After absolutely smashing the Freeq Launch Party, we caught up with THePETEBOX and his beatbox of tricks in a quiet café in Nottingham to talk about Prague, Mexico and driving to Mongolia in a Fiat Panda. If you haven’t heard already, THePETEBOX is fast becoming a worldwide beatboxing sensation and what’s more, he’s Nottingham born and bred.

We enjoyed a bit of preamble about yo-yo dieting, avoiding Ginsters at service stations and gangrene we got down to the business at hand.

FREEQ: Thanks for playing at the Launch Party – everyone left buzzing. Are you getting used to that at gigs – can you ever get used to the adulation of fans?
PB: (laughs) No I can’t! I’m getting some big reactions when I play. It’s not just me doing some songs, it’s me doing songs with just my mouth – it’s a spectacle and the whole experience evokes a bigger reaction because of what it is. So, er no I can’t get used to it! I think the whole concept of what I do when you strip it down it’s just me and a microphone in front of a load of people I always think that’s weird. When I was on stage at Glastonbury, it was so good I got my phone out on stage. I was like ‘yea I know I’m supposed to be used to this but I’m just gonna film ya, (laughs) so can you just make some noise!’
FREEQ: So it’s like the drug that fuels you
PB: Er, no. It’s great when everyone claps and screams your name but the ultimate moment for me in life is when you’re on stage and you’ve got the monitors going, you know, really loud and it’s just the atmosphere and the bass and when I’m singing, eyes closed, and I can hear the speakers and that for me, whether there’s no-one there or loads of people there, that’s what it’s all about. But when you get love at the end, that’s ace as well!

FREEQ: So how was your gig in London for getting love at the end? Er, we’ll re-phrase that; how was it for getting appreciation?
PB: Ha ha, yea, these two girls at the front row, I was like… (laughing)
Yea, good, I wasn’t supposed to play until three days before. My band was going to play but the bassist was in France so I was a last minute addition. I went on after the headline band and it was great. Quite a different setting as I’ve been playing festivals and club nights and this was more of a band night but I love playing in that kind of setting coz you can see people really engaging in it.

FREEQ: We told a couple of buddies to go down to see you as your stuff on the website doesn’t do it justice; it’s difficult to understand until you see it live.
PB: Yea, we’ve got some new videos getting bounced down today – some nice quality footage. We’ve been hitting people in emails and they don’t get it until they see you at a gig. We’re re-approaching how it’s all done coz what I’m doing is more than beatboxing, I’m doing songs and I sing and do more of a band set.
FREEQ: It’s a vocal performance.
PB: Yea!

FREEQ: You’re a bit of a Nottingham legend, do you know any other beatboxing champions from Nottingham?
PB: Beatboxing champions er, no. Beatboxers, yea. There’s one guy, who I think is amazing, a guy called Foz.
FREEQ: Is that the one you battled in Bristol last year?
PB: No no, a different guy, he was called Fozzy – he’s good as well. But Foz, he’s from Nottingham and he went to Leeds and he was doing stuff with Dealmaker records then he moved to London and stopped beatboxing, which is a shame coz I think he’s amazing, so yea – Foz; check him out. (Not as good as me though!)

FREEQ: What do you love most about Nottingham?
PB: It’s weird, I’ve lived in a lot of places but I think it’s something about me and my flat personality where I can’t engage in a scene; I don’t get ‘scenes’. I don’t get identity with places, I don’t know, I’ve never had it and I’ve lived in Australia, Brighton, London, but the best thing is the music I guess. Just the fact there’s loads of wicked bands and loads of people trying to put those bands on a stage, and loads of venues. Erm, and girls…

FREEQ: Ok, so what do you like least about Nottingham?
PB: The thing I like least about Nottingham? Er, just that it’s in England!
FREEQ: And there’s no beach.
PB: Yea, no beach. I’ve been going to Prague a lot recently and I went to two in a row and I’m going to another at the end of the month – beach parties. And they don’t have a sea, but they just make a beach next to the river.
FREEQ: Is the river clean? Can you swim in it?
PB: People swim in it. I wouldn’t swim in it but people do.

