mikey Vu enters the studio and beat boxes to Sat Out the 15th.  We like it.
• 2010, Feb 25:   Hannah joins us as our first Abubilla Assistant.  She serves tea, but quickly graduates to the studio, singing backup and then lead on a ton of songs.   She writes a blog on her first impressions…
• 2010, March 9:    Gus Joins as Second Discovery Artist.   We get a bit jumbled on our Discovery Artists.  As it has worked out, Louise graduated from Scholar to Discovery Artist and Ed joined the Saturday Morning Canasta Club.  We are still working on Louise’s first Discovery Album, but we have now finished Gus’s, Michael’s and Tati’s.  But we get ahead of ourselves.  Gus joins and brings fantastic songs and plays leads on a lot of Abubilla Music songs.  Gus comes to us through Morgan, the singer of Puppy in Chapter 1.  Morgan has a friend who has a cousin who is Gus.
• 2010, March 27:  We launch a jam jar competition to create jam jar labels for the next album.  Jimmy submits ones with dead flies but doesn’t win.
• 2010, May 6th: We discover Ketebul Music, and begin to work with them on a potential project to record tribal music in Africa.  As a first step, we begin to work on their website.
• 2010, May 21:  We set out to win the  Battle with the Bird (Click Here) – specifically, what happens when you click Abubilla into Google?  Our goal was to have Abubilla Music come up before the damn Abubilla Bird.  It does now.  Battle won.
• 2010, June: Summer Jam.   Lew, Jimmy’s brother, joins the summer Jam.  We finally play good blues and nail No Bells, one of our favourite songs from a Spanish Jam.   There was a marked change from our first jam, where we played Canasta.  Here there was a bit too much wildness.    The band wrote Monkey Space Camp to describe Mike and Gus.  The band also wrote, If I Were a Little Birdie, on the porch in the sun.   Here’s If I Were A Little Birdie:

• 2010, July 22:  We launch Website 2.0.   and  Misery Marmalade and Other Spanish Jams Released.
• 2010, July 25: Greg joins us in the studio, having met Andy at a video shoot in Unity studios.  He begins recording Ed, Louise and Sophie on Immovable Thing.
• 2010, August 4:  After a 72 hour marathon, Hunter releases Mah Knees video. Shot in one take, it then takes Hunter hours per word to embed the lyrics.   Video becomes the first Abubilla Music video to get 1000 hits.

• 2010, August 7:  Andy releases his solo album Spiralling.  Songs from the album will become a key part of Abubilla Music live shows.
• 2010, August  Andy meets Ketebul Music in Africa.   We begin working together to design a mobile recording studio.
• 2010, September 5:  We meet with Innocent to discuss branding.
• 2010, September 6:  Six Months of Saturdays appears on iTunes.
• 2010, September 9:  Charlotte Reed joins us in the studio. She becomes the voice of our only ever cover, I’ve Just Seen a Face.

• 2010, September 18:  Hannah reports her greatest day at Abubilla Music ever.
• 2010, September 25:   Greg finishes and release Monkey Space Camp.
• 2010, October 5:  Greg releases  Immovable Thing Video.   This is the first of many videos to involve the front room.  Kathy, having lost control of the studio, now sees the battle to move to the conservatory and front room.   She is under the illusion she is control of these rooms.  Giggle.

• 2010, October 12:  Andy plays at the Half Moon in Putney.  A light goes off. We want to play there too.
• 2010, October 24.  Michael enters the studio as a new Discovery Artist.
• 2010, November, Spanish Jam.  Our fourth Spanish Jam.  Hi’s and Lo’s.  The high by far was the writing, recording and release of the song King Henry’s Tears on a beautiful autumn day in Southern Spain.  Here’s the video:

• 2010 December If I Were a Little Birdie released.  Morgan does the artwork this time.
• 2010, December 21:   We release our first X-mas Song, borrowing the tune from our very first days in the studio.
• 2011, January 27:  This wonderful Chapter of music ends with our first Gig ever, at the Flat Planet, where we launch Gus’s Discovery album.  Shortly after Gus heads off for another  music label.  Our first birdie leaves the nest.  And we confirm the Discovery proposition – a great place for young artists to start their careers, get time to develop their song writing and then move on to greater things.
• 2011, February 3:  Greg releases Whisper, our favourite Gus song and a wonderful bookend to a wonderful Chapter:

Chapter 4, “Everything Else” – New Discovery Artists and Singing Wells Emerges February 2011-January 2012:  This Chapter starts with Jimmy and Mike heading off to Brazil and then Andy and Jimmy launching the Singing Wells project in Malindi.   It ends with a fantastic time launching Abubilla Music onto the world at the Half Moon.  End between are two new Discovery Artists, yet another SMCC album and more Greg and Hunter videos!  The good news is we’ve written a formal review of 2011, so we’ll be quick with this chapter.  Click here for a full review.

