Joe Brooks

Joe Brooks (born Joseph David Tancock; 18 May 1987) is an English singer and songwriter.

Brooks started out as a Myspace musician when he was just 17 and quickly gained popularity on the site while releasing two independent EPs.

Joe Brooks was born on 18 May 1987 in Southampton, England.

He is the son of a trucking-business owner, and a primary-school teacher.

He has an older sister and a younger brother.

He grew up in Shirley, Southampton, where he attended Wordsworth and St. Mark's Schools.

He focused predominantly on sports as a child and he began playing tennis when he was four years old and continued to play for the next twelve years, which included participating in competitive tennis tournaments.

He quit tennis at the age of 16 when he decided to focus on a potential career of sports coaching instead.

Meanwhile, Brooks's interest in music also began at a young age, when he saw his mother play the piano.

He asked her for piano lessons when he was 10 years old.

He took formal piano lessons for a year before quitting due to his lack of interest in classical compositions.

A few years later when he was 16, he saw musician and guitarist Derrin Nauendorf play at a local music club.

This inspired him to pick up the guitar.

Using his mother's old classical guitar, he began to teach himself to play in his room.

He received help from various musicians whom he met while attending the Soul Survivor music festivals.

Inspired by artists such as Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, and Bryan Adams, Brooks threw himself into music and started to practice singing and composing songs.

After leaving Mountbatten Secondary School in Hampshire, his interest in the guitar and music recording lead him to focus on Music Technology classes while he attended Barton Peveril Sixth Form College.

Between music classes in college and recording at home on his own digital recorder, he began to produce his own songs and covers, which became popular via Myspace.

After a year of learning to make music, Brooks started his own Myspace page on 3 April 2005 and began posting music to it.

Around this time he also met his first manager, Stewart Dugdale, who signed him to South Star Music, a management and studio business that Dugdale had recently started.

Brooks just happened to meet Dugdale when he bought sound equipment from him.

During this initial meeting, Brooks played guitar for Dugdale, who took interest in him and signed him to a management deal.

Using Dugdale's small recording studio, Brooks would begin recording his first EP, Maybe Tomorrow.

During the recording of Maybe Tomorrow Brooks began gaining popularity through his Myspace page, which led to interest from other managers and labels.

Brooks had offers to sign production deals and record label contracts at this time, but did not take them due to concerns with contract terms.

After graduating from Barton Peveril, Brooks attended the University of Bath to focus on a degree in Sports Development and Coach Education.

During his first year at Bath, Tim Byrne, the manager of other manufactured UK acts Steps and A1, contacted him.

After a series of meetings with Byrne in London, Brooks signed with Byrne as his new manager and ultimately decided to drop out from the University of Bath to focus on his music career.

Brooks released his first CD, Maybe Tomorrow on 7 March 2006 and created his own website for promotion.

He sold the album online through his site and Myspace.

He also continued playing live shows in small venues around Southampton and Bath.

While attending college for his Coaching degree, Brooks began to express interest in travelling to America and playing shows there.

An American professor at Bath, Eric Anderson, helped him arrange for an extended trip to California.

In September 2006, Brooks travelled to America for the first time to tour small venues around California and Nevada and make contacts with people in the music business.

Securing his own gigs, Brooks performed at small clubs and coffeehouses in San Diego, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

This self-managed tour lasted for around a month before Brooks travelled back to the UK to return to school.

It was also during this month that he would meet his next manager, Ginger McCartney, the mother of Jesse McCartney, a previous child actor who was given a record contract.

By 2008 he was hyped and labelled as the "Number 1 Unsigned UK Artist" on MySpace and had amassed 11 million song plays.

In 2009 he signed to Jason Flom's Lava Records and Universal Republic Records, where he released his first full-length and major label album, Constellation Me, in 2010.

Following his exit from Lava/Universal in 2011, he released a fan-funded independent EP, A Reason to Swim, later that year.