The Brendan Voyage

rendan Benson is a busy boy. It’s not that the folk-popster and part-time Raconteur has a new album to promote – at least not since 2009’s superb My Old, Familiar Friend, his fourth solo record. But since becoming a husband and a father in the space of a year, juggling a successful career has become slightly more taxing, even if he does claim to be happier than he’s ever been.

When I call him at his home in Nashville, Benson is bouncing a gurgling, giggling baby Declan on his knee. He’s telling me about the time, several months back at a Simon & Garfunkel tribute gig that he played in Central Park, that the diminutive Simon spotted his son backstage, made a beeline for him, scooped him into his arms and handed him back without a word.
“It was so surreal,” he chuckles. “I never met him, I never said ‘hi’ to him, he just wanted to hold my son!”
By the way, if you’re thinking that ‘Declan’ is a strange choice of name for a supposedly all-American Michiganite, you’d be right – except for the fact that Benson’s mother is a Murphy from Youghal, Co. Cork, who moved Stateside when she was 9 or 10 years old. Such knowledge also explains why the mop-topped singer is planning to fulfil a longstanding ambition when he undertakes an extensive tour of Ireland over the coming month.
“I’d always told people, ‘I’m gonna tour Ireland, I’m gonna do it some day’, but even in the past, just playing a gig there seemed to be hard to do,” he explains. “They’d tell me that it was either too expensive to get the gear over there, and the money just wasn’t worth it, or something like that. There was always some excuse. But when my new manager Emily came on board, I did my whole ‘Ireland’ spiel, and this time, she made it happen.”
With his stripped back set-up - he’ll play these dates with just one other musician, Mark Watrous - it sounds like Benson is returning to the formative days of his career, when a guitar and good tunes were all that was necessary. The tour coincides with the release of his second album Lapalco on vinyl, and will see the singer play acoustic gigs from Warrenpoint to Whelan’s and everywhere in-between over the course of a month, with nary a day’s rest.
He claims to prefer studio time and playing with The Raconteurs to solo gigs (“You can share in the glory and share the duties, whatever. Being on my own is exhausting!”), and says he’s really bad at talking his music up, and self-promotion in general. His likeable demeanour suggests he’s almost too nice a guy for this whole rock ‘n’ roll business. Which begs the question – why put himself through such a gruelling tour schedule?!
“Good question. I must have been out of my mind,” he laughs. “It just sounded appealing to me, it sounded romantic – that I’d bring my wife and my son, and we’d cruise around Ireland in a van and earn a little gas money along the way. We’re gonna make a trip out of it, a little holiday. I’m looking forward to it. For better or for worse, we’ll see how it turns out!”