FREEQ: Nice. So what made you want to become a beatboxer - this is one question you probably get asked all the time.
PB: Yea, well I am a beatboxer so… it’s fair enough I suppose. I’ve always played piano from being very young and my Dad plays piano and it was one of the things my Mum was like ‘you learn piano, you learn swimming and you learn to read’. So I’ve always played piano and then when I was like 14, I just fell in love with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana and was like ‘guitar; that’s the instrument for me’. I started playing guitar and writing and always wanted to be a rock star and then played drums in a band with my brother, so I’ve always played music and been really aware of it and always sang and written songs. Then I was in someone’s car and someone passed me a CD through the window. I remember the day of Rahzel going ‘hey check this out’ and it was him doing If Your Mother Only Knew, where he sings and beatboxes at the same time, which at the time was absolutely incredible. He was leading, he created the basis for mainstream beatboxing, he was always doing these amazing tricks and good solid beatboxing. And that was it. I was like ‘if he can do that, then I’m gonna be able to do that’ and then I just copied him as much as I could – I sounded rubbish for ages. I started doing open mic nights in Nottingham and playing my guitar, pouring my heart out, pouring my soul out and two people might be there, p*ssed, not bothered. Then I’d start beatboxing and everyone would listen and I sort of got the buzz from performing beatboxing and went from there.

FREEQ: So do you think that musical background helped you? You’re not just a beatboxer, you’re a writer really – you perform some of your own songs as well as beatboxing, singing melodies and harmonies.
PB: Yea, definitely.
FREEQ: Does it give you an edge over other beatboxers?
PB: I think it’s not over other people or something specific to me, it’s just beatboxing is two elements: there’s the sounds, which nowadays every kid can do. There’s such huge Internet resources – you can type ’10 year old beatboxer’ in Youtube and he’s doing some awesome skills because there’s so many people recording themselves with video cameras and there’s so many tutorials like humanbeatbox.com. So that’s getting quite common, people being able to sing and beatbox at the same time or do some crazy bass noise, but then it’s up to individual beatboxers to take it and do something good with it. You know, good arrangements, good routines. The fact that I’ve always grown up around music is definitely how I’ve come to have my style and approach and the way I deliver and use beatboxing is purely reflected in the fact I want to make music and not just do funny noises – which I do do as well.

FREEQ: So did your folks ever want you to get a proper job?
PB: No, they were probably happy coz I was bumming around before.
FREEQ: So they were just relieved you wanted to do something?
PB: Ha ha, no, I mean, my Dad’s a doctor, Mum’s a teacher, they don’t live together but have always been a big presence and I did well at school, it was cool – school was cool, (laughs). I wasn’t the model student but I knew my priorities and I always knew that when the time came to push all I had to do was push for this little bit of time and then do nothing so it [working hard] was always a means to do nothing. So GCSEs weren’t really great, then A-levels came around, didn’t do so well and I was a bit bored of being in Southwell, so I came to college in Nottingham – got my A-levels and went to do film in Grimsby. So it was looking alright but I never quite got on. Grimsby; first year was great but it was Grimsby, and all my mates were second years, so I quit that and just came back to Nottingham coz all my mates were moving away. I’ve got really fond memories of Grimsby but if I’d stayed there another year I would’ve hated it. So I came to do sound engineering at Confetti. I’ve always been doing something, but then building the beatboxing up alongside it, and then obviously delighted that I get to travel the world and make money from beatboxing, coz it’s pretty cool.

