Singer-songwriter Jack Savoretti is a busy boy, there’s no doubting that.

When we speak on a Friday lunchtime, he’s on his way to the airport fresh from an interview with Chris Evans on Radio 2 and heading for a gig in Rome before he flies back to blighty to play Glastonbury the day after.

That’s presumably the way of the world when your stock has been slowly rising over the years and your latest album – released in February – blows up.

“It’s pretty nuts but I’m not complaining,” the 31-year-old told Vibe. “I’m looking forward to having a holiday, that’s for sure. The last couple of months have been pretty full-on but it’s great people want to hear what we’ve been doing.”

His holiday will have to wait for now because Jack’s got a busy summer ahead, including playing the John Lewis-sponsored OnBlackheath festival on Saturday, September 12, on a bill that includes Elbow and Manic Street Preachers.

“I can’t wait,” he said. “It’s always great to play a new festival and see what’s going on. It’s close to home, so that’s nice. It makes a difference.”


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Home for Jack is Queen’s Park, but that’s not to say south of the river is a stranger to him.

He said: “I grew up near Putney. My wife grew up in Putney as well so we do go south of the river quite a bit.

“For my sins, I’ve always been a west London boy. That’s the cool thing about London – it’s a city with at least 12 different cities in.”

Back to OnBlackheath, Jack’s looking forward to an unfamiliar crowd and the potential to win new fans.

He said: “I think it’s the fear factor of a festival. It takes you back to when you started out. You are playing to people that you have to keep in mind are a new crowd. You’re not playing to your fans.

He added: “When you tour, you already know people already like what you do so there is that ease.

“With a festival you get the same rush you did in the early days when you started out – just trying to make music that hits people.

“You really feel it in a festival, which is crazy. You feel it when it is working, you feel it when it is not working.

“When it is not working, it’s tough, but when it does work, that’s the reason we do what we do. “

“When you step in to a field of people who don’t know what you do and you suddenly feel them responding to it, that’s the buzz.”



For a while, it’s fair to say Jack lost that buzz. In fact, he nearly gave up music a few years ago.

He said: “I found myself in a situation where it wasn’t going the way I planned.

“The team I was working with wanted different things than I did. It was tough. It got very complicated and quite nasty. I just thought it was a horrible world to be a part of – I wanted nothing to do with it.

“Then I realised it had nothing to do with music, it was to do with the music industry.

“If I was going to do this I had to figure out a way of creating my own little ship to sail through this industry on. It took me a while but I’m glad I did it.”

Since then, Jack’s little ship has been sailing pretty well. His latest album, Written in Scars, has been his best received yet and charted at number 13 and was a Radio 2 Album of the Week.

He said: “It has done better than anything we have done before. A lot of it has to do with the team I have built around me.

“They are shining and showing they know what they are doing and that’s helping me do my job.

“It was a different record because I approached it differently. I watched a Paul Simon documentary where he said he starts every record from the rhythm and builds it around that. That was quite alien to me because usually that was the last thing I would think about.

“With this record, every song was born with a rhythm and started from that and grew.

“It was weird but because of that every song on the record ended up being recorded the day the song was written. It captures that.”

Jack Savoretti plays OnBlackheath on September 12. Go to onblackheath.com