Jack Peñate

Jack Peñate
Jack Peñate performing at Glastonbury Festival 2008
Background information
Birth name	Jack Peñate
Born	September 2, 1984 (1984-09-02) (age 24)
Origin	Blackheath, London, England
Genre(s)	Alternative Soul Rockabilly Pop Indie rock
Occupation(s)	singer-songwriter performer
Instrument(s)	vocals Guitar
Label(s)	XL Recordings
Associated acts	Jack's Basement The Maccabees Talk Taxis
Website	Official Site Official MySpace
Members
Jack Peñate - vocals and Guitar Joel Porter - Bass Guitar Alex Robins - drums

Jack Fabian Peñate (pronounced /pənˈjɑːti/; born 2 September 1984, Blackheath, London) is an English musician and singer-songwriter signed to XL Recordings.

Early life

Jack Peñate went to Alleyn's School until he was 18 years of age. His grandfather was Mervyn Peake who wrote the Gormenghast books.^[1]

Music

Peñate made his way up the ranks of the club and bar scene of London before he was signed by record label XL Recordings. Peñate released his first promo single in October 2006, "Second Minute or Hour" along with its b-side track, "Got My Favourite". This single was released by the record label Young Turks, as a 1000-only limited 7 inch, each containing a different Polaroid photograph, taken of Peñate. And in April 2007 he released the "Spit At Stars EP". As well as the title track, this featured "My Yvonne", "Cold Thin Line" and a cover of Darondo Pulliam and Al Turner's "Didn't I". The CD edition of the EP also included the first song he ever wrote, "Jack Of All Trades", which he wrote with his band at school called "Jack's Basement". He has appeared on XFM radio's "Xposure" and his first two singles were both Single of the Week on Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe's show.

On 10 August 2007 he announced that his album would be released on 1 October and be titled Matinée. However, on 7 September, this date was pushed back to 8 October, because more time was needed to "finish off all the bits of artwork for the inside cover and because my neck is playing up again." Peñate also stated that "I've been told it's now in production so hopefully there won't be any more delays." ^[2]

Despite much pre-album publicity, the album met with mixed reviews including a 5/10 from the NME who had featured Penate on their cover in a previous month. However, the album did debut at number seven in the UK album charts. ^[3]

On 3 January 2009, XFM played a new track by Peñate called "Tonight's Today", the song ended up being the first single from his 2nd album Everything Is New.

Discography

Singles:

• 2006: "Second, Minute or Hour" (original release)
• 2007: "Spit At Stars"
• 2007: "Torn On The Platform" UK #7, UK Indie #1
• 2007: "Second, Minute or Hour" - 24 September 2007 UK #17, UK Indie #1
• 2007: "Have I Been A Fool" - 10 December 2007 UK #73, UK Indie #3
• 2009: "Tonight's Today" - 30 March 2009 UK #23
• 2009: "Be The One" - 15 June 2009 UK#35, UK Indie #3

Albums:

• 2007: Matinée - 8 October 2007 UK #7, UK Independent Label Albums #1
• 2009: Everything Is New - 22nd June 2009 UK #16

Live gigs and Tours

At Peñate's concerts, it is customary that audience members enter the stage while the song "Torn On The Platform" is performed. One such stage invasion at the Oxford Zodiac on 22 April 2007 resulted in a fan stealing Peñate's distortion pedal. After he'd realised it was missing he proclaimed, “D’you know what? Whoever’s got it…keep it! Just make sure you play a Telecaster through it and not a Gibson!” ^[4]

Jack Peñate was featured on BBC Three's coverage of the Glastonbury Festival on Friday 22 June 2007.

He has also appeared at the Carling Weekend in Reading and Leeds. Two days after his performances at both festivals, he announced on a message on his MySpace that he would have to cancel two gigs the following week, due to severe damage to his throat which also resulted in him reducing his set length at the previous weekend's Carling Weekend.

On 8 December 2007 he performed on the Later With Jools Holland show sharing a bill with David Gray, Rilo Kiley, The Coral, Cleo Laine and John Dankworth, amongst others.

During the summer of 2008, Jack Peñate played several live concerts with guest guitars from old school friend Felix White.^{[citation needed]} This included Peñate's set at Reading of August this year.

Peñate has played gigs all over the UK on tour and has previously shared dates with his good friends Adele, and The Maccabees, Jack played at the 2007 Oxegen festival in Kildare, Ireland.

Peñate was one of the contributors to the Janie Jones charity cover single.

He also featured at music night Songs in the Dark run by Jeremy Warmsley and Simon Mastrantone

Jack Peñate performed a cover of La Roux's "Bulletproof" at the Radio 1 Live Lounge.

On 3 July 2009, he played at The Roundhouse in Camden Town, as part of the iTunes live festivals month.

References

External links

• Official website
• Jack Peñate at MySpace
• Jack Peñate at Discogs
• official widget
• The Sun article
• Jack Penate: Matinee Review - MnGR
• The Times: Jack Penate takes on Lily Allen and Adele; March 28, 2009