FREEQ: Speaking of traveling the world, you’ve been all over the place doing festivals, gigs and shows. Did you ever think, back when you were handed that first CD, that one day this would be the scenario?
PB: I dunno, well no, that didn’t cross my mind I suppose, but what did cross my mind was that ‘one day I’m going to be able to do this’. But definitely among my friends they completely didn’t think I would do it. I’m still owed probably hundreds of pounds from people who said ‘I bet you never do it, I bet you never become a beatboxer’. But yea, there’s no way you entertain the thought that you’re gonna be doing all that good stuff. I still wasn’t serious until after about a year and a half and I did my first gig. From doing open mic nights, someone saw me and I did a proper club night and then I was like ‘hang on, I can do this, I got twenty quid – sweet!’ Then I won this Radio 1 competition and it was only then I thought this was getting serious. I started to realise people paid you and it was only then I thought I wanna be doing this around the world.

FREEQ: Does it cause problems on applications where you have to state your occupation – is there an option for ‘beatboxer’?
PB: Well no, you say self-employed; I’m a self-employed musician. Or I say music teacher. If you say you’re a musician they think you haven’t got much money – coz most musicians haven’t!

FREEQ: You’ve been doing some workshops on beatboxing?
PB: I haven’t done for ages but yea, I started doing it at college as a way to earn some money. It was just to be able to use my beatboxing and work one day a week instead of five, so that’s how it worked. But for a long time I loved it, it was always something new and meeting new people but it’s quite hard approaching that from my angle - my focus and drive is purely a performing musician. I want to play big shows, I never wanted to be a teacher or youth worker, so it’s kind of weird. There’s only so long you can do it before you’re thinking ‘I don’t want to be doing this, it isn’t where my heart is’. But I know I’m good at it and I can bring something interesting to the young people. It was getting to a point where I thought ‘I can’t be doing this’. I was going from doing a show in front of 2,000 people, meeting famous dudes, and the next day I’d be in like, Worksop, doing a workshop to p*ssed and stoned kids (laughs). It’s one extreme to the other.

FREEQ: For us it’s all about unsigned and independent music and arts because we want to give opportunities for people who are just starting out or would benefit from exposure in the magazine.
PB: Yea, there are a lot of people I’ve met who do have real promise but need a bit of guidance or encourage and you know, some praise or something to help them realise their self-worth, coz there are some people where you’re like ‘you could be really good but you’re gonna go and get p*ssed now aren’t you, and probably smash a window’ which is a real shame. It’s weird coz even the roughest, toughest guys, we’d do a festival or something and get them performing and at the end people coming up to them, and they’re like reduced back to being kids again, they love being told they’re good and get encouragement.

FREEQ: What’s been the highlight of your career so far?
PB: Ah, loads of stuff is ace - playing gigs, I just love it all. The thing I did that was amazing was, well, three things. One was a tour of Africa we did last year. We went from Johannesburg through Maputo in Mozambique up the East coast and up through Malawi to finish at the Lake of Stars festival. It took two weeks, there was me, Joe Driscoll, some DJs, loads of press; The Times, Guardian, some magazines, and it was all filmed. It was great just being there in the name of music. There was one place we got to Vilanculos, we were like the guests, we were there camping and the locals took us out in their boat fishing, out to an island. They caught the fish on the way and cooked us this amazing meal and that night I did a show by the beach. It was like this little hut, no lights really – there were no lights in the whole village – and loads of the locals came and watched me do this gig through this tiny little PA system. It sounded pretty bad but it just worked, I was loving the fact it sounded boxy and tinny coz it was just perfect for the occasion and just seeing the local people in the crowd loving what I was doing, it was just amazing.
Getting this Channel 4 Talent award was good, it was nice to have recognition coz I’ve won a few competitions, but I don’t put any weight on winning or losing coz it’s always judged by the crowd and gimmicky and if you win it’s not like you’re the best…
FREEQ: Just how many people shouted for you on the night.
PB: Yea, it’s still good but Channel 4 Talent award was judged by the editor of T4 and people who know music in a broader sense, so that was great.
And finally, the shows I’ve been doing in Prague. This year I’ve been out five times. I did one tour at the end of March, I’ve got a guy out there, Honza, who used to work at Junction7 who takes me out and it’s always a wicked party that we go to. I’ve played Roxy’s – a huge club, just been to do Creamfields, you know, beach parties – it’s just a cool time because he’s built me up and I’m really well known there now and it’s like when I’m there everything’s different; it’s great and exciting.

