Star Gazing - Jack Peñate

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Trying to track down Jack Peñate over recent weeks has been quite a challenge. Seemingly more in demand than a pair of skinny jeans in Kate Moss’ Topshop collection, this week alone (it’s Friday when we finally meet each other) the twenty-two year old has been in and out of the studio recording horn sections, before flying to America for a week on Monday “to do some more recording for one more song.” It’s a schedule that’s tiring to read, let alone, tiring to have to live. To top it all off, he’s had two hours sleep in the last twenty four hours – the twenty two that he was awake, however, did include a competition winners gig, which he admits was a bit “industry,” and a chance encounter with Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller – cinemas new best friends – at an after show party. The latter – as he smiles his wide, infectious grin – was clearly the highlight.
 
Emerging from the crowds of a busy London Street, Peñate certainly stands out. Dressed in his trademark, just-short-of-the-right-length jeans, colourful socks and a hoody, you can see why he’s currently in a category of his own – somewhere between cool and refreshingly un-cool. As he enters the café where I’m waiting alongside his PR man, like a gentleman he removes his trucker hat, ‘adjusts’ his hair and orders a frappuccino. If he’s tired, he doesn’t show it.
 
“I should be finishing my degree if life had planned…” suddenly he cuts the sentence short – something he does a lot in his eagerness to start a new one - and continues. “Actually, I didn’t wanna do my degree but if life had carried on I’d be now finishing my finals or something. A year ago I’d probably be doing the same type of thing but just on my own. I’d gig non stop. I was always playing, but I was just playing a lot in London. I’d be just playing gigs and actually having time to see friends and stuff like that which is, um, like a gem when I get to see people, which is sad, but it’s great that I get to do something that I love. It’s changed a lot but all for the best.”
 
Peñate has been everywhere of late – and that’s not just because of his tour schedule, which has seen him play over seventy sold out dates in as many days. His last single, ‘Spit At Stars,’ and first with XL Recordings, whose other artists include The White Stripes and Dizzee Rascal, was playlisted on national and regional radio stations a like, thanks largely to its infectious buoyancy and upbeat pop credentials – something that’s rife in all of Peñate’s songs. Just in the last few months alone he’s been dubbed a London Troubadour along with the likes of fellow Londoner’s and close friends, Lily Allen and Jamie T; 2007’s must see starlet, and; not to mention, the best, as-yet-undiscovered, Patrick Swayze look-alike (he roars with laughter at the now rather frustrating comparisons).
 
It’s all a long way from the youngster who first became “quite obsessed” with music at the age of eleven - which is when he also picked up the guitar. “That’s all I did really was listen to music and play guitar. I started writing songs when I was about thirteen and for years they were horrible, terrible songs…not that they are any better now,” he adds bashfully, “but I just had to learn my trade.” Although he was the only member of his family to have an instrumental interest in music, he attributes his musical household for his passion. While his mother and father brought him the classics – Dylan, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell –his brother and sister provided a more eclectic mix ranging from drum and bass to Whitney Houston. He admits fondly, “I was really lucky I always had music in my house. Every room had its own taste.”
 
Peñate’s first taste of performance, however, didn’t come till he was seventeen when he rather unknowingly became a member of a band which borrowed his name, and, the room in his house where they practised. Jack’s Basement, as they were called, was made up of Joel Porter (now bassist in Peñate’s band) and Felix White (guitarist in The Maccabees) who the singer describes avidly as his “best friends.” Peñate explains: “I was obviously writing songs and stuff and one day Felix came into school and said, ‘We’re now a band,’ and I was like, what? Felix said, ‘Yeah we’ve got a gig next week.’ I was like, what? We didn’t have a name, we’d never practised and we couldn’t really play instruments that well. He (Felix) was like, ‘Fuck it – lets do it.’” And so they did - badly. “We rehearsed and played this amazingly funny gig,” he divulges, with a huge smile. “We played at the Clapham Contact…no, the Clapham Christian Youth Contact Centre and we had to postpone the gig by half an hour because the ballet lesson (Peñate, incidentally, is now roaring with laugher, whilst trying to convince me this is all true) that forced eight year olds had overrun a little.”
 
While Peñate reveals, thankfully, that the band did eventually take things more seriously, deep down, even the other members of Jack’s Basement knew that he always had an ambition to be a solo-artist. His tone suddenly changes. “For me, it’s just I’ve always wanted to be a solo artist. My heroes were all solo artists. Growing up I was obsessed with Nick Drake first, and then Jeff Buckley and Neil Young. All these people are like people that I idolised. I suppose you could ask the question of any solo artist, ‘why do you do it?’ But I just did, it felt right.”