The Hidden Lane. Jamhot Studios Past.

Next up on our tour of Jamhot studios, we have the place that probably means the most to us. The Hidden Lane. 

After moving from our beloved little room on Argyle Street, we managed to bag a great roomy studio space within The Hidden Lane itself, in the slightly mysterious & tucked away Mercat House, the bright & bold orange building hidden at the end of the lane. 

It felt like a big step moving to the lane itself, as we were now among around 100 other creative folk doing their thing in the bizarre, quirky & rickety collection of odd shaped colourful buildings.

The move was slightly stressful, as we forgot we would need to clean the old office. And we lost our deposit as we left the walls adorned in blu tack from all of the posters that we had covering the walls (oops... sorry Joe). 

The new space seemed huge compared to the tiny room, and we were able to fit in four big desks in one half (I think at one point we might have managed to fit in six), with a seating area with TV, couch & Playstation in the other bit. There was even a wee sink and kitchen area and we also had our own toilet - which seemed like a thing of luxury (even though it was far from it, given there was no lock and it sometimes didn't flush). 

Within this space we set about the serious task of trying to get better at what we did, and for four years this was our home. As we were still pretty rubbish, we had to work all hours to try and get through things, regurally having to work late into the night and often (usually) at weekends. And it was late at night that we discovered our rather creepy next door neighbour was shooting some sort of pornography. He was soon to be gone, replaced by a fashion designer who would make us pasta. It was a step in the right direction. 

Across the hall, there was a tiny tiny room that at one point housed a woman dressed all in black who was a fortune teller running a telephone hotline. She was rarely in, so all you heard were ringing phones all of the time. How very odd. Downstairs was the Sub Club office, and we used to see them running out with a bucket when it rained to catch the water from the leaky roof. There were other folk around too, a picture framer, a Green Party MSP and a couple of bands and music managers. At one point the actor Billy Boyd was in looking to rent the room next door to us. He never ended up taking it, which was a shame, as we could imagine asking him out for a spot of Second Breakfast. Never mind, it was not to be. 

Ove this time the studio grew, Jamie joined us and Anna was there for a bit too. We also welcomed in lots of freelancers and other folk to work with us over that time and started to do some work that we were really proud of. The business did really well (despite us!), and it was such a good, if sometimes rather sressful, period for Jamhot. 

During this time we liked popping to The Finnieston and The Ben Nevis for beers, and often The Big Slope too. The area was really starting to change, with the arrival of Piece for sandwiches and Crabshakk the fish restaurant. If we had been savvy business people (we are not) we would have bought a studio space in the area as a smart investment (we did not), we invested in buying lunch instead. It was a good choice (at the time at least). 

We met so many interesting folk during our time in the lane. From musicians to designers, photographers, videographers, guitar makers and lots more, along with the occasional certified lunatic - which made things entertaining. One of our favourite folk was the rather volitile lady who ran the wee cafe - she once poured lumpy out of date milk into our coffees before loudly declaring to us - 'milk's fucked, nae coffee' - good times. 

So much happened while we were here that it's hard to put it all into a single post. But it was a good time for Jamhot, as we started to feel like maybe there might be a future in running the studio, so long as we didn't fuck it up (we did many times, but managed to keep the ship sailing anyway). 

After slightly burning ourselves out with the late night and weekend working, at around the four year mark we decided it was time for a move. Our hidden lane studio used to be used by the manager of the band The Fratellis, and strangely enough we were about to move across the park into a strange little building that he owned in woodlands near Glasgow Uni.

More on that soon... but we can confirm that yet again we lost our deposit after using no more nails to affix a large kitchen work surface to one of the walls that we used as a white board (oops... sorry Joe).