FREEQ: We’ve heard the women over there are quite tasty…
PB: Yea, they’re alright…

FREEQ: You’ve been in a few competitions. What’s better, competing or performing?
PB: Performing – easy. Competitions are like, you’ve got such a small amount of time in the rounds. For me it’s how to build up to something in your arrangements, you know, kind of start simple and build it up, have a drop here and there. So it’s all just tailored totally differently. The competitions normally involve the other person going ‘wokawoka (mimics a scratch sound) your Mum’s a tw*t’. I don’t subscribe to that at all – I’ve been using that a lot ‘I don’t subscribe to that’, Larry Davies says it in Curb Your Enthusiasm. So yea, it’s totally different, just a thing you do sometimes, don’t think about too much, but it’s all about performing; carving your own personal way of using and experimenting with beatboxing.

FREEQ: We did some research and discovered you liked inline skating and were in the scouts…
PB: Is this from Robin?
FREEQ: No, not at all – ha ha.
PB: I wasn’t in the scouts, I was in the cubs. I didn’t make it to scouts, scouts was wrong by that age I think. But yea, inline skating, not just inline skating but aggressive skating. We started out on Bauers, me and a couple of mates – we were kings of the roller disco! Then my mate came back from America with some aggressive skates which were like the inlines but you had sole plates for grinding on each side and then in the middle, so we all got a pair of them and we used to rip it up in Southwell in those. Good times. Apart from I never had baggy jeans. I was like ‘Mum, can I have some baggy jeans?’ - ‘No!’ We went shopping once a year for clothes until finally my Dad was throwing out a pair so I made my own baggy jeans and they were cream and I dyed them blue and cut them off and then I truly felt part of the gang! Ha ha.

FREEQ: We weren’t going to get into all of that but there you go. The other thing we did find out was that you were in an advert in Mexico for a phone company – or something like that, no-one in the office speaks Spanish! Was that your screen debut and any plans to break Hollywood now?
PB: Yea, it was for that king of thing. I’ve been on East Midlands news a couple of times but er, that was last March, just randomly had an email, just going ‘alright, we’re a Mexican production company, we’d like to get some videos and photos to pitch to the client to be in an advert.’ I was like, ‘this is cool, never going to happen’ but I sent it off anyway. That was on the Monday and on the Wednesday they emailed back going ‘yea, we’ve met the client, they want to use you. Can you shave off your stripes and we’ve booked you a plane for Friday.’ So I went out on Friday, had a wicked weekend coz the director took me out and he was this cool young guy and then filmed on Monday and flew back on Tuesday – it was all a bit weird – and the result is on my website. I didn’t really think much of those kind of things, it’s pretty good money, so I thought it would be great if a couple more of those came my way randomly but, er, it didn’t. So my mate, Foz, got this advert – I wont tell you how much money he got but it was a hideous amount of money – to beatbox in this advert and that’s what made me think ‘hang on a minute…’ so I joined all these casting agents and since then I’ve just done a BBC ident which happily isn’t going to be played. It’s great, I’m really happy about it coz it was one of my least proud moments ever. I did it last month for this new programme called Last Choir Standing. The scene is me at the front, beatboxer, I was like the featured one. To the side of me is a pop group dressed like S Club 7, on the other side a gospel choir, behind them a church choir, behind them is a choir of Welsh men, dressed in miner’s hats and boots and at the back is a choir of gay men. It was the worst, but it was a bit of money and I wasn’t going to turn the money down, I might as well do it. I was expecting a flurry of texts when it shows and then the agent text me through going ‘got your money, the ad isn’t going to be shown.’ I was like ‘Yes!’ But apart from that, one thing which I did do that was good was – it’s still not finished, we finished filming in February – it was this short film for a director who works for film 38 in London and it’s just me and this other guy in this like Western stand off and we kind of have a fight but I beatbox at him and he reacts with body popping and er, it’s pretty cool. I don’t know when it’s finished, a guy called Andrew Harman is the director, he’s really busy doing other stuff so it’s just as and when and I think they’re doing all these special effects but that’s going to be cool.

