Our story

Our first ever Bimbo Jones band gig was not at a pub or a club, but at the world famous Glastonbury Festival in 2005.

Our manager, Al, called us up one day and said, "Boys, I've got you a remix. It's for the Cheeky Girls." He sent it over and it was very cheesy. It was the song "(Hooray, Hooray!) It's a Cheeky Holiday!". Me and Lee looked at each other and thought, "Oh dear, how can we do this? How can we keep our cool credibility?" So we just took the "hooray" from the song, put it over a dirty, funky bass line and big drums, and made it very simple. Everyone loved it. It went out as a white label, which meant that no name was on it, not even Bimbo Jones. And that week it went to number one in the Music Week charts, the commercial pop dance chart, and that was as a white label with no name on it. The next week, Music Week put up that it was Bimbo Jones remixing the Cheeky Girls, and all the DJs must have recoiled from it in shock and horror, because the next week it wasn't even in the Music Week charts at all! Ha ha ha, the music does all the talking.

We were asked by Chicane to support them on a mini tour in the UK, at the second show in London. To our surprise, when we got to the green rooms, one door said Chicane, one door said Bimbo Jones, and the third door said Tom Jones. To our astonishment, Sir Tom Jones was there to perform a new song that he'd made with Chicane. We kept laughing and thinking of Tom Jones walking down to the green room, looking at the wrong door, laughing to himself and saying, "I'm not Bimbo, I'm Tom!"

How we got to meet Sergio Mendes all began when he had just finished his last album, working with the Black Eyed Peas, John Legend, Q-Tip (the rapper from A Tribe Called Quest) and Justin Timberlake. He went to Concord Records, a jazz label in Beverly Hills, to see their CEO, John Burk, and said, "I fancy doing a new album. It was great working with the Black Eyed Peas, but I don't know who to work with." John suggested that he might want to work with two guys from London who had just got the record label two number ones on Billboard. Sergio's reply was, "I love London. Sort the meeting out. I want to meet the boys."

Al calls us up one day and says, "Boys, pin your ears back. Sergio Mendes is coming through town." Concord Records, who we had done several remixes for and got to number one for their artists, had said that Sergio Mendes was coming through town and would like to come and visit us, because he had just done an album with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and was now looking for fresh producers to make an album with. He came to the studio we had in London at the time and was served lime drinks, and we had a lovely chat, but he didn't seem that interested. Just before he was about to leave, a bit nonplussed, Lee said to him, "By the way, Sergio, what is this track? I love it. It's called 'Ye-Me-Le'. You'll find it." And Sergio's face lit up, he threw his arms up in the air and said, "My goodness, boys, I've been thinking of doing this song for so many years. Thank you so much, Lee, for reminding me of this song." He said, "What are you doing in two weeks? I'm flying you to LA to come and co-produce songs on my new album." Two weeks later, there we were heading to Encino, to the House of Blues studio, to go and record with Sergio. What a blessing.

Hear “Ye-Me-Le” from Bom Tempo on YouTube

During our trip to Los Angeles, we arrived five days after Michael Jackson had sadly passed away. After the second day of working on the album, I said to Marc, "Let me show you where Michael Jackson's house was in Encino, California." We parked the car down the street, as every news company on the planet was planted along the street, mainly US news companies. The last people we spoke to were Sky News. We introduced ourselves to the presenter and gave her a business card, and to our astonishment, within five minutes she said, "You're live on air, get ready." So we had a live interview explaining that we were working on the album for Sergio Mendes at Jermaine Jackson's studio. It was live across the Atlantic, so we called our families and they listened in. Hello!

When we were producing with Sergio Mendes on his records at the House of Blues studio in Encino, he turned around, looked at us and said, "OK, what's next?" And I said, "Rototoms, Sergio. Let's put some rototoms on the track." So he got on the phone, made a call and said, "We need rototoms." The next day, a huge truck came reversing up, beep, beep, beep. A guy got out, came round to the tailgate and opened up the back of the truck, and inside there was a huge scaffolding rack with about 32 rototoms on it. He said, "Where am I putting these?" So the rototoms were wheeled into the studio. I thought we were just going to have one small rototom, but instead we ended up with the rototom scaffolding rack that had also been used on the Star Wars theme.

At the end of our trip with Sergio Mendes, working and writing on the album for him, he kindly invited us to join him at his show at the Hollywood Bowl. He could very easily have sent a taxi or a limo to collect us, but being the gentleman that he is, he picked us up himself in his personal Mercedes limo, which only had five seats, to give us special attention. He drove us there early. We arrived at the Hollywood Bowl for the soundcheck and stood on the stage where the Beatles, the Doors and so many other amazing artists have performed over the years. It was such an honour. He sat us down at the front with Burt Bacharach's people. The show was amazing. He then drove us back to his house, and at about one in the morning, as a thank you, he and his wife Gracinha gave us a one-to-one performance to thank us for all our hard work on the album. They performed a song just for us, which we have on video. It was amazing.

