Interview: Jack Fox talks hip-hop, comedy, drumming, acting and Donald Glover

 

Jack Fox performing at Fitzgeralds Sunderland by Daniel Potts Photography

On the back of two well received mixtapes, Jack Fox (real name: Jack Johnson) along with producer The Harbourmaster are opening the Hip-Hop and Grime stage at the 3aster gig at Independent on Easter Saturday, but there's a lot more to the man than bars.  Mark Tyers caught up with the South Shields rapper, comedian, drummer and actor to talk about his prodigous creative output and the influence of Donald Glover.

Mark Tyers (MT): Last night you performed a set at a comedy club in Liverpool, and then you got the overnight coach back to Newcastle before catching the first metro back to South Shields. That's not the most casual trip in the world and it's not your first out of region comedy performance either- so how is your stab-at-stand-up going?

Jack Fox (JF): I did indeed! It was a very long trip just to do a 15 minutes set! I’m really enjoying my venture into stand-up comedy. I’m happy to be getting a lot of gigs and feel fortunate enough that a lot of people I work with in the stand-up comedy world ask me to come back to their venue. I guess that’s a good sign, right?

MT: Anyone who listens to yours and the Harbourmasters creations (lower case mixtapes I & II) should hopefully pick-up on the tongue-in-cheek lyrics as well as the immaculate samples. Is there any similarity between writing and performing stand-up and rapping?

JF: Firstly thanks for noticing the lyrics are tongue in cheek! I recently got reviewed in a magazine that critiqued my lyrics for being ‘too macho’. I do kind of treat them the same in that I almost start with a punchline and work backwards to make sure the punchline makes sense and is the funniest/best rhyme scheme I can think of.

MT: I read in the South Shields Gazette that you and the Harbourmaster started making music together as bandmates? What was the band like? Did you get out of the rehearsal room?

JF: The band was Martin’s (harbourmaster’s) creation. We were called rainfalldown (yep, all one word) and we did a lotttt of gigs in a lottt of pubs around the north east. We were kind of folk-rock with Martin on acoustic guitar, me on drums, a bassist, keyboard player and a mandolin player. I sort of earned my gigging badges by playing with rainfalldown. I don’t think Martin and I could have predicted we’d end up making rap songs together years later.

MT: Anyone who has been around the local music scene for a while will perhaps be most familiar with you as the drummer for Hivemind (formerly Masamune). How's that going? I see you people have dropped a rather eye-catching video for your latest single?

JF: It’s going well, thanks! We’ve just dropped Bad Disease and a video for it and we’re gearing up to finally put our debut album out sometime this year. There’s a few more things to come from us first though. Keep your eyes out for us!

MT: And you've been dabbling in acting to? Cyber-byte was telling me how Sunderland's 2018 MA film-student class gave your flick a better-than-average rating at their end-of-course screening day.

Towards the end of last year I was fortunate enough to be in 1 of 4 (I think!) online shorts directed by Connor Langley. Connor and I have worked on a project before and out of the blue one day he asked me if I’d like to be a part of his new project and of course I said yes. It was a lot of fun and a learning experience. I’m definitely going to be stretching more of my acting muscles again in the near future.

MT: Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) chose his rap name by sticking his name into the Wu-Tang rap name generator, but that definitely wasn't the case with you – your late grandfather was a big influence right?

JF: That’s right! My grandad was a professional comedian for around 50 years who went by the name Alan Fox (Fox being my Nana’s maiden name and Alan being a generic first name!) Funnily enough he went by that stage name because his real name was Tommy Duffy and there was a famous singer by the name of Jonny Duffy on the scene when he was coming up. Similar to why I wanted to change my name from Jack Johnson to Jack Fox so as not to confuse people!

MT: Talking about Donald Glover- you've pretty much got the same skill set. Sure he can claim he's winning in terms of acting and rapping, but you've got to be the superior drummer right? And whilst you haven't got Ludwig Gorannsson in your camp you've definitely got age on your side- so how’s it going trying to be South Shields answer to him and what have you got planned for the rest of the year?

JF: Haha I appreciate the comparison, he’s a very big influence on me! I’ve always been the type of person to mimic what I’ve been interested in. When I was a kid I used to love dinosaurs, so I’d walk around on my tip toes and scrunch my fingers up and pretend I was a T-Rex. Then when I got into football all I’d wear was football kits and kick a ball around, so as I got older and I got more interested in music, hip hop and comedy I thought “why not!?” Life is too short not to give things you’re going to enjoy a try. As for the rest of the year I’m just going to do more. More Hivemind music and videos. I’m still doing 1 EP a month. Much more stand up shows. And who knows, Donald Glover has his TV show Atlanta, maybe I’ll write, direct and star in my own online web show. Time will tell!