FREEQ: So when the BBC announce the next hike in tv licence fees, we know the reason is because they paid you an extortionate amount of money to not show the ad.
PB: Yea, I love it! Ha ha.

FREEQ: So for anyone wanting to have a go at beatboxing, what would be your advice?
PB: Er, just that it’s easy to learn now; everyone can beatbox that wants to. What I would’ve said a few years ago is just get over the fact that you sound rubbish for a while and keep going. But now, check out the tutorials, listen to other beatboxers and keep doing it. There’s this whole thing about biting other people’s stuff, people get p*ssed off when one person does a cover, but it’s a cover, it’s not their own song – unless they’ve got an individual arrangement. There’s 100 songs that come out every year that probably ever beatboxer hears and goes ‘I’m gonna do that’ so sod it, copy everyone’s stuff while you’re learning and then when you start performing, make sure you come up with original routines and stuff.

FREEQ: How do you do it?
PB: How do you beatbox?
FREEQ: Yea.
PB: (Laughs) You kind of use every surface and corner of your mouth and thwack them all together and try and use the noises you make in a beat, and then use your throat and voicebox to create crazy sounds ha ha.

FREEQ: So you say there are loads of tutorials out there. Is there a set way of doing a basic drum sound?
PB: Yea, the three that are the easiest sounds are the hi-hat – it’s like you’re saying ‘t’ but without the ‘ee’ sound then accentuate it. The snare – imagine the ‘k’ at the end of the work ‘kick’ but then make it loud and use your stomach to pass some air through it and make it louder. The bass drum is like a ‘b’ but without the ‘ee’ sound again and you really thwack your lips together to get the tone [like you’re spitting a pip out your lips] and you play with the pattern to make the first beat. B-T-K-T

FREEQ: What is the biggest challenge you face as a beatboxer?
PB: Making an album.
FREEQ: Is that something in the pipeline?
PB: Yea, um, we tracked two tracks already, still need to write a couple more, work with different producers, but it’s quite scary coz it’s weird building a profile away from the recorded music side of things. Because of the live gigs I do, a lot of people know me so then you bring out an album – it’s got to be good and I don’t know if it’s good or not, coz it’s all made with the mouth, you just gotta have faith in the song and they have to be good songs. Then you have to find a way of striking a balance between good production – it can’t just be beatboxing all the way through, that would be boring – but then you don’t want to go the other way wehre you over-produce it, where you know, every beat being cut up and it sounds mechanical. You need to capture a beatboxing performance. So it’s fun, it’s quite hard to do as we don’t have a whole bunch of studio time it’s just bits here and there, but that’s probably the biggest challenge – to get a good record.

FREEQ: So is the album literally just your vocal?
PB: Well yea, and no. If there’s a space I can’t fill with my voice and there needs to be something, I’m not going to sacrifice the sound just by keeping it beatboxing, but yea, in the main, it will be just beatboxing – some of the tracks are purely me with my mouth.

