Hello, everyone,
Keep your eyes opened for Pete du Pon is on tour with Amy MacDonald.
Pete du Pon’s talent for songwriting has reached the ears of soulful songstress, Amy Macdonald. Pete, a songwriter of true conviction, whose current EP, Lost, is top ten in the Amazon singles chart, will open for Amy at six gigs around Britain during May.
“I’m thrilled to be touring with Amy and supporting her at some of her UK gigs,” says the 27-year-old from Guildford. “Like her, I was, and still am, massively influenced by the music I heard when growing up.
“I spent hours listening to singer songwriters like James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Tracy Chapman, as well as bands like Counting Crows, Radiohead and Del Amitri. I can’t wait for this tour to start!”
Pete’s wistfully lyrical songs drive a stake through the heart of other artists’ less meaningful numbers, touching listeners with a depth of understanding lacking in many of today’s lighter pop tunes. A moody collection of acoustic folk numbers such as Lost, Tell Her and A Long Way Home amongst others reveal raw emotion rarely heard nowadays.
Stuart Zender, Jamiroquai’s former bassist currently on the road as bass maestro to Mark Ronson, has co-written songs with Pete, including Someone Like You which features in a new American film about basketball, called Ball Don’t Lie, starring rapper Ludacris and Rosanne Arquette.
“Pete’s voice is timeless,” says Stuart. “Many artists today are technically brilliant but haven’t lived life enough to achieve his depth of feeling. He sings with real conviction and a lot of artists fail to achieve this.”
A poignant session at Abbey Road studios confirmed this. Sitting where Lennon and McCartney produced one sublime record after another, Pete gave WorldSpace digital satellite radio network a run for their money with an impeccable performance of half a dozen numbers, including numbers from his debut EP, Lost, as well as a cover version of Greenday’s hit Basket Case which has received rave reviews in the States. The recordings have been beamed worldwide to thousands of listeners - an impressive debut for any troubadour today.
“At first I was ok. I really didn’t have time to think about the history of the place as I had a specific time slot in which to play my songs, be interviewed and more or less leave the building,” he remembers.
“Then I was told the broadcast would go out to more than 130 countries which made me gulp slightly. I realised what an awesome experience it was – sitting where Lennon and McCartney had recorded. I’d been pretty calm up until then!”
Pete has also worked with Rollo of Faithless and his writers, and has co-written songs with Jamiroquai guitarist, Si Katz. His other fans include Brian McFadden and various writers such as Julian Gallagher (U2, James Morrison) and Blair Mackichan (Lilly Allen, Will Young) while Paolo Nutini had more than a word or two of encouragement for him at one of his recent gigs at London’s The Water Rats.
Pete takes it all in his stride. He remembers the early days playing the standard Oasis covers in French bars for drunken English tourists during a year out for his Bristol university degree.
“I got paid 30 euros and as much beer as I could drink,” he recalls ruefully. “The theory was that if an English guy was playing, other English guys would turn up and drink all the beer. I did Radiohead covers before being drawn into playing crowd pleasers like Oasis’s Wonderwall. It was safer than being honest and playing your own stuff, but it got a bit tedious after a while.”
The Von Trapp family
Born in Canada to an English mother and a Dutch father his family settled in Guildford when Pete was only one year old.
“I have three sisters, one of which is a twin, and we were all musical. My sisters played piano and sang, Dad would play guitar and piano and sing, and at people’s houses we were often semi-pressurised to perform - we were known as the Von Trapp family.
“There was always music in every room in the house. I played the piano at six, and at nine picked up the saxophone as I was a big fan of Ray Charles but could only manage the theme tune from Agatha Christie’s Poirot.”
He started the guitar at 13 with his dad before an inspiring teacher “who stank of tobacco and would often drift off in lessons” took over, teaching him more traditional flamenco. “One day I bravely asked for something contemporary. The first song I learned was House of Rising Sun. Stairway to Heaven followed a month later and the list grew before I began to teach myself.”
Pete wrote his own first songs at 15, performing them in the quietness of his bedroom. Not until his first gig in France aged 21, playing to a mixture of pensive locals and British tourists, did they get an airing.
“I was offered a job as barman, turned it down and said I’d like to be their resident guitarist and was worryingly offered the slot without an audition! Before the first gig the bar owner assured us we’d have all the equipment we needed, which actually turned out to be one amp and half a mic stand, for the two of us share!”
“Using a combination of a broom handle and masking tape to hold the mic in place we played on as if we’d be doing it for years and we loved it although it probably sounded awful.”
From performing three nights a week with a friend in various bars in the centre of Grenoble, France, gigs followed elsewhere in the country, including Meribel where the different crowds would demand more covers – “up tempo stuff that the drinkers could sway to”. After seven months of feeling like a glorified karaoke machine, the then 22-year-old Pete returned to Britain to finish his degree and take on a variety of jobs to finance time spent writing his own songs.
After a short spell of work experience at Universal Records in the synchronisation team, filing other songwriter’s names, his demo cd was picked up by publisher John Woolf who got him to re - record the rough bedroom versions of Pete’s demos in various studios, as well as writing, recording new songs and hanging out with writers such as Jacob Schulze in Sweden, Arthur Baker and Rollo from Faithless.
“Through Rollo’s own record label under Universal I worked with him and his writers on some material. At first, writing with other people was a bit of a culture shock. Even now I’m still learning to talk about what I’m feeling to other writers, but bit by bit it’s getting easier!”
As Pete continues to make waves he has been touted as the next big thing in 2008 by numerous national papers. His soft voice already conquered me, but judge for yourself... throughout May, Pete opens for Amy Macdonald at the following venues:
Friday 16 May: Leeds University Stylus
Monday 19 May: Norwich UEA
Tuesday 20 May: London Shepherds Bush Empire
Thursday 22 May: Manchester Academy
Friday 23 May: Glasgow Academy
Saturday 24 May: Glasgow Academy
Don't miss it, I'm sure you will enjoy yourself!
Bengal.
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