For the third edition of Five Minutes with… we spoke with rising singer songwriter Jack Kane, shortly after he released his debut Digital Pressing. A stunning cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide, there are only a dozen or so editions remaining - grab one here! Read on to find out more about how he got his start in music, playing live, and his dad’s iPod.

Serenade: Hey Jack, how are you doing?

Jack Kane: All good thanks! How about yourself?

S: Doing great thanks - excited to have your first Digital Pressing out in the world! Tell us a little bit about yourself, and how you got into music.

JK: I’ve always ‘done music’, but I always looked at it as something I’d do not as a career but as an escape from work, or to do on the weekend. I went to drama school, and always wanted to do acting as my full time gig, which I did, but it was only after the impact of lockdowns I started writing my own material.

I’d always written music for catharsis, as an enjoyable way to pass the time, and then I started uploading on social media, and it all became a little more serious. I’m way less nervous doing anything musical than acting and I think that’s because I’ve always used it as a fun escape

S: That’s interesting! What do you feel is the difference between being in front of the camera acting, or being up on stage? Do you feel that both are putting on a performance to a certain extent?

JK: I’m less anxious when performing music, I think it’s because you can’t be bad at being yourself, but you can be bad at acting! However It’s definitely more vulnerable being yourself but I feel like the best parts of me are drawn to the surface while performing music

S: That definitely makes sense - in terms of your main musical inspirations, where do they initially come from?

JK: So my dad gave me his old iPod when I was about 8 or 9. We were always a very musical family, but up until then, I’d never really listened with my own agency. I’d take it to school, and everyone would know me as the guy that always had headphones in! I’d be listening to so much of my dad’s weird music tastes, or at least not what everyone else at school was listening to. I think the first song that I played on repeat was Rich Girl by Hall & Oates. I didn’t know that song hadn’t just come out! While everyone else was listening to Dizzie Rascal or JLS, I was listening to Hall & Oates.

S: Amazing. Do you remember what else was on the iPod?

JK: There was a lot of Elton John, Bread, AC/DC… very much a typical dad’s taste!

S: I used to have an external hard drive that had about 50,000 mp3s on it - before streaming services. I remember thinking at the time, that if I ever had kids, it would be the least cool thing to hand them a hard drive of mp3s, but maybe not!

JK: I think you’d be surprised!

S: I’ve seen on eBay the old original iPods go for quite a lot of money now! So when you started out making and releasing music, am I right in thinking that was during lockdowns?

JK: Sort of, I was taking it at a leisurely pace, then during lockdowns I stepped up how seriously I was taking it. I had my blinkers on for acting, and then a series I was filming was completely cancelled because of Covid, so I had quite a bit of free time. Auditions went out the window, so I began focusing on music as a project. I’d initially written a twelve track album, but looking back, some of it was garbage! I then put together more of a thought out plan, which I’m very glad I did.

S: How have you found releasing and promoting music? Especially when you’ve built audiences on social media, how do you find trying to direct them to specific places to listen to your music?

JK: You don’t want to push people too hard - there’s an element of playing it cool, but it does feel like nowadays you have to be very visible in order to get people to listen.

S: One thing I hope we can achieve through Serenade is to give songs a bit more of a life beyond the release - it feels like a huge number of songs have very short shelf lives - that they’re promoted a few weeks in advance, then live for 48 hours, then there’s a bit of a ‘okay well what do I do now?!’. It’s difficult when the fans you’re engaging with, also have so much other noise going on - and another release to engage with the following week.

Anyway, on to the pressing, which we hope we can give an extra life to! Why Landslide as a cover?

JK: It’s always been a song that I’d sung - I started singing it when I was in my teens, and it’s always sat well in my range. It reaches the peaks and the lows of my voice, and it’s only as I’ve gotten older that I’ve come to understand the meaning behind the song, and coming to terms with changing. It’s a very poignant song for me, that I’ve featured in my live sets for a while, so it felt like a very natural choice.

S: There’s definitely a reason that classic songs are regarded as such! I’m a big believer that any great song can be stripped down to just a piano if necessary.

And what else have you got coming up this year?

JK: I’ve got a whole EP pretty much ready to be fired out the gun, with the first single in autumn.

S: And live shows?

JK: Yep! Just working out the plan for my first headline show at the moment!

S: What parts of being a musician do you enjoy the most?

JK: Definitely when I’ve just written something that I love, and nobody else has heard it yet - and it only exists in that world. Nobody can shoot it down yet, or critique it - it’s a great feeling.

S: And what do you find the most challenging?

JK: I’m not sure if I’ve had one particular item yet - perhaps the most challenging is staying consistent on social media

S: It sometimes feels like artists are quite beholden to algorithms, which doesn’t always seem to be a productive way to release creative material. It definitely feels like there’s a struggle for artists to reach their real fans.

And that leads us quite nicely on to Serenade and Digital Pressings - why did it make sense for you to approach the release in this way?

JK: It excited me because I’m always looking to new technologies, and it definitely changed my perspective in terms of putting value onto something that exists online. The truth is, we’ve already been doing that for years through video games - so it makes complete sense to move it to a more cultural sense, where fans can collect items that mean something to them. For fans that only listen on streaming platforms, their investment into music culture is already online - so feels like a natural progression.

My dad has collectible vinyl, and it’s great to own - for a fan to know that they’ve been a bigger part of a release.

S: Definitely! That’s certainly part of our intention in trying to build a fairer creative economy, and giving fans positive ways of engaging with their favourite artists. Thanks so much for your time, Jack!