Jack Penate Performs Live on the Interface

Jack Penate is your token rock fan-turned-star. "I fought for about an hour over Chris Martin's guitar way back when Coldplay first started. He threw it in the crowd and I didn't get it," Penate tells Spinner during a recent Interface taping in our Los Angeles studios. He also got handpicked from the audience to dance onstage with Missy Elliot. "I was really obsessed with her first record," he says. "I wasn't the normal Missy Elliot looking fan, and I think she liked that, so she brought me on stage. I was like 16 or something -- at that point I was break dancing and all that kind of things that you do. I just danced and took photos of me and her cuddling."

These fan encounters eventually led to Penate's 2007 debut 'Matinee,' which reached No. 1 on the UK's indie rock chart. For his part, Penate created his own signature sound that sonically blends rockabilly, reggae and tropi-Cali all into one.

"I wanted the guitar to be like a rhythmic instrument. I didn't want it to just be how people normally play guitars." he says of his signature strong rhythms. "I wanted it to create some kind of atmosphere and sound like, almost a drum." For his latest album, 'Everything Is New,' Penate's trademark rockabilly is met with more reverb and anthemic, atmospheric riffs.

"I'm quite into the titles which don't have to mean anything but can mean everything too," he says. "I wanted the whole record to sound like it was a lyric in a song title -- all moments between things happening instead of the actual moments." For the video to 'Pull My Heart Away,' Penate traveled to Petra, the ancient ruin in Jordan, because he "really wanted to go" with some friends, booking the plane tickets at 12AM for a flight out the next morning. "We just kind of got there, didn't really know what we were doing and shot anything that looked beautiful there and made a video when we got home," he says. "It was really homemade, but also a complete adventure."

Another adventure crucial to 'Everything Is New' came when the British singer-songwriter, then only 19, traveled with a pal across America. On a stop in New Orleans during Jazz Fest, Penate had his first encounter with "a big brass band, this death-marching band" that inspired the words to 'Let's All Die.' "I loved the idea of celebrating at a funeral." he says of hearing a joyous take on the cryptic words. "There might be teenage kids singing along to 'Let's All Die.' I liked the idea that in its own little way, it's kind of a little bit punk, or as much as punk as I can be."

Watch Jack Penate Live on the Interface