INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

In his own shoes

Paolo Nutini built his career as singer-songwriter, model and all

On a pleasant Saturday evening in mid-March, a large crowd gathered in the backyard amphitheatre behind Stubb’s barbeque restaurant in Austin, Texas.

It was the final night of the South-By-Southwest Music Conference, and many people arrived early because the large venue would soon reach capacity for a bill headlined by one of the festival’s top attractions: the reunited Stooges, featuring Iggy Pop.

But down by the stage, a certain young Englishman was enthusiastically telling anyone who would listen they were about to see something really special — a new singer who had taken England by storm, named Paolo Nutini.

It’s possible that some of Nutini’s excitement was the product of several of Texas’ finer brews, but when he and his band took the stage, his announcer danced and sang along like a true believer.

Nutini, with his soulful brand of folk-ish pop, was quite entertaining that evening. His music may not have been the best match for a crowd that had come to witness the unhinged, super-fueled punk of the Stooges, but Nutini indeed appeared to make a good first impression on the crowd.

And our English friend, it seems, wasn’t exaggerating about the stir Nutini was creating back in his homeland.

In July 2006, Nutini’s debut single, “Last Request,” debuted in the top five on the British charts. His first CD, These Streets, arrived shortly thereafter, debuting at No. 3 and going gold in just two weeks.

So far, Nutini has yet to see his U.K. success carry over to the United States. But there are signs he’s beginning to build momentum. He is now beginning a two-month headlining tour that finds him playing large clubs and theaters in most cities, and his recent shows have included buzz-building appearances at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee and the Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago.

The fall tour, at first, looked likely to make an even bigger splash because it included a series of shows co-headlined by British singing sensation Amy Winehouse. But Winehouse canceled her appearances — a move that caused speculation that the singer, whose past battles with drugs are the stuff of tabloid legend, had returned to rehab. Winehouse’s representatives report an exhausted Winehouse simply needed a break from touring.

“I was really looking forward to touring with Amy Winehouse,” says Nutini, who quickly added headlining dates to fill out his itinerary. “I do hope that she’s just chilling out. I don’t know what the situation is, but I’ve met her on two different occasions, and she seemed quite erratic. It’s nice to see that hopefully she’s getting that time to become who she is again.”

Nutini should fare just fine headlining on his own. He feels the extensive touring he has done over the past year has sharpened his performing skills, and the songs from These Streets have evolved and improved. Stylistically, his music retains its breezy quality live, but the sound is a bit rawer, and perhaps even a bit folkier, than on the CD.

“I think the general consensus has been that everybody has preferred the live set [to the CD],” Nutini says. “People who even like the record, they prefer the live sound.”

Nutini admits he was apprehensive and out of his element when recording sessions for These Streets began. He also found himself a bit intimidated to be working with his producer, Ken Nelson, whose impressive resume includes projects with Coldplay and Badly Drawn Boy.

“The outcome of the record, I’m very proud of,” Nutini says, “but at the same time, I wish I could revisit it and just sort of [change] 20 percent or 30 percent of [the songs] and add some balls a little bit, you know what I mean, a little more conviction to it. I suppose, you know, I was thinking about what I didn’t want [on the record] then, and what I did want got lost.”

Nutini, actually, is being a bit hard on himself. After all, he was just 18 years old when he signed in May 2005 to Atlantic Records. In fact, he hadn’t been pursuing a music career for long at all.

Growing up in Paisley, Scotland, where his parents ran a fish and chips shop that had been in the family for four generations, Nutini had taken an interest in music when he was a young boy.

“My grandfather loved singing,” Nutini says. “He’s passed away now, but he loved singing. He would sing these arias. My father’s father, he loved opera music. And he also loved folk, very traditional folk. … And every Sunday the monsignor from the church would come over and he’d play boogie-woogie piano, and I’d call him the boogie-woogie priest. I’d be there at 4 or 5 years old, dancing around, playing along, banging a little drum and stuff.”

Naturally, Nutini was also drawn to his father’s record collection, which included a varied assortment of rock albums, as well as Motown, Ray Charles and various other classic soul records.

“When I was very young, I picked one up and I asked my dad could you put this on?” Nutini recalls. “It was Ben E. King and the Drifters … I found myself listening to a song called ‘When My Little Girl Was Smiling,’ and I just, listening to it, I was smiling. It kicked in that there was no comedy on there. There was nothing there to make me laugh, nothing to amuse me. I just started to smile because of the song.”

Nutini continued to dabble in music as he grew up. He sang in his high school choir and even started writing songs, but he didn’t consider music something he could do as a career.

That started to change around the time Nutini reached age 16. One evening, he went to a concert, and when the headliner, David Sneddon, was late, the concert organizer decided to stage an impromptu talent contest.

Nutini’s girlfriend convinced him to go up and sing, and one person in the audience, Brendan Moon, was so impressed that he offered to manage Nutini. That summer, Moon also convinced Nutini’s parents to allow their son to go on tour with a band he managed, Speedway, serving at first as a roadie for the group.

“I was just there for the ride until I worked up a set I was confident in playing,” Nutini says. “Then I would go in and do a short support set for these guys.”

The next year, Nutini decided to quit school and move to London to pursue music. Before long, Moon had drummed up interest from Warner Chappell in signing Nutini to a publishing deal. Then, Atlantic Records came calling and signed the young singer.

Nutini may now be able to look at his first album and see room for improvement. But These Streets is a strong — and actually fairly mature-sounding — debut.

Nutini’s love of classic soul music is apparent in several songs. The snappy “New Shoes” nicely accents a soulful chorus with touches of pop, rock and even a taste of funk. The title song, while it’s done simply with acoustic guitar and accordion, has plenty of soul in its yearning vocal melody. “Million Faces,” as Nutini himself notes, recalls Al Green with its sweet and tender sound.

But These Streets also has songs that lean more toward rocking pop (“Jenny Don’t Be Hasty”), heartfelt pop balladry (“Last Request” and “Rewind”) and rollicking folk-pop (“Alloway Grove”).

Couple the solid songs with Nutini’s pleasantly grainy singing voice and the shaggy-haired, fresh-faced good looks that have already made him a sex symbol (he recently signed a modeling contract), and it’s clear he has all the ingredients for major success.

Nutini, while he takes the emphasis on his looks as a compliment, isn’t entirely fond to see that become such a focus in building his career.

“I’ve seen promotion shots where I’ve been airbrushed so much I don’t even look like that,” Nutini says. “I look like I’m 5 years old. It makes me look really young; it makes me look stupidly young. And I hate that because everybody that sees that, then they aren’t even going to bother listening. There’s a poster out that I think if anyone looks at that, they’d go nah, not for me, man, not for me. And it’s just not fair. I’ve always made my opinions heard on that.”

Obviously, Nutini wants his music to earn him his fans, and he thinks one of the best things about These Streets is that it doesn’t pigeonhole him into a certain sound.

“The songs are quite different,” Nutini says. “I suppose I didn’t want to try to go with one sort of feeling and then try to make the rest of the songs sound like that. I kind of wanted them all to feel a little bit different from each other. … It means with the next record, I don’t think there’s a real expectation of a certain style.”