Blog
2013 Summer Spanish Jam: Report Back
Written by Jimmy
We have just completed our 8th Spanish Jam (June 22-29 2013), the sole purpose of which was to work on SMCC Album 5. Going into the jam we excitedly talked about ‘yellow balls’, i.e., the wonderful 10 day Marbella weather forecast that reported 10 days of sunshine. We can happily report the yellow balls were as advertised – 8 perfect days of sunshine. Here’s our report:
The Music:
The players included Andy (vocals and spanish guitar), Rob (acoustic bass), Mike (Cajun), Sophie (cello) and Greg on photography. Jimmy pressed buttons. Here we are:
The goal of SMCC 5 is to revisit new and old tracks in a single style – Spanish/African inspired acoustic, all played live. The benefit of this down in Spain is we get a lot of time to jam outside:
On the 23rd, we started Footprints, Never Happened (new), and 71 Hours to Monday (revisit 3). Of these, we were particularly happy with the remix of Footprints. On the 24th, we focused on Box of Yellow Roses, Cold Light of Day and Strange Clock. We tried Old Gray Posts and ended up with a new jam with working title of Spanish Waltz. We tried One in a Trillion and ended up with a nice little draft song Dance With You. Again, we were particularly happy with Strange Clock.
Because Mike needed to leave early, we reserved the 25th to get his Cajon and backing vocals down and then used 26-28 to work on putting down the rest of the parts well. Each evening was spent listening to the ‘latest version’ of the whole CD and making a list of re-writes for the next day.
We seem to have a nice groove in the studio now. Three musicians playing live, with 3-4 mics each. All pretty chilled and a heck of a lot simplers than our early jams with dozens of musicians popping in/out. Our clean up takes about 20 minutes, in contrast to the full day we reserved for earlier jams. The benefits of getting simple!
Not all was simple. Andy/Greg left at 5AM for a bon fire shoot, only to be distracted by a rather small…. tractor on the beach:
We’ll now head back to our London studios with the album in relatively decent shape. Now need to step back and figure out what we have and when we’re ready for you to listen to it.
Everything Else
The more chilled out studio days, leaves times for a lot of play time. Sophie and Jimmy did a lot of hill climbing, Andy did a huge amount of work on Singing Wells mixes, Greg took photo duties on major trips to Marbella and San Pedro. Rob and Mike worked on sun tans. I will focus on three things:
1. Games: We take our games quite seriously at Abubilla Music and can recommend a good short list:
a. Parudo. A liars dice favourite. Mike had 5 one’s followed by 5 sixes on one roll. Andy never lies.
b. Sussed: A new game, highly recommended. Simply to play. All about guessing what your mates will say.
c. Apples to Apples: a game Greg brought. All about trying to be the ‘best pick’ from a category. Generally sick or funny win.
d. Telestrations: recommended to us by Rob, remains the party classic.
e. Add to these our other standards: Mexican Dominoes and Tension, which we didn’t play this time but usually do.
2. San Pedro: We needed beach footage for Back on It, and Pratap recommended we go to San Pedro for one of their festivals. Lovely:
Andy, with birthday camera, takes some shots of Greg.
Two of dozen sand sculptures…
Some not very politically correct effigies waiting for the bon fire:
Sophie on the beack…
Another lovely moon rise
3. A Trip to Marbella. For all the times he’s joined us, Greg never popped over to old town Marbella. He and Kathy and Sophie took a cruise over and here are his shots:
That’s it. We’ll sign off with three final shots:
The Moon rise that greeted us each evening before games started…
The Sun that greeted us each day as we played music.
And the Abubilla Music Logo that sits quietly at the bottom of the pool.
Until the Winter Jam!