When we arrived at the Hollywood Bowl, there was a young man on guard on the road, and he stopped Sergio's car. Sergio wound down the window. The young man said, "Sorry, sir, you can't come in here. It's access only." Sergio said, "Well, I'm performing here." The young man said, "Can I see your ID, please, sir?" Sergio said, "Look behind you." And behind the young man was a huge billboard with Sergio Mendes's face on it.

I had been working for years trying to get into record companies, and every avenue I tried had not borne fruit. I was starting to wonder if my music was not good and if I should give up my hopes of being a music producer. Then a family friend, Guy Fletcher, who was the chairman of PRS, introduced me to a man called Brian Allen, and Brian said, "You should go and meet this producer called Lee." So I went to Opium nightclub in Dean Street and met Lee and his wife, and we became instant great friends. We had a tryout session in the studio the next week, where we made a song in two hours. Then Lee DJed it in front of 350 people at a club, and they went absolutely crazy. I stood behind the decks with Lee, looking at the effect of the music, and suddenly I realised that all those record companies I'd been dealing with did not have the ears to hear good music, and that actually our music was incredible.

In the year 2000, I went to the Winter Music Conference in Miami for the first time, with my wife, to see what it was all about. I'd heard good things about it, and it had been going since 1985. I actually paid to register as a guest. When I arrived, they already knew who I was, and I explained that Marc and I were setting up a dance band. The following year they actually invited us, and before you knew it we were appearing on panels (remix panels, production panels, songwriting panels) and even DJing at the red carpet events. It was such an honour.

After several years of playing at the Winter Music Conference and going on its panels, Marc and I were very lucky to be among the nominees for World's Best Remixer, which was an amazing honour. The last year we were nominated, we were up against Avicii, Calvin Harris, Kaskade, Tommy Trash and R3hab, which was a crazy, amazing honour.

One year when we were there, a guy came up to me, tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hey, my friend's been looking for you guys and wants to work with you." I said, "Really? Who's that?" And he said, "Cyndi Lauper."

So in 2010, I took my family to California to see if we might want to live in America one day. At the end of the trip, once my family had gone home, her manager, Lisa, asked me to come to a hotel in Beverly Hills to meet them. The night before, Cyndi Lauper and her manager were in a nightclub in Los Angeles. The DJ walked up to her and asked, "Miss Lauper, is there anything I can play for you?" She replied, "Can you play Bimbo Jones, 'And I Try'?", which was number one on the American Billboard dance chart. Two hours later he went back up to her, very nervously, and asked, "Miss Lauper, can I play another song for you?" To which she replied, "Put Bimbo Jones, 'And I Try', on again." So that was great to hear ahead of my meeting with her.

I did not know what to expect. I hired a keyboard player to come along, because I didn't know if I'd be making a song, and Marc was back in London at the time. She opened the door and said, "Lee, is that you?" I sat down with her for four and a half hours, discussing music and ideas, while my friend was at the bar getting drunk, waiting for me. Cyndi seemed like a new friend, and she said, "I think I'm going to fly to London and work with you and Marc, Bimbo Jones, on Kinky Boots." And so our story of songwriting with her began.

At one of our gigs at Glastonbury Festival, we were playing as a band with Katherine Ellis, who at the time was our lead singer. We had created a fabulous album with her that was being signed to Tommy Boy. We were due on stage at Glastonbury when there was a horrendous storm with bolts of lightning, and a massive crack of lightning came down, hit the tent we were about to play in and burnt it to the ground. We all looked at each other, soaking wet in our tents, in dismay that we had come all this way and now there was no gig!

We had been the last ones to arrive in the VIP music area the night before, and there was only one place left to put up the tent: at the bottom of a valley, right in the middle. When we woke up, there was a river running past the tent that hadn't been there the day before. We sat there, knowing there was no gig, watching beer cans, a tennis racket and a Wellington boot float past on this river.

Our manager, Al, was part of the 19 management operation with Simon Fuller, and we used to DJ at their Christmas parties with all the celebs. For the 19th birthday of 19, celebrating 19 years since they had started with Paul Hardcastle's track "19", they held a huge party at the Royal Albert Hall. We were asked to remix "19" especially for the occasion, in front of 3,500 music royalty, world celebrities and dignitaries. At the very end, after Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart had played together for the first time in many years, they played the "19" remix we had made, with ticker tape coming down to close this incredible celebration. We stood up and just screamed and cheered so much.

Back in 2009, I was visiting my grandmother in Southern Ireland when I had a phone call from the legend KC of KC and the Sunshine Band and his manager, Billy. I had to take the call at the top of a hill, the only place with a phone signal. I asked Harry what his last name was, and he said, "Casey, C-A-S-E-Y", which shocked me, because in West Cork that's a very famous surname. I asked him if he had ever been there. He said no.

I talked through all of his music and surprised him by saying that his original signing was to a UK label called Jay Boy Records, which he could not believe I knew. The reason I did is that my mum had a copy of the early record, which I used to play as a very young boy. I then pointed out several people who had remixed or sampled his records over the years, and so a meeting was set up in Miami the following March, during the music conference. We met up and talked music, and we sent him some music to collaborate on with us. He later went on to write a letter for my green card application, saying that if he had not worked with us, he might not have wanted to make music again. That was a major honour, and a complete surprise to read.