Valentine’s Day is around the corner, so we decided to talk with Amy Gabba from Amy Gabba and the Almost Famous about signing to a record label, her song “FU Cupid,” and how the song’s remake as “FU COVID” took on a life of its own.
You recently signed to Allegedly Records.
Amy Gabba: I did. Those are some of my favorite people. Actually, some of my favorite people that I’ve never met in real life. It’s funny how we’re in this new state of business relationships and friendships being formed with people you’ve never actually met, but you feel like you know them the way you know other people in your life. That’s how I feel about Allegedly. It’s funny because I just started a new job in January and I’m working completely remote, so I’ve never met my boss, never met my coworkers, except on a screen. And then I just signed to a record label with a bunch of people I would consider family but have never met in real life. This is the reality of the world now I guess.
How did Amy Gabba and the Almost Famous begin?
Amy Gabba: I’ve always been doing music stuff and Amy Gabba started as a nickname from a Ramones/Joan Jett cover band that I played with for the last seven years called the Gabba Heys. Amy Gabba became this nickname. Then I went through a really rough breakup and to get through it — we were still living together — we wrote a couple songs together. I always wanted to do a fun ska project, but it was like haha I’m going to put out a ska record. It starts as that joke you make, but it’s not that weird because you are in music and I’m playing shows every weekend and writing music all the time. Then, my friend Dave, who does sound for The Interrupters, I was talking to him. He said, “You know we have a studio now in Orange (California). You’ve come down for Christmas. You should stop by and we’ll lay down a couple tracks.”
You always fuck like that with people. Like maybe we’ll get together. We’ll jam. It’ll totally happen, so you don’t really give it a lot of thought. Then, before you know it, he’s setting up dates with me, so I went down. I had these songs I had written. I sent together the demos I put together weeks before, and he put together a team. Before we knew it, we had a neat key and I guess we should release this. It’s kinda like it happened by accident. It wasn’t like I got five bandmates together and we wrote songs together.
What kind of music were you playing before you were playing ska?
Amy Gabba: I was doing a little bit of everything. I started doing blues and rock, country type stuff when I was 11. When I was really young, I group up out West similar to Nashville or Texas, it’s comparable to that. It’s Alberta [Canada]. Country music’s really, really big there, so that’s what I grew up loving. My stepdad played classic rock all the time, huge Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, even Eric Clapton. Stuff like that. When I moved to Toronto, it was a whole new thing. I never really listened to punk music and I got super into punk, more pop-punk, but I was a late bloomer. I don’t think I really got into it. Obviously, I liked ska and punk like Goldfinger, Sublime, and No Doubt. You know, now I like Rancid, Mad Caddies, Reel Big Fish. When I really fell in love with those bands, I was like 25-26, it changed my life. I still played my classic rock and other stuff on the side, but that was when I started writing pop-punk and ska music.
“Revolution,” if you’ve heard it, I think was the first punk song I ever wrote. That I wrote six to seven years ago. I sat on it a while before I recorded it. I made the natural progression because that’s where my taste in music went and that’s where my friends were. I love the community of it. Eventually, you realize how connected everybody is.
The music is super important and I love that a bit of me can still exist in that I don’t have to completely change how I sing or who I am. It’s upstrokes now a little bit more. You pivot, grow, and build on that. I don’t plan to ever stop playing those other genres of music. My record collection is completely eclectic. You’ll see a Teenage Bottlerocket record next to Elton John and Queen. There’s Whitney Houston, Wilco, and Guns and Roses. It’s all over the place. I don’t try to define myself by genre.
What about “FU COVID?”
Amy Gabba: I don’t think I gave it that much thought when I put it out. We have 6.6 thousand listeners on Spotify in January. That’s way bigger than anything we expected. I’m not doing fancy PR. That was never what this was supposed to be. For it to organically happen and make new friends, like you, and people you get to talk to because, somehow, they heard it. How did you hear the song? I’m always so curious.
I knew of you prior to that song. I actually know all the songs on The Heart is Stupid.
Amy Gabba: That’s so cool. You heard “Fuck You Cupid” and then you heard “Fuck You COVID” come out.
I think I heard the album when it first came out about two years ago.
Amy Gabba: July of 2019, it would have come out. It’s crazy how time flies.
What’s next for “FU Cupid?”
Amy Gabba: I think it’s great that I can call up Allegedly and say “Hey Valentine’s Day is in 14 days and we should do something fun with “Fuck You Cupid” turning it around, flip flop it back.” Obviously, it’s like my anti-Valentine’s Day song, so what could we do? We’re always bouncing ideas off of each other, which is really great. We just wanted to have fun with it. I really wanted to do new artwork. I wondered if we had any artists who might want to draw something for fun to look at and then a friend sent me a video of her in her living room dancing to “Fuck You Cupid” and then another friend did a cover. Let’s give people something to look forward to. Right now, we can’t go out and celebrate Valentine’s Day. Maybe it would be fun to have a little contest for everyone to send something in whatever their take on “Fuck You Cupid” is and then Bree from Allegedly and I are going to cocktail hour/happy hour Zoom party with whoever wins. Allegedly will pick a winner and send them a bunch of merch, but it’s mostly an opportunity to have some fun with it. It’s such a fun song.