FREEQ: Ok, one question we ask a lot: If you were recruiting for Leader of the World, who would be on the interview panel and why?
PB: The Leader of the World? That’s a ridiculous question! Er… I don’t know anyone worthy of being leader of the world. I wouldn’t want a leader of the world in general.
FREEQ: No no, we mean who would be on the interview panel if you had to have a leader!
PB: Oh, who would be the judges? I don’t flippin’ know! I suppose I would want to be on there, I’d like some kind of say. Er, my brother because he’s just. And er, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

FREEQ: Ok, where next for THePETEBOX?
PB: In the studio, I’ve got more shows coming up. End of August there’s V Festival, September I’ve got Bestival, October maybe going out to Lake of Stars again, in Africa. There’s talk of a tour of the uni’s. It’s quite weird coz I never know really what I’m doing past the next couple of months, quite often I get to the stage where I think ‘I’ve got no gigs’ then suddenly loads come through. I just got a call about a gig in France in October.

FREEQ: Would you prefer to be gigging all the time?
PB: Yea, four or five days a week, tours, I love it, it’s what I’m made for you know, I don’t need a house, I need a computer, and a guitar, maybe a shower, er – bed… I just love getting amongst it and going and meeting so many people. I’m just having so much fun and ageing beyond my years and drinking too much beer and whiskey and er, I’m just up for all that.

FREEQ: Out of all the people you have met, who was the best?
PB: Eddie Vedder, from Pearl Jam, that was really good. Coz the ultimate person to me would be Kurt Cobain, but he probably would be quite hard to get on with, I dunno. But as far as people who’ve influenced me musically, like Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder is in the top five. I met Rahzel, that was good, but he was just about to go on stage so I didn’t really speak to him much, I just mumbled ‘gahah, er, Rahzel, how does this work – your lips – they’re huge!’ So we’ll say Eddie Vedder.
FREEQ: Not Kila Kela?
PB: No. Not Kila Kela.

FREEQ: When you’re just chilling out, or got time to reflect, is it just continually in your brain – little loops going round?
PB: Oh yea, it’s horrible, all the time, always always – even now. Either songs or loops of songs that my brain makes up, little loops or patterns just always going on. The worst time I noticed it was invading me was when we drove to Mongolia, me and Andy and some mates drove from London to Mongolia in a 1-litre Fiat Panda. It’s like 9,000 miles. We went the long route via Turkey and Uzbeqistan and all that. That was like the worst jukebox you’ve ever heard going through my head, all the time, like early 90s dance and stuff.

FREEQ: Why Mongolia? Did you just fancy a drive?
PB: It was an organised thing called the Mongol Rally. We did it in it’s third year – it was 170 cars. The people that organise it get the visas coz they’ve built relationships with the ambassadors and stuff so they can get visas – most of them… so they do that for you, but then aside from that it’s like, to enter you have to raise a grand for charity, er you gotta have maximum 1-litre car and you start in Hyde Park and you end in Mongolia – see you in a bit. So you don’t go in convoy at all, you know, through Europe to Prague it was the first party, so you had to bomb it like 2 o’clock in the day and the next evening was the party so we had to all get to Prague by then. So you see quite a few cars then, but from there some people go east and straight through Russia, there’s so many different ways you don’t see anyone. We did it in three cars, there was seven people in three cars so it was like a cool holiday / adventure with your mates. It was THE best thing I’ve ever done – it was amazing, the freedom and feeling of waking up literally not knowing where you are. We had two maps, one of them was lost on a p*ssed night, we ended up in a place called Samson in Turkey and the map wasn’t there anymore. The next map, which was of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakstan and the bottom of Russia, was used as toilet paper on the ferry on the way to Turkmenistan. It was the worst crazy, dirtiest, death-trap of a ferry. It was like a brick, a diesel-spewing brick. So we didn’t have any maps, but it’s just the feeling of being purely in the moment; we had a loose mission, just to start there and end over there and we didn’t really know where we were going. We met so many people and we were kind of celebrities coz, you know, these Westerners in places where no-one visits, with crap cars that are amazing to them with stickers on and a couple of my mates are really big and one’s like a superhero with dreads, so all the women were coming up to him, and people wanted to feed us and give us meat and cheese and it was a great mindset to be totally in the moment – it was cool.

FREEQ: So, a bit like life – you start in one place, end up somewhere else and meet a load of crazy people on the way.