Your average musician will not embark on a 16-date tour of Ireland but, then again, there’s nothing average about Brendan Benson, the American songwriter who plays an acoustic show in the Róisín Dubh on Tuesday, September 21.

What convinced Brendan to embark on such an extensive tour of Ireland?

“I don’t know – good question! It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he laughs.

“It’s a way of killing two birds with one stone. I think I’ve neglected Ireland a lot, on tour. I think Ireland gets over looked a lot because, according to the booking agents, it’s economically not worth it. It depends on your situation, I suppose – how much gear you have, what kind of production you’re travelling with and all that.”

Brendan will be accompanied on tour by his wife and four-month-old son, so he has had to abandon his initial plan of doing all the driving.
“We were literally going to jump in the van and go but it was getting a little overwhelming,” he says. “So we got a guy to drive us.”

Originally from Michigan, Brendan has lived in California and New Orleans but is now settled in Nashville. He explains why he made the move to Tennessee.

“Well one reason is there’s no state income tax, which was appealing!” he says. “More importantly it’s a music town, it’s an industry town. So it’s got all the resources rivalling New York or Los Angeles – studios, publishing houses – but with kind of a small town vibe.”

There is a commercial, tacky side to Nashville – Garth Brooks would have thrived here – but you can also bump into people like John Prine and Nanci Griffith. It’s still a town for raw, honest song writing talent.
“There’s still a kind of underground and a coolness to Nashville,” Brendan insists. “I think most people, if they know anything of Nashville, it’s probably that new country music – which is terrible. But you can easily steer clear of that. There are lots of good bands and good venues to go to.”

Brendan Benson writes tunes that stick in your head. In Good to Me, he extols the virtues of a cheap car, a battered guitar and his lover – in one song! He is a master of the memorable chorus but doesn’t deliberately set out to write them.

“I’m sometimes conscious of it,” he says. “I don’t try to but I’m hoping that one surfaces, that somehow I’ll accidentally stumble on one. But I wouldn’t know how to write a hook if I tried.

“To me a hook is something so innocent, something so pure that you couldn’t conceive of it,” he adds. “It just happens. And that’s what makes it so appealing and therefore a hook.”

On his Irish tour, Brendan will be joined by keyboard player Mark Watrous. Mark has played with Brendan in The Raconteurs, the band Benson co-founded with White Stripes front man Jack White. Mark joined the group just after they finished their second album, Consolers of the Lonely.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.