Gallery 47 aka Jack Peachey has been playing the Nottingham gig circuit for over ten years now. From playing small venues such as the now long gone Lee Rosy’s on Broad Street to entertaining crowds at the Bodega, Jack manages to capture the audience with his carefully crafted lyrics.
2020 sees Gallery 47 release his latest album, East Street.
We spoke to Jack to find out more.
Tell us a little bit about the new album?
It's called 'East Street' after my old bus stop 'Old Kent Road / East Street' in London. I worked on the album for six months last year but then I lost everything when my hard drive got corrupted, and so I started from the beginning. We didn't have much of a budget so we recorded all the drums on a single condenser microphone in my mum and dad's dining room. I remember watching 'Marriage Story' on Netflix with my mum and dad when I was mixing the first track.
You have been performing around Nottingham for over ten years now, what makes it special and what changes have you seen over that period?
I like how things can make waves here. I like the people. There is always something happening and there's a kind of communal buzz which manages to walk the line between collective support and competition. We have a good avenue to independent shows which lets artists put on their own nights with decent sound for a small fee, and there are also opportunities for musicians to showcase themselves with decent support slots.
Who and what inspires you to write music?
It's really horrible because the idea of becoming well known terrifies me. I'm scared of being misunderstood as a matter of course, which means that I often try to communicate through lyrics and random messages and changing my cover photos on facebook and all manner of weird, indirect things which compete with my inability to articulate in words. Between 2013 and 2016, and arguably ever since then anyway, I've been experiencing this constant, compelling feeling which urges me to put things down, as if I was about to die and that it wouldn't be out there unless I did it right then. This gets really, really stressful when you keep paying £1,000 you don't have to finance the things you do need to warrant any release. It's very stressful. Maybe this is why I write music - because I'm so stressed about trying to achieve success despite the fact I don't want it.
How has your music evolved since you first began recording and creating records?
I'm not sure if it has evolved too much. It depends on the day. I feel that production is so, absolutely essential if you want to do anything beyond acoustic and vocal, unless you just want to record a bunch of stuff and pick the gems and let the other stuff go. I think I used to have more hope but I'm not sure if this is because things were going better. I never feel like I ever wrote to impress anyone or achieve some kind of acclaim, but when you do start to realise that what you're making might not be right for the current market or might not convince people to buy into it, you start to panic and you want to do something different, but I've found that you receive no reply 99% of the time anyway, no matter what you send out, and that your best chance is just to be true to what you think is decent and leave some of your future to chance. But this is because I like to gamble, and also partly because I don't know any other way to approach it.
Nottingham seems to have a supportive music scene, however what more do you think needs to be done for more local artists to become successful outside of the city?
It's very supportive! It's great. I really missed it in London, and now I feel old at 30. I think Nottingham is doing everything it can to help musicians and it's a really good place for musicians to find their feet. My issue is with the fact it's almost impossible to make a decent living from music unless you're really successful or popular, and that puts such a massive stress on everything.
East Street is available now from https://gallery47.bandcamp.com
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