My name is Jeremy Abboud, & I’m a 20 year old multi-instrumentalist & singer/songwriter. I moved from Canada to LA to escape a grey government town of passionless people, live in the greatest creative hub in the world & work more closely with everyone in the music industry instead of calling people from the other side of the continent, as well as play shows around the area. I got tired of the lack of drive & creativity at home & although surprisingly beautiful at key times of the year, I felt like seeing more than grey, light grey, & dark grey when I went outside 9 times out of 10! Honestly, I just wanted to have a 2nd cafe to go to.

My home studio is in a basement in the Canadian countryside, on the edge of a forest outside the national capital of Ottawa. It’s a room I’ve been building since I was about 13 where I’ve got a vintage 60s drum kit, a tiny 64 key Melodigrand piano, the only real, acoustic piano that could fit, some great mic models The Beatles used, & everything I need crammed into one little room! After witnessing the initial energy & magic of some demos get watered down (however slightly) when recording final versions, I’ve since resolved to have mics properly set up at all times so I can keep the 1st take that comes out as I think it up. That 1st take is almost always what is heard on the final records now. I’ve got a remote so I can hit record on myself from any instrument in the room. I come up with the production as I write, so usually lay down all the instruments for a section immediately after writing a line in a wild tornado around the room, then move on to the rest of the song & repeat. I hunker down in there by myself, usually through the night, & am typically ready to listen to the finished product by sunrise, at which point I’ll ski to a field & review what I’ve done.

I was born listening to rock n roll. At 0 years old, I had a “best of rock” CD featuring the likes of George Thorogood & The Beach Boys played for me non-stop. I started picking up instrument after instrument. After a brief foray into electronic music at about 10, I wanted to see what all the fuss around The Beatles truly was, so one day I put on Sgt. Pepper as I cut the grass, & I was off! Or rather, back where I started. From there I got back to The Beach Boys, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, & the roots like Buddy Holly. I also went further back to Frank Sinatra & many more. I love the energy, colour, realness, & connection to the artists you can feel through that era of music.

When I was 16, I worked with The Beatles, Rolling Stones & Jimi Hendrix’s engineer, Eddie Kramer on my 1st album & recorded a harmonica solo for a song called Have Love Will Travel. I was trying to replicate the feel of a nasty, distorted saxophone solo on the original so just went wild trying to make it sound like a madman let loose. Eddie said it sounded like Bob Dylan on acid, so when writing AGLY, I decided to try & top my 1st harmonica solo in terms of insanity & make it sound like Bob Dylan on cocaine. I grabbed a handheld mic & ran around the room improvising until it sounded unhinged & explosive enough.