Ryan McMullan picks up the call amid a sensory bedlam of car rental stands and bustling passengers in Belfast International Airport.

His own flight has just landed; a seemingly swift half-hour jaunt across the Irish sea from Newcastle. It was, such are the splendours of modern aviation, a little delayed. The Portaferry native is still confident he’ll make it home for hurling training, though he’s not overly enthusiastic about the pre-season fitness regime that awaits.

“There’s going to be a lot of running tonight. It’s funny, I’m going to get match fit and then go on tour for six weeks and have to get back into shape when I return.”

“It’s really good for the head,” the singer-songwriter continues, touching on the importance of keeping active. “It makes you feel alive, clears the psyche, puts you to bed a bit happier and has you waking up a bit healthier.”

McMullan has had to learn to manage his headspace, as anyone who’s listened to his debut album Redesign – which came out at the tail end of last year – will know.

The 32-year-old will be the first to admit that his inaugural full-length was well overdue. Some songs were penned years ago, and the title alludes to how the project was disassembled and put back together over and over.

Still, it was done and it was good. Glittery yet raw and honest, it was the sound of someone who’d been through the wringer and came out singing.

“Redesign was being built when I really wasn’t in a good place,” McMullan shares. “When you cancel a world tour and postpone an album because of where you’re at mentally, it’s pretty soul crushing.

“I hate to let people down, especially people who buy tickets to your show. There’s nothing worse than being on tour and you get sick and you have to cancel the show. People have given up time and money. Maybe they’ve got a babysitter or a new outfit or whatever.

“For the show to go away, it’s just a big letdown. It’s a thing that I really struggle with. But you get other people that you will make you feel like you’ve let them down, and they can fuck off.

“There’s a difference between not turning up and not being able to turn up. I was mixing the two into one, and by the end of writing that album, I got from the position of not seeing a way out to being able to see a glimmer of light. So that’s where that album sort of headed.”

McMullan is keen to kick on. A follow-up is already in the works and he’s hoping to deliver it at some point this year. In the meantime, he’s delivered us his In This Room EP, a short-but-versatile collection of live favourites that hadn’t yet seen full release.

“Whenever I played those songs at shows, I could feel they were songs that people wanted,” McMullan explains. “As soon as I start playing ‘Jenny And Johnny’, people start singing it word for word. It’s the same with ‘In This Room’ – it was written a long time ago for a movie, and to this day, I still get messages from people asking why it’s not on Spotify.”

The film in question is The Delinquent Season starring Cillian Murphy, Andrew Scott and Eva Birthistle. Furthermore, the intimate and crooning number was co-written alongside Ed Sheeran. What was it like working up close with one of the world’s most commercially successful artists?

“There are no days off with Ed,” McMullan says. “He’s the hardest worker in every room I’ve ever been in. It’s phenomenal. We were on the tour and it was a day off in London and he was like, ‘I’m going into the studio tomorrow to write this song for a movie. Do you want to come?’

“It’s just a different world. We were walking down a dingy alley in London and I was thinking, ‘What are we doing here?’ Then you open the door and it’s this gorgeous studio. The guitar that I’m playing on was owned by Johnny Cash at one point. You take a little bit of energy from that sort of stuff.

“You realise that you need to be on your game because Ed is such a quick writer. He’s just so seasoned. If you don’t get involved, you could quickly get left behind; he’s on to the next verse before you’re finished the next line.”

Supporting Sheeran on a European tour in 2017 meanwhile, was a crash course in showmanship.

“Every time I see him he’s got advice for me,” McMullan continues. “He’s so invested in what you do. We were in Germany and after I came back from selling merch he asked how I got on.

“I told him that I sold 50 CDs or whatever, and he said that the next night I should point to the corner where I’m selling my merchandise, and speak slowly because English is their second language. Over the next few nights I sold a lot more CDs!”

As he’s already alluded to, life on the road has its challenges. McMullan’s songs indicate that he’s a pretty romantic and social chap. Touring, he says, can make it difficult to keep relationships steady.

There are also financial frustrations, even for those pulling in punters by the thousands and packing out prestigious venues like the Olympia in Dublin and Belfast’s Telegraph Building.

“Touring at the minute is so unsustainable and it’s hard to put on a show that represents your music,” McMullan continues. “I’ve done a couple of shows before where the only way to do it was to go on my own.

And you feel like you let people down a wee bit. It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s just him and the guitar. I thought it would have been a band,’ and you’re like, ‘I wish it was.’

“What I find hilarious is that the cost of a pint, taxi and hotel room has gone up. The booking fees and venue hires have gone up, but everybody’s afraid to put the ticket price up. All you need is everybody to pay an extra cost of one pint for their tickets, and that affords an extra person on tour.

“You don’t want to scare people away, but also it’s almost impossible to do without it. The cost of one pint per ticket would dramatically change the scope.”

• In This Room is out now.