today is the day!

okay, at this moment the time is 12:09 PST on wednesday, october 17th and all here at willisville are in full on party preparation mode! tonight at 6:00 PST, we will launch our art/music/web/soul extravaganza: bubblesandcheesecake.com. allee, bubbles, cheesecake, murray the engineer and i have been working on this for over a year. so, needless to say, all are a flutter with last minute tweaks, inspirations, fixes and excitement. sometimes it felt like this day would never come. it’s been a wild ride.

allee and i got together to write a year ago september, 2006 for what would be my 5th solo album. her stipulation in working together had been that we make the final recordings here at willisville. her feeling was that the other songs that we had written and recorded had not been done justice when re-recorded for my albums, “i confess” and “songs for tuesday”. she thought the records were good but had lost the funky-kooky-distinctive-soulful flavor that she and i had conjured up when producing the demos together.

midway through that first day, i had the thought that if we were going to make the records together, that they should not have only my name on them. allee’s musical parts and signature background vocals are so unique that i felt that someone listening to the records, should know the name of this musical force called allee willis. so i turned to her and said, “you know, allee…if we are going to make this album together, it shouldn’t just be a holly p album, it should be a holly and allee album.” she was slightly intrigued, but only slightly…

about an hour later i said to her, “you know…i have an alter-ego now”. she said, “oh?’. i said, “yeah, MC CHEESECAKE. that’s my alter-ego. she just got born the other day, when i was driving down the street with my husband joe. i was desperately hungry and started rhyming about all the food i wanted to eat. when i got to the desserts, joe shouted, LOOK OUT NOW! IT’S MC CHEESECAKE!”

allee looked slightly more intrigued.

i said, ” yeah, so uh…..cheesecake feels very strongly that she is bubbles’ protege, the same way that i have been your songwriting protege.” for those new to willisville, allee has an alter-ego called bubbles the artist, who is a very serious, very fantastic painter. anyhow, here’s where the story turns.. i said, “allee, this album should not be just a holly and allee album, it should be a bubbles and cheesecake album and i know what we’re gonna call it.”

“what?”, she said.

“THE SOUL OF BUBBLES & CHEESECAKE”.

October 17th, 2007