• 2011, January 24, David joins us for some fun bvox for Sarah, Why?
• 2011, February:   Sao Paolo and Breathe.   Jimmy and Mike take a trip to Sao Paolo to begin recording the global remix of 71 Hours to Monday.    We were still calling our fourth Album, What Would Martyn Say?, but at least we knew one of the best songs on that album would be ‘Breathe’ by Andy and Rob.  In February we started talking about it being the stand out piece:

   Here’s Mike in Sao Paolo:

• 2011, March – Africa and Ventriloquist Dummy.   We introduced our favourite ‘Best of the Nest’ you tube short and then set off to Africa to record the tribes of Malindi for the Singing Wells Project in partnership with Ketebul Music.   First, the Dummy, which represents all the wonderful blogging completed by our lovely assistant Hannah:

• 2011, March .  While we had a lot more recording to do before it was finished, the bulk of recording for 71 Hours to Monday occured in March, so a good time to show the video – 71 Hours Global Re-mix (a cover of same song off first album), with a lovely string session of Clare, Milly and Sophie, our very own opera singer, Camilla Bull and Winyo and Makaden.
• 2011, April:  Michael’s Discovery Album.   We return to London to work on final touches to Michael’s Discovery Album, recording and mixing final versions of I’ll Be Frank and Millbank, both of which will appear on the fourth album and Michael’s Discovery Album.  Here’s I’ll Be Frank with a great Sax outro from Andreas:

• 2011, May:   Andy goes ‘Soundtrack’.    Andy writes a quick piano piece for Hunter’s Video Censure, while the band continues to finish up Michael’s Discovery Album and our fourth album.  Here’s ‘Censure’:

• 2011 June – Stupid Blogs.    The studio goes silent in London as we move to Spain for the Summer Jam.  But we continue to  blog about  ridiculous things.   The most important of these, which we discovered, and now has 80 million hits was dog tease.  In Spain, we finish off songs for the fourth album and write a few more.  One was ‘A Market Town’, which came out of no where with stunning vocals from Louise; here’s the video:

• We also woke up at 5AM to film Footprints down at Marbella.  Here’s the video and Greg’s commentary on the making of the video.

• 2011, July 6:    Greg releases his masterpiece, the video for the global remix of 71 Hours to Monday:

• 2011, September:  Tati Enters Studio    Tati enters the studio and Hunter releases Aiden’s Dream. Here’s Aiden’s Dream:

• 2011, October 1,  The Launch Party of King Henry’s Tears and Our New Website:    We launch King Henry’s Tears, which is mastered by Dan Dan,  and our new website (Web 3.0) , which is designed by Wes at Nebulo Strata, at our third live gig and introduce Tati as our new Discovery artist.    We also launch the Hand.  Greg works on her song Child of Fury, her first Abubilla video (beyond all the live gigs) and Hunter works on Wodwo Video:

• 2011, November:  Abubilla Music back in Africa – Batwa Tribes of Uganda and Luo Tribes of Kenya:   We were back in Africa to record the Batwa and Luo tribes.   There were so many magic moments, but here is small selection of audio and video moments.

• 2011 December.  The Bone Guitar finished it’s global travels in 2011 – here’s the data:  4 Continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America) 16  Countries (Australia, Brazil, Czech, Finland, France, India, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Russia, Rwanda, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Uganda, and USA ) and 28 cities (Melbourne and Sydney in Oz, Barcelona and Marbella in Spain and Anchorage, San Fran, LA, Wash DC, Outer Banks, Williamsburg, Vermont, NYC, Chicago, et al, in US).
• 2012, January 16:  We launch Graceless.   Chris Kozlowki introduces his Cut My Hair Video, featuring Sam who joined us in December:

• 2012, January 22:  Abubilla Music sells out the Half Moon, hosted by Andy, featuring the SMCC and introudcing Tati and Chris.  Here’s a video that gives you a feel of the performance:

• -2012, February 4:  Greg releases Hannah and Sarah’s version of a Smile Explodes:

And that’s the story so far.  We are now in the middle of Chapter 5.   It is taking us to Africa – March 2-10.    It will take us to new gigs … Leon on April 13 and Half Moon on April 29th.    It will see us finish Chris’s Discovery Album, Tati’s second album, Winyo’s first album and the Saturday Morning Canasta’s Club 5th album.   We hope you enjoy the story so far…

Jimmy