NEW YORK’S ACOUSTIC-ROCKING TEEN SENSATION SPENDS AN AFTERNOON
IN THE COUNTRY WITH FASHION DESIGNER AND ROCK PHOTOGRAPHER HEDI SLIMANE.
GET READY TO HUM ALONG

PHOTOGRAPHY HEDI SLIMANE
TEXT JACOB BROWN

"I'll be riding on the subway, and a phrase just comes into my head," explains 15-year-old songwriter Hayes Peebles as he sits at a Soho café. "It pretty much always starts with a phrase—something from a specific event or person or place. I get this strange internal feeling, and then just feel compelled to elaborate on it." He fiddles with a spoon, tugs the sleeve of his T-shirt, runs a hand through his dirty blond hair. He's awkward discussing himself.

It's an unexpected reaction from a performer who regularly gets on stage in front of unforgiving New York audiences, and, armed with only a guitar, sings the hell out of the deeply personal songs he writes in an upstairs bedroom of his parents' suburban Westchester home. And they're not easy songs. Titles like "Shame" and "Gone Grey" come with lyrics like, "The stress it piles, till your skin pulls tight/In this masquerade of lust and guile/Now the pressure stops, and the coils unwind/Now it's time you're swimming in/And your solace is his lips." But while Peebles is frank, sometimes brutally so, he never wallows in empty teen angst; instead, his songs carry a visceral urgency that's rooted in youth. And though he emphasizes lyrics over pop structure, his melodies are energetic and catchy enough that audience members find themselves humming snippets long after a show.

Peebles keeps the between-songs banter to a minimum, and sticks to himself after gigs, packing away his guitars. But he's never shy when he performs. The stage feels no different, he says, from his bedroom. As he plays—his face twisted in a grimace or softened in elation—his mind is clearly elsewhere. Revealing oneself, "sometimes painfully," is something all artists do, he observes. But it's not something most kids his age do—especially not with parents looking on. "We don't really discuss songs' subject matter," he says with a grin. "Some of it's pretty sexual, tongues and teeth and intertwining mouths and whatnot."

Peebles grew up in the West Village, and spent his early adolescence skateboarding in Union Square and loitering outside CBGBs. But when he was in middle school, his family packed it up for the suburbs. For a Manhattan kid, it was an exile. Trained on piano since age 8, he dealt with his frustration by picking up his older sister's discarded guitar. "I guess a year into teaching myself, the idea of writing songs sprung itself on me," he says.

By his fourteenth birthday, Peebles had about eight songs. At his longtime piano teacher's urging, he sent a few MP3s to the booker at Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side, and soon had his first Manhattan gig. Shows at nearby venues such as Pianos and the Cake Shop soon followed. That same year, he began commuting to a Manhattan high school, often staying in the city to play clubs in the evening.

The late nights haven't slowed down his pace; Peebles continues to churn out new songs every month or two. Not surprisingly, the new material often draws on the contrast between his New York identity and the pastoral setting of his home. He romanticizes both urban grit and natural tranquility, finding metaphors in midnight subway rides as often as foggy breath on country mornings.

Peebles knows that this is a critical moment of transition. He is about to release his first, self-titled EP. Labels, managers, and agents are on his doorstep. And he's about to turn 16. "I think it's interesting to see where I end up," he says. "Even when I was 3, listening to Springsteen in the car with my dad, being a musician was my dream. But it never seemed like anything tangible, until recently. Now I guess it's happening."