It all started with great grannys old piano. She left it to Jake in her will, not because he showed promise, but because he was the only one in the large Irish family not to thump the hell out of it!
However Jake didnt learn to play that piano. Dyslexia turned grannys sheet music into a sea of meaningless dots, which Jake would join together to make the face of his music teacher, until she washed her hands of him.
But Jake knew he could play, he just had to find a way to learn. Every Saturday morning at kids theatre, nine-year-old Jake would lie under the baby grand, memorising how the chords were formed and how they sounded, until he too could play the tunes in his head.
Out of this came a stripped, raw and sensitive musicality, unconventional in its roots yet fresh in its presence. A young man documents his rite of passage, paved with heartache, family disputes and finding Jake, concluding in his album (The Butterfly Observations, coming soon ).
Jake Hook is a musician who sheds new light on the concept of the singer-songwriter. As for Grannys old piano, it has been by his side ever since.
Over previous months, Jake had a song commissioned by CBBC called 'Seaside Day Out', this outrated both the UK-Germany football game and primetime TV interactive content of "How To Solve A Problem Like Maria", it received an astounding 250,000 downloads in one week on the BBC interactive service, Jake was said to be "stunned" and "dead proud" by the news.
The song itself, purely aimed at the very young in its lyrical content and upbeat bouncy music is so very different from his other songs, and shows yet another side to the very multi-talented Jake Hook.
As if writing, singing and playing his own songs wasn't enough, a first at producing the 'Double H' remix of 'Baby It's You', for artist Beryl Marsden signed to his record label 'LoneBoy Records' was to be the next undertaking, this single was released worldwide on January 15th 2007.
Also in January of this year Jake teamed up with fellow singer/songwriters David Sneddon and Chris Townsend on a mini tour of five dates, gigging in London, Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford, releasing his 'Live Sessions Ep' to coincide with this.
The Ep reached the very respectable position of No.3 in the indiestore chart, also in January indiestore featured Jake as artist of the week,"In the final installment from our intrepid singing/songwriting trio (see Sneddon/Townsend in the chart) comes perhaps our favourite. "Veering from Eighties funkatering ('Elusive You') to gorgeous gas mark 9 balladeering ('FireFlies') without batting an eye, it is all utterly marvellous stuff."
Live Sessions remained in the chart for a staggering twelve weeks, listen to the tracks from the Ep using the player below.
February brought us two new demos Chemical World and 26th Frame and the beginning of April another three, Hidden, Shuttle Boy and Angry Man.
These five brand new songs show us yet another direction Jake has taken, although, very different from each other the songs hint at a much darker side to what we have come to expect but still manage to keep the intensity and emotions Jake incorporates into his music.You can find even more music, pics and info about Jake on his website jakehook.com or on his main myspace page at myspace.com